research based lesson plan for grade 1

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Getting First Graders Started With Research

Teaching academically honest research skills helps first graders learn how to collect, organize, and interpret information.

Earlier in my career, I was told two facts that I thought to be false: First graders can’t do research, because they aren’t old enough; and if facts are needed for a nonfiction text, the students can just make them up. Teachers I knew went along with this misinformation, as it seemed to make teaching and learning easier. I always felt differently, and now—having returned to teaching first grade 14 years after beginning my career with that age group—I wanted to prove that first graders can and should learn how to research. 

A lot has changed over the years. Not only has the science of reading given teachers a much better understanding of how to teach reading skills , but we now exist in a culture abundant in information and misinformation. It’s imperative that we teach academically honest research skills to students as early as possible. 

Use a Familiar Resource, and Pair it with a Planned Unit

How soon do you start research in first grade? Certainly not at the start of the year with the summer lapse in skills and knowledge and when new students aren’t yet able to read. By December of this school year, skills had either been recovered or established sufficiently that I thought we could launch into research. This also purposely coincided with a unit of writing on nonfiction—the perfect pairing.

The research needed an age-related focus to make it manageable, so I chose animals. I thought about taking an even safer route and have one whole class topic that we researched together, so that students could compare notes and skills. I referred back to my days working in inquiry-based curriculums (like the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program) and had students choose which animal to study. Our school librarian recommended that we use Epic because the service has an abundance of excellent nonfiction animal texts of different levels.

Teach the Basics for Organized Research 

I began with a conversation about academic honesty and why we don’t just copy information from books. We can’t say this is our knowledge if we do this; it belongs to the author. Instead, we read and learn. Then, we state what we learned in our own words. Once this concept is understood, I model how to do this by creating a basic step-by-step flowchart taught to me by my wife—a longtime first-grade and kindergarten teacher and firm believer in research skills.

• Read one sentence at a time.
• Turn the book over or the iPad around.
• Think about what you have learned. Can you remember the fact? Is the fact useful? Is it even a fact?
• If the answer is no, reread the sentence or move onto the next one.
• If the answer is yes, write the fact in your own words. Don’t worry about spelling. There are new, complex vocabulary words, so use your sounding-out/stretching-out strategies just like you would any other word. Write a whole sentence on a sticky note.
• Place the sticky note in your graphic organizer. Think about which section it goes in. If you aren’t sure, place it in the “other facts” section.

The key to collecting notes is the challenging skill of categorizing them. I created a graphic organizer that reflected the length and sections of the exemplar nonfiction text from our assessment materials for the writing unit. This meant it had five pages: an introduction, “what” the animal looks like, “where” the animal lives, “how” the animal behaved, and a last page for “other facts” that could become a general conclusion.

Our district’s literacy expert advised me not to hand out my premade graphic organizer too soon in this process because writing notes and categorizing are two different skills. This was my intention, but I forgot the good advice and handed out the organizer right away. This meant dedicating time for examining and organizing notes in each combined writing and reading lesson. A lot of one-on-one feedback was needed for some students, while others flourished and could do this work independently. The result was that the research had a built-in extension for those students who were already confident readers.

Focus on What Students Need to Practice 

Research is an essential academic skill but one that needs to be tackled gradually. I insisted that my students use whole sentences rather than words or phrases because they’re at the stage of understanding what a complete sentence is and need regular practice. In this work, there’s no mention of citation language and vetting sources; in the past, I’ve introduced those concepts to students in fourth grade and used them regularly with my fifth-grade students. Finding texts that span the reading skill range of a first-grade class is a big enough task. 

For some of the key shared scientific vocabulary around science concepts, such as animal groups (mammals, etc.) or eating habits (carnivore, etc.), I created class word lists, having first sounded out the words with the class and then asked students to attempt spelling them in their writing.

The Power of Research Can Facilitate Student Growth 

I was delighted with the results of the research project. In one and a half weeks, every student had a graphic organizer with relevant notes, and many students had numerous notes. With my fourth- and fifth-grade students, I noticed that one of the biggest difficulties for them was taking notes and writing them in a way that showed a logical sequence. Therefore, we concluded our research by numbering the notes in each section to create a sequential order. 

This activity took three lessons and also worked for my first graders. These organized notes created an internal structure that made the next step in the writing process, creating a first draft of their nonfiction teaching books, so much easier. 

