Animal Graphic Organizers

Throughout the last few weeks, students have been listening to nonfiction stories about their vermont animal.  We have been learning about how writers use 'facts' in their writing and identifying the difference between what we call a fact and opinion.  In connection with our all about expert books, students are preparing to write a mini-report about their vermont animal. Today, students learned how to organize their knowledge in a graphic organizer.  We are focusing on four different areas of our animal - how it moves, it's characteristics (covering), what it eats, and where it lives. The class has been looking closely at frogs over the last month and completed an outline as a class on this amphibian.  Students drew pictures and added labels to describe it and after set out to do the same with their own animal.   Later in the week, we will be organizing these notes and putting it together into their first "report."