For my Leveled Research Library this school year, the main research objective for my students is to grow them as readers and writers to be able to research from the blue level with a detail template. The world of researching opens up when a student can read nonfiction books with 2 to 3 paragraphs on every 2 pages and understand how to form a complete sentence from two sentence fragments. In advancing to the blue level, they will proven to me that they understand how to answer all types of questions correctly with a complete sentence. They will understand what a sentence is and they will write it with a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end. Finally, they will have grasped the concept of forming paragraphs with a main idea, ordering these paragraphs and the sentences within, and writing these paragraphs as a cohesive research report with an indent at the beginning of each paragraph.
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The Detail Template: When students research with a detail template they continue to write a sentence fragment in each box in response to the detail in each box. Each box on the detail template represents one sentence. Unlike the question templates of the red, yellow, and green levels, when students report the information gathered, they may combine boxes to form one sentence since they will already have a firm understanding of writing sentences.
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How do I get my students to this point in the researching process while using the Leveled Research Library?:
Before I created The Leveled Research Library, I began my first research center six years ago in my third grade classroom with a detail templates and random nonfiction books. I learned a lot about the writing abilities of my students after the first report. I learned who could write in paragraph form and who understood how to write a complete sentence. I had some students writing a list of sentences while others were writing paragraphs with an indent at the beginning. It was a typical classroom with students writing at various levels.
Before I created The Leveled Research Library, I began my first research center six years ago in my third grade classroom with a detail templates and random nonfiction books. I learned a lot about the writing abilities of my students after the first report. I learned who could write in paragraph form and who understood how to write a complete sentence. I had some students writing a list of sentences while others were writing paragraphs with an indent at the beginning. It was a typical classroom with students writing at various levels.
As school years passed by, I learned several ways to begin researching on the blue level in the classroom with a detail template, as well as various ways to introduce this activity to my students. I have had success with each of the ways written about in this blog entry.
My first year researching in third grade, I introduced my students to the concept of researching by having them compose a class list of topics they were interested in learning about. Their first research report was about “fossils”. I provided multiple resources for them to use and my students would research 20 minutes a day in the Research Center while I taught my small reading groups.
My first year researching in third grade, I introduced my students to the concept of researching by having them compose a class list of topics they were interested in learning about. Their first research report was about “fossils”. I provided multiple resources for them to use and my students would research 20 minutes a day in the Research Center while I taught my small reading groups.
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My First Research Center: This easel was in the middle of my classroom with a carpet so students could sit and research. At the bottom of the easel were all the supplies my students would need to finish their research reports by creating a poster for it. On the easel, I hung an example of a how to create a poster for a report students were doing on fossils.
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On Fridays, we would all gather and discuss which boxes on the paper would “go together” and why. As we discussed this, I would color code the boxes and create a key on the side with the main idea of each paragraph.
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Colored Detail Template: This is an example of a detail template for a report on a state. Students would have already gathered the information and recorded it on the template before coloring it. |
Once we all agreed, the students would color in the boxes. The colors would show which box was to be written with other boxes to form a paragraph. Then students would spend their Friday mornings writing their research report and creating a poster around it.
State of California report
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Fossil Report
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Each week, I introduced a new topic, such as a U.S. state, a country, plants, clouds, planets, etc. Each day my students research their topic for 20 minutes in the Research Center. As time passed, I added the computer as a resource for researching their topic with a set of websites they could utilize to gather information. I obtained most of my science and social studies grades through these reports. This engaging activity improved my student’s reading, writing, and researching skills every day.
Neptune report with a timeline.
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Thailand report with a timeline and a map.
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The next school year, I taught first grade again. This year I created The Leveled Research Library with my first graders and had them researching at mostly red, yellow, and green levels. I didn’t use the detail template with the blue level until the following year when I had a first grader move through the levels with a question template. I got tired of making blue level question templates with 10 questions each, so I gave her a detail template and told her to gather the information for 10 of the 21 boxes. She completed this task. Then,I had her cut the boxes out and group them together by common words, ideas, patterns, etc. She was groups details together to form paragraphs with main ideas.
We would then discuss why she grouped them together. Since this was a teacher supported activity, we both had to agree on the main idea and details of each paragraph. Once we agreed, she would glue the boxes to a half sheet of paper and then order the papers so she would know what paragraph to write first. She would then write a final draft of the report.
This same year, I taught a lesson with a 3rd grade teacher in the month of May. She wanted to teach her students how to research for the last month of school. We gathered books from the local and school libraries. The students had the choice to research an ecosystem, an animal, a natural disaster, a continent, or a planet. They could use one resource or multiple resources. To begin the research process,, we did a whole group lesson together. I completed an animal template before the lesson about Snow Leopards. I made copies of the completed template for each student and together we discussed some ways we could group or sort the boxes into main ideas. The students cut the templates apart to make the activity tactile. Then, they gave me ideas for how to group the boxes together into paragraphs.
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I did this activity under the ELMO. The students organized their pieces the same way or decided on another way. I circulated the room and listened to their ideas. If we agreed on their main idea, they glued the pieces to a half sheet of paper and wrote the main idea on it. After the students finished this activity, they ordered their half-sheets of paper or paragraphs. They ordered their paragraphs however they wanted. The main objective of this objective was the learn the process of how to use the template to write an organized research report.
This past year, I had ESL pullout classes and I serviced about 50 students throughout the day. About 40 of these students researched from my Leveled Research Library. I introduced them to the Leveled Research Library one group at a time. I had groups of 5 to 6 kids in a group and I began with one group in each of my classes. Once the first group understood how to use the question template at their researching level, I moved onto the next group. My goal that year was to get a majority of my students researching from the blue level with a detail template. My students started to grasp researching at the yellow level of the library and many moved onto the green level. Once they mastered the green level, they researched from the blue level with a detail template. I also introduced researching with a detail template through my small reading groups to give every student the opportunity to research at the highest level with teacher support. This pattern continued throughout the school year to support their grade level units on reading and writing informational text.
Leveled Research Library for about 40 third and fourth grade students.
For more information about researching with a detail template and incorporating this into your small reading groups, click on the following links for more posted blogs on this topic:
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