The overall result was that first graders were able to truly grasp the power of research and gathering accurate facts. I proved that young children can do this, especially when they work with topics that already fascinate them. Their love of learning motivated them to read higher-level and more sophisticated texts than they or I would normally pick, further proving how interest motivates readers to embrace complexity.

Resources for parents, grandparents, teachers & students

Researching with 1st Grade-Teaching Good Research Steps

Mar 19, 2015  •   2 Comments

     Teaching good research habits to younger grades is a very important part of being a librarian.  In the past, I have introduced the research steps using a lesson that connected the Big 6 steps to following a recipe for making an apple pie.  You can read about this “Recipe for Research” lesson on my blog here.       Typically, after I do this lesson, we would investigate Non-Fiction books, Text Features, and databases, and then they would do their research later in their classrooms with their teachers.      This year, I wanted to be more involved in helping them learn how to do the actual research part, so I decided to do a mini-research project with my first graders as part of their library lessons.   Step #1      I started off by asking them what they wanted to learn more about.  Most of them answered with some sort of animal, so we decided that our first research project together would be about animals.        This was actually perfect, as w e had just finished reading the book Those Darn Squirrels  by Adam Rubin. (By the way, if you haven’t read this, it’s a FANTASTIC book.  The kids LOVE raising their fists and shouting “Those Darn Squirrels!” whenever Old Man Fookwire yells at the crazy squirrels in his backyard.  Plus, they were super excited to find out that there are 2 more books in the series!)

      I told them that I was going to research Squirrels since we had just read about them, and then  I introduced them to PebbleGo .   This is an absolutely FANTASTIC database by Capstone Digital!  It is ideal for younger grades, and makes it super easy for them to find information. Each topic is divided into 6 main tabs: body, habitat, food, life cycle, fun facts, and related articles.  Each tab allows the student to either read or listen to the information, and most topics have a video they can watch as well.  It is slightly expensive, but well worth the money!  (If you are interested in checking it out, you can get a free 2 week trial by filling out a short form found here .)  I gave them some time to explore the database so they would be familiar with it for our next lesson, and I told them to think about what animal they would like to research.

Step #2      On their next visit, we quickly reviewed the “Recipe for Research” steps again, and  brainstormed a list of “egg” questions to research about their animal.  T hey came up with things like: what does my animal eat, how fast can it run, who is it afraid of, how does it move, where is it’s home, etc.   I created a Research Brochure (aka: note-taking tool) and had them chose 4 questions to write inside each egg.  

  Once their questions were written down, I asked “What do you think the lines underneath each egg are for?”  They correctly guessed it was for their answers to the questions.  I had them look at the lines, and we discussed how they weren’t very long and they would have to make sure they only wrote down the important words.      I pulled up information on Squirrels on PebbleGo, and we read that “Tree Squirrels have bushy tails that are as long as their body.” I had them help me find the “important facts” and I told them the general rule was they could write up to 3 words from a sentence.  (I am trying to start them early on learning how to paraphrase and write notes, and not just copy everything that they see.)  It was fun writing down their ideas, and then they would check to see if they had more than 3 words. After several tries, they came up with “long, bushy tails”. We practiced a few more times together, and then they  spent the rest of their library time on PebbleGo trying to find the answers for their animal. Before they left, I collected their research brochures to keep them safe for next time. S tep #3       The next week in the library, I showed them another database that I love to use with the younger grades,  Facts 4 Me .  It’s super cheap (only $50.00 for an entire year subscription!) You can take a quick tour of the site to learn more here .  It’s developed by former teachers, and the layout is also very friendly.   Each topic starts with a “Quick Facts” section that gives basic information.  On animals, it gives a variety of info such as: type, habitat, diet, weight, height, etc.  Along the left side are photographs, and under the Quick Facts section are short paragraphs giving more information.    

     At  the bottom, it even gives the exact citation to include on your Works Cited page, so I took this opportunity to begin teaching  them how to do a simple Works Cited page.  For the younger grades, I created just a simple ABC form (A=Author or website, B=Book Title or topic title, C=Copyright date).  I told them anytime they used facts from a source, they had to fill out a slip for their Works Cited page.  I had a stack and we just stapled the slip to their brochure so it all stayed together.  I gave them the rest of this library period to finish finding answers to their questions.

Step 4      Now that they had their answers, I showed them how to take their notes and create detailed, complete sentences on notebook paper.  We also talked about how to write a simple paragraphs (one paragraph for each “egg” question that they had answers for.)  When they were done, I had them work in pairs and peer-edit.  They helped each other with spelling, capitals, punctuation, and made sure that all their egg questions were answered.   Step 5 I gave them a variety of formats to choose from for their final presentation:   1) They could write a basic report using the 2-page format. 

2) They could make their own animal book using the brochure format including a Table of Contents and Author page.

3) Those that wanted to create a true Non-Fiction animal book could create one with a Table of Contents, Index, and Works Cited page.

Step #6      For their finale, each student presented their animal reports to the group.  I believe it’s important for students to get practice talking in front of their peers. Next time, I think it would be fun to Skype with another library and let students from each class share.  Technology options:        There are so many different apps that you can use to present their final information as well.  I love Tellagami and Sock Puppets, and both of these are easy to use.  Since we completed these activities toward the end of the year, our normal schedules were interrupted due to state testing, book fair, and end of the year changes.  Exploring those apps were a great way to keep the kids excited about their research project and provided motivation for them to finish.  If you are interested in doing this research activity with your students, you can find it here on my website or at  TpT store .  I’d love to hear how you do research with your students! Sandy

2 Responses to “Researching with 1st Grade-Teaching Good Research Steps”

Clear and easy to follow, yet thorough and precise. Thank you!

You’re welcome Mona! I hope they help! 🙂 Sandy

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• Research Skills

50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills

Please note, I am no longer blogging and this post hasn’t updated since April 2020.

For a number of years, Seth Godin has been talking about the need to “ connect the dots” rather than “collect the dots” . That is, rather than memorising information, students must be able to learn how to solve new problems, see patterns, and combine multiple perspectives.

Solid research skills underpin this. Having the fluency to find and use information successfully is an essential skill for life and work.

Today’s students have more information at their fingertips than ever before and this means the role of the teacher as a guide is more important than ever.

You might be wondering how you can fit teaching research skills into a busy curriculum? There aren’t enough hours in the day! The good news is, there are so many mini-lessons you can do to build students’ skills over time.

This post outlines 50 ideas for activities that could be done in just a few minutes (or stretched out to a longer lesson if you have the time!).

Learn More About The Research Process

I have a popular post called Teach Students How To Research Online In 5 Steps. It outlines a five-step approach to break down the research process into manageable chunks.

This post shares ideas for mini-lessons that could be carried out in the classroom throughout the year to help build students’ skills in the five areas of: clarify, search, delve, evaluate , and cite . It also includes ideas for learning about staying organised throughout the research process.

Notes about the 50 research activities:

• These ideas can be adapted for different age groups from middle primary/elementary to senior high school.
• Many of these ideas can be repeated throughout the year.
• Depending on the age of your students, you can decide whether the activity will be more teacher or student led. Some activities suggest coming up with a list of words, questions, or phrases. Teachers of younger students could generate these themselves.
• Depending on how much time you have, many of the activities can be either quickly modelled by the teacher, or extended to an hour-long lesson.
• Some of the activities could fit into more than one category.
• Looking for simple articles for younger students for some of the activities? Try DOGO News or Time for Kids . Newsela is also a great resource but you do need to sign up for free account.
• Why not try a few activities in a staff meeting? Everyone can always brush up on their own research skills!

• Choose a topic (e.g. koalas, basketball, Mount Everest) . Write as many questions as you can think of relating to that topic.
• Make a mindmap of a topic you’re currently learning about. This could be either on paper or using an online tool like Bubbl.us .
• Read a short book or article. Make a list of 5 words from the text that you don’t totally understand. Look up the meaning of the words in a dictionary (online or paper).
• Look at a printed or digital copy of a short article with the title removed. Come up with as many different titles as possible that would fit the article.
• Come up with a list of 5 different questions you could type into Google (e.g. Which country in Asia has the largest population?) Circle the keywords in each question.
• Write down 10 words to describe a person, place, or topic. Come up with synonyms for these words using a tool like  Thesaurus.com .
• Write pairs of synonyms on post-it notes (this could be done by the teacher or students). Each student in the class has one post-it note and walks around the classroom to find the person with the synonym to their word.

• Explore how to search Google using your voice (i.e. click/tap on the microphone in the Google search box or on your phone/tablet keyboard) . List the pros and cons of using voice and text to search.
• Open two different search engines in your browser such as Google and Bing. Type in a query and compare the results. Do all search engines work exactly the same?
• Have students work in pairs to try out a different search engine (there are 11 listed here ). Report back to the class on the pros and cons.
• Think of something you’re curious about, (e.g. What endangered animals live in the Amazon Rainforest?). Open Google in two tabs. In one search, type in one or two keywords ( e.g. Amazon Rainforest) . In the other search type in multiple relevant keywords (e.g. endangered animals Amazon rainforest).  Compare the results. Discuss the importance of being specific.
• Similar to above, try two different searches where one phrase is in quotation marks and the other is not. For example, Origin of “raining cats and dogs” and Origin of raining cats and dogs . Discuss the difference that using quotation marks makes (It tells Google to search for the precise keywords in order.)
• Try writing a question in Google with a few minor spelling mistakes. What happens? What happens if you add or leave out punctuation ?
• Try the AGoogleADay.com daily search challenges from Google. The questions help older students learn about choosing keywords, deconstructing questions, and altering keywords.
• Explore how Google uses autocomplete to suggest searches quickly. Try it out by typing in various queries (e.g. How to draw… or What is the tallest…). Discuss how these suggestions come about, how to use them, and whether they’re usually helpful.
• Watch this video  from Code.org to learn more about how search works .
• Take a look at  20 Instant Google Searches your Students Need to Know  by Eric Curts to learn about “ instant searches ”. Try one to try out. Perhaps each student could be assigned one to try and share with the class.
• Experiment with typing some questions into Google that have a clear answer (e.g. “What is a parallelogram?” or “What is the highest mountain in the world?” or “What is the population of Australia?”). Look at the different ways the answers are displayed instantly within the search results — dictionary definitions, image cards, graphs etc.

• Watch the video How Does Google Know Everything About Me?  by Scientific American. Discuss the PageRank algorithm and how Google uses your data to customise search results.
• Brainstorm a list of popular domains   (e.g. .com, .com.au, or your country’s domain) . Discuss if any domains might be more reliable than others and why (e.g. .gov or .edu) .
• Discuss (or research) ways to open Google search results in a new tab to save your original search results  (i.e. right-click > open link in new tab or press control/command and click the link).
• Try out a few Google searches (perhaps start with things like “car service” “cat food” or “fresh flowers”). A re there advertisements within the results? Discuss where these appear and how to spot them.
• Look at ways to filter search results by using the tabs at the top of the page in Google (i.e. news, images, shopping, maps, videos etc.). Do the same filters appear for all Google searches? Try out a few different searches and see.
• Type a question into Google and look for the “People also ask” and “Searches related to…” sections. Discuss how these could be useful. When should you use them or ignore them so you don’t go off on an irrelevant tangent? Is the information in the drop-down section under “People also ask” always the best?
• Often, more current search results are more useful. Click on “tools” under the Google search box and then “any time” and your time frame of choice such as “Past month” or “Past year”.
• Have students annotate their own “anatomy of a search result” example like the one I made below. Explore the different ways search results display; some have more details like sitelinks and some do not.

• Find two articles on a news topic from different publications. Or find a news article and an opinion piece on the same topic. Make a Venn diagram comparing the similarities and differences.
• Choose a graph, map, or chart from The New York Times’ What’s Going On In This Graph series . Have a whole class or small group discussion about the data.
• Look at images stripped of their captions on What’s Going On In This Picture? by The New York Times. Discuss the images in pairs or small groups. What can you tell?
• Explore a website together as a class or in pairs — perhaps a news website. Identify all the advertisements .
• Have a look at a fake website either as a whole class or in pairs/small groups. See if students can spot that these sites are not real. Discuss the fact that you can’t believe everything that’s online. Get started with these four examples of fake websites from Eric Curts.
• Give students a copy of my website evaluation flowchart to analyse and then discuss as a class. Read more about the flowchart in this post.
• As a class, look at a prompt from Mike Caulfield’s Four Moves . Either together or in small groups, have students fact check the prompts on the site. This resource explains more about the fact checking process. Note: some of these prompts are not suitable for younger students.
• Practice skim reading — give students one minute to read a short article. Ask them to discuss what stood out to them. Headings? Bold words? Quotes? Then give students ten minutes to read the same article and discuss deep reading.

All students can benefit from learning about plagiarism, copyright, how to write information in their own words, and how to acknowledge the source. However, the formality of this process will depend on your students’ age and your curriculum guidelines.

• Watch the video Citation for Beginners for an introduction to citation. Discuss the key points to remember.
• Look up the definition of plagiarism using a variety of sources (dictionary, video, Wikipedia etc.). Create a definition as a class.
• Find an interesting video on YouTube (perhaps a “life hack” video) and write a brief summary in your own words.
• Have students pair up and tell each other about their weekend. Then have the listener try to verbalise or write their friend’s recount in their own words. Discuss how accurate this was.
• Read the class a copy of a well known fairy tale. Have them write a short summary in their own words. Compare the versions that different students come up with.
• Try out MyBib — a handy free online tool without ads that helps you create citations quickly and easily.
• Give primary/elementary students a copy of Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Citation that matches their grade level (the guide covers grades 1 to 6). Choose one form of citation and create some examples as a class (e.g. a website or a book).
• Make a list of things that are okay and not okay to do when researching, e.g. copy text from a website, use any image from Google images, paraphrase in your own words and cite your source, add a short quote and cite the source. 
• Have students read a short article and then come up with a summary that would be considered plagiarism and one that would not be considered plagiarism. These could be shared with the class and the students asked to decide which one shows an example of plagiarism .
• Older students could investigate the difference between paraphrasing and summarising . They could create a Venn diagram that compares the two.
• Write a list of statements on the board that might be true or false ( e.g. The 1956 Olympics were held in Melbourne, Australia. The rhinoceros is the largest land animal in the world. The current marathon world record is 2 hours, 7 minutes). Have students research these statements and decide whether they’re true or false by sharing their citations.

Staying Organised

• Make a list of different ways you can take notes while researching — Google Docs, Google Keep, pen and paper etc. Discuss the pros and cons of each method.
• Learn the keyboard shortcuts to help manage tabs (e.g. open new tab, reopen closed tab, go to next tab etc.). Perhaps students could all try out the shortcuts and share their favourite one with the class.
• Find a collection of resources on a topic and add them to a Wakelet .
• Listen to a short podcast or watch a brief video on a certain topic and sketchnote ideas. Sylvia Duckworth has some great tips about live sketchnoting
• Learn how to use split screen to have one window open with your research, and another open with your notes (e.g. a Google spreadsheet, Google Doc, Microsoft Word or OneNote etc.) .

All teachers know it’s important to teach students to research well. Investing time in this process will also pay off throughout the year and the years to come. Students will be able to focus on analysing and synthesizing information, rather than the mechanics of the research process.

By trying out as many of these mini-lessons as possible throughout the year, you’ll be really helping your students to thrive in all areas of school, work, and life.

Also remember to model your own searches explicitly during class time. Talk out loud as you look things up and ask students for input. Learning together is the way to go!

You Might Also Enjoy Reading:

How To Evaluate Websites: A Guide For Teachers And Students

Five Tips for Teaching Students How to Research and Filter Information

Typing Tips: The How and Why of Teaching Students Keyboarding Skills

8 Ways Teachers And Schools Can Communicate With Parents

10 Replies to “50 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Students Research Skills”

Loving these ideas, thank you

This list is amazing. Thank you so much!

So glad it’s helpful, Alex! 🙂

Hi I am a student who really needed some help on how to reasearch thanks for the help.

So glad it helped! 🙂

seriously seriously grateful for your post. 🙂

So glad it’s helpful! Makes my day 🙂

How do you get the 50 mini lessons. I got the free one but am interested in the full version.

Hi Tracey, The link to the PDF with the 50 mini lessons is in the post. Here it is . Check out this post if you need more advice on teaching students how to research online. Hope that helps! Kathleen

Best wishes to you as you face your health battler. Hoping you’ve come out stronger and healthier from it. Your website is so helpful.

Comments are closed.

Research Based Lesson Design

Here is the presentation used at the Dig Deeper into RBLD training .

In Anaheim Elementary School District, our core audience is English learners.  Tier one instruction must be designed to meet the needs of at least 80% of students which typically includes English learners.  While all students benefit from Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI), English learners need EL scaffolds in conjunction with EDI.  With Research Based Lesson Design (RBLD), English learner strategies are planned for every instructional phases of EDI.  For a one page printable handout of the EL scaffolds in RBLD,  click here .

Both Concept Development and Guided Practice are taught using  a gradual release of responsibility .

For lesson planning, the  sequence that RBLD phases are planned  differs from the order in which they are taught.  Grade level teams are encouraged to collaborate in planning lessons.  A lesson using RBLD can be planned using different formats.  Some possible options are in a  PowerPoint , on paper and pencil, on a poster, or using this optional  template  (Click “File,” then “Make a copy.”)  Contact your Curriculum Coach for any support.

Learning Objectives

Activate prior knowledge, lesson importance, concept development, skill development, guided practice, lesson closure, independent practice, strategies used throughout a lesson.

Content objective is defined, displayed, and reviewed orally.

Visuals/TPR as appropriate for clarification

Highlight, circle, color code

Academic language restated in more comprehensible language

Sentence stem

Prior lesson visual support

Primary language connections (e.g. cognates)

Write, draw, share, TPR during Interact Step

Bridge Map to connect new learning

Multi-Flow Map that shows the effects from learning the lesson’s objective

Examples are visually displayed

Sentence frames or stems

Contextualized definitions  and  vocabulary charts

Discovery Education clips (Web 2.0 support)

Visual indications for examples v. non-examples

Pictorial support ,  TPR ,  realia

Highlighting, circling, underlining, color coding

Thinking Maps

Flow Map for procedure

Note-taking/process grids

Partner support

Sentence frames

Visual support/TPR

Color coding

Access to visuals from the lesson

Structured Think Pair Share

5 Research-based Practices for Kindergarten and First Grade

Here's what every kindergarten and first grade teacher should be doing..

Posted June 1, 2017

[Note: In this guest post, two renowned former kindergarten teachers who wrote about the extraordinary literacy successes of children in their classrooms (Feldgus & Cardonick, 1999) show how today’s cutting -edge research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience supports the best practices they and their colleagues have advocated and honed for three decades. What they discovered intuitively and through reflection and collaboration is now cutting-edge best practice in 21st century kindergartens.]

5 Powerful Research-Based Techniques for Exemplary Kindergartens Today

By Eileen Feldgus PhD and Isabell Cardonick MEd

The recent high-profile spotlight on a landmark study in Developmental Psychology has drawn attention to research by Canadian cognitive psychologists Gene Ouellette and Monique Sénéchal (2017). In some respects Ouellette and Sénéchal discovered what we, Eileen and Isabell, have advocated for decades: a powerful connection to improved end-of-first-grade reading scores through the use of early writing and invented spelling. The study’s title, “Invented Spelling in Kindergarten as a Predictor of Reading and Spelling in Grade 1: A New Pathway to Literacy, or Just the Same Road, Less Known?”(Ouellette and Sénéchal, 2017), reflects what exemplary kindergarten teachers have known about the powerful writing/reading connection for years—kid writing is a pathway to reading success. But this work is still not well known or universally practiced. This less-known pathway is the one we traveled. Starting out as passionate kindergarten teachers in the 1960’s and 70’s, we were ardent about creating classrooms that worked for children. We devoured the research of that era and became life-long learners throughout our careers. Early on we discovered better outcomes for children as we focused more on writing, encouraged invented spelling, developed innovative strategies for teaching phonics and eliminated boring worksheets. Today in 2017 five best-practice techniques we discovered in our practice are now wholly supported by research and recommended for today’s kindergartens and first grades.

1. Use Invented Spelling (Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2017). We found invented spelling to be joyful, motivational for our students, and wonderful in terms of providing opportunities for scaffolding and systematically teaching almost all important aspects of the kindergarten literacy curriculum including phonics, phonemic awareness, knowledge of the alphabet, writing conventions, and vocabulary development. But perhaps the most amazing discovery throughout our journey was that kids had remarkable capacities to make meaning if we supported them in the process and allowed their creative juices to flow. Early on we learned as we had read in Don Graves’ research (1983), that kids write best when we step back and allow them to choose their own topics and give them ownership and autonomy. We called our teaching model, “Kid Writing” (1999). Our model fit perfectly with a growing model now called Guided Reading for differentiated reading instruction (Fountas & Pinnell, 2012) and we put in a whole layer underpinning Lucy Calkins work (2003) by showing teachers exactly how to get started and how to move forward with writing workshop and formative assessment. Here are a few samples that illustrate kids’ capacity to grow and flourish as writers in kindergarten:

When I was born my mommy and daddy used to pay a lot of attention to me. But now they don’t pay a lot of attention to me. They pay a lot to Conner.

