The Everyday Library: Research with Amazing Animals

Name: Amazing Animals Research Unit

Skills: Research, Taking Notes, Print and Digital Sources

Resources: Amazing Animals Research Guide, Cute as an Axolotl, Pink is for Blobfish, WorldBook Student database

Great for Grades: 3 and 4

The final product--look at that fine axolotl drawing!

Research is woven into lessons and units, especially in grades 3 and up. But oftentimes curriculum, pacing calendars, and packed schedules make teaching research, and giving it the time it deserves, difficult for classroom teachers.

That's where librarians come in.

Librarians are information specialists, so that means we are experts at research. And just like any other skill in schools--reading, multiplication, essay writing--research needs to be taught.

Here is one of my favorite ways to introduce research skills to upper elementary students: the Amazing Animals Research Unit! I use this at the beginning of the year with 4th grade, to brush up on the skills they gained in third and set the scene for using more sources. This unit allows them to get practice with print and digital sources, practice note taking (first with guided notes, and then freestyle), and create a final product to display what they learned.

I broke this unit down into 3 weeks. For reference: I see my classes once a week, for 45 minutes. We spent 30-35 minutes each week on this, leaving 10-15 minutes for checkout. For this unit, I assigned partners (with the help of the classroom teacher) for my students to work with.

Week 1: Introduce the unit. My students were pretty excited about doing animal research, but became even more so when I gave them a sneak peek of some of the animals. Who doesn't get excited about naked mole rats, river dolphins, bare-hearted glass frogs, and uakari? I walked them through the packet, and we did page 1 as a class. Then I showed students how the book pages they'd be using were laid out (I made copies of pages from the books, since we didn't have numerous copies of each book), and what information they'd be looking for on page 2. I took about 3 minutes at the end to have them cite their print source on page 4. We did page 1 as a whole group--brainstorming ahead of time to think about what we would want to look for while researching. Doing that helps students focus on keywords and think about what they, as scientists, would most need to learn and share.

Their goal for the day: finish page 2--or at least make a good start, since introducing a new unit takes time!

Page 1: Group work to plan ahead

Page 2: Basic Info

Week 2: This week, we talked about the importance of multiple sources, and different kinds of sources. My students were familiar with WorldBook Kids, but for this unit, I introduced them to WorldBook students. I used my example animal (the hippopotamus) to show them how to search the database, how to look for information, and what makes a fact worth writing down. Page 2 is all about freeform notes, so I modeled some note taking as well. I gave students back the book pages from week 1, but the emphasis was on digital sources this week. Again, we cited our source on page 4!

Page 4: Works Cited

Their goal for the day: finish page 1 if they hadn't, and dig into page 2. Some of my students finished page 2, but all of mine got to a place where I felt confident they could finish week 3.

*Note: my students researching the capybara pointed out the WorldBook entry was pretty lackluster, so I found an alternate site for them to use, and made a QR code for easy access. QR codes rock.

Page 3: Freeform notes

Week 3: The grand finale! Students had the day to finish up their research and make their field guides. I showed them my field guide example and talked about how to choose their "3 Things." (Note: it might be worth telling students to do the writing on the field guide before the drawing, because some of my students spent almost the whole time drawing. They created some beautiful work, but it was time-consuming!) This day was pretty hands-off for me, since students had most of their research done. When they finished, they cut out their field guide, handed everything in, and that was that! I hung the guides up around the library and in the hall, and it's always neat to see other students looking at displayed work.