Research

As we dive more into nonfiction reading and writing our class will begin to learn about doing research! Though we have not started learning to do research just yet many kids are already very interested so I introduced them to a few kid-friendly internet search engines this morning.

We are currently learning about Mexico and this morning we looked up the weather both in Monterrey, Mexico (where we have a pen pal class) and at McMurdo Station, Antarctica to compare differences in weather there with our own. This prompted lots of fantastic questions about the north and south pole, the equator, time zones, weather patterns, etc! I showed the class where I have links to kid friendly search engines on my blog so that they can start independently researching the answers to questions like these on their own before we get going as a whole class. A few kids tried them out during our morning break and I encourage you to check them out at home as well.

If you look under "Student Links" on the right side of this blog you will see Kiddle and Kidrex listed. Both of these are fabulous, kid-friendly internet search engines where you and your child can search for information on topics of interest or answers to burning questions such as those that came up in class this morning! We will start using these as a class in the near future when we begin our nonfiction research.