2. Abandon teaching “Letter of the Week (Reutzel, 1992, 2015). Teaching one letter per week was standard practice in kindergarten when we began teaching. We tried our best to jazz up our teaching of the alphabetic principle because we knew it was essential to breaking the code and reading. Our students sang for the letter, danced for the letter, cooked for the letter, and cut and pasted for the letter. We took elaborate measures to teach the alphabet and sounds because we knew it was important. One fond memory was our “P” Party:” we served foods beginning with P—pizza, pretzels, popcorn, pepperoni, and the like. But with letter of the week the pace was too slow, and as far back as 1992 researchers were noticing the same problem and cautioning teachers to “break the letter-a-week tradition.” (Reutzel, 1992)

So in our classrooms we began to use children’s names on the first day of kindergarten—from Albert to Zoie—and learned to focus on all the sounds and letters from the very beginning. In contrast to when we were using letter of the week our students mastered letters and sounds far sooner.

Today, as reported by Reutzel (2015), “research has identified six evidence- based alphabet letter learning orders through which young children may acquire knowledge of alphabet letter names and sounds (Justice, Pence, Bowles, & Wiggins, 2006 ).” And guess what? “The first learning order is called the own-name effect.” (Reutzel, 2015) We got it right before the research proved it!

3. Use Invented Spelling and a Developmental Writing Scale to monitor progress (Gentry, 2006, 2000). Even before we published the first book on Kid Writing, we were collaborating with Richard Gentry on how to use a developmental spelling/writing assessment along with a developmental rubric to show how young children’s progression through five phases of developmental spelling revealed—among other things—the individual child’s understanding of phonics and his or her invented spellings as evidence of what the child knew or did not know. We found this work to be much more powerful for targeting instruction and monitoring kindergartners’ progress than traditional spelling tests or even measures of phonemic awareness and alphabet knowledge. Progress monitoring by phase observation is now supported by empirical research! (Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2017)

When we started out as neophyte teachers, kids were simply memorizing words that we gave them on a list. We learned to scaffold what they were using in their invented spelling and to show them how English spelling works. Our teaching went from giving lists of what to spell to showing kids how to spell and invented spelling was our vehicle! Without getting into the particulars of an analysis, look at the following samples that show one kindergarten child’s remarkable progress from fall to spring of her kindergarten year.

September sample: It was a sunny day.

June sample: Tuesday my tooth was wiggling. When it was in my mouth, it bled. When it fell out, it stopped bleeding. My mom gently pulled it out with a paper towel and I was happy that it fell out.

4. Let go of worksheets! (Palmer & Invernizzi, 2015). We found that teaching and learning in our classrooms improved when we abandoned worksheets. Remember those nonsensical work sheets where children were to write the letter that the word for each picture would begin with? When we first began teaching we remember students who squirmed with sit-at-the-desk busy worksheets and struggled over the Y is for Yak worksheet wondering why Y was the match for the first sound in “goat” which is the picture they saw on the worksheet.

5. Teach children to stretch though a word with a moving target. (Feldgus, Cardonick, & Gentry, 2017) Research by Ouelette, validated our Stretching Through a Word with a Moving Target teaching methodology. Their research, “confirmed that facilitating invented spelling within a Vygotskian teaching approach can bring about benefits in learning to read and spell, and these benefits go beyond the expansion of alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness.

Our stretching through technique, for example, helped kids move from l for lady in Phase 2 to lad in Phase 3 to ladee in syllable chunks in Phase 4 on the way to conventional lady . The stretching through technique met kids where they were and supported them in moving to higher levels of spelling sophistication from phase to phase.

Keep the Faith—Keep the Passion—Keep Your Kids Writing

One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is our passion for literacy-learning classrooms for beginners. Today as staff developers and authors, we continue to encounter kindergarten teachers all over America and beyond who share our passion, devotion to children, and vision for joyful, play-based, academic kindergarten and first grade classrooms. We believe implementing these five research-based strategies surrounding kid writing will be transformational in America. It is the answer to reversing the decades-old trend of flat-lined first grade reading scores!

For details on these five strategies and creating joyful kid-writing classrooms that work, check out our comprehensive guide for kindergarten and grade 1 teachers: Kid Writing in the 21st Century: A Systematic Approach to Phonics, Spelling and Writing Workshop (Hameray, 2017).

Link to Kid