A Little More on Pond Discovery Bags

We started our Pond Discovery Bags Research today by completing a fact chart whole group. I opened the bag, took out the stuffed mallard duck (I have collected my stuffed animals through the years, some are puppets). I read one of the books in the bag, read the fact sheet and looked at the word bank. We watched the Ducks video. Before group time, I had made an enlarged version of the Fact Sheet( the picture above is a cleaned up version of the one I did today). We worked on boxes, one at at time. As I completed the group chart, each student had a chart and pencil on a clipboard. I talked about the importance of writing only a few words. From the words written on the chart today, we will write an information piece tomorrow. I will expect at least one sentence about each of the categories. I will model the process whole group and then let the children practice using information collected on their fact sheet. I am hoping that modeling the process from collecting information through various resources to completing the fact sheet to writing the information piece, the students will have a clearer idea of what I expect as they independently start the process. I'll be back tomorrow with some examples of our first day of independent research (good or bad!). I hope this post answers some of the questions from emails I received today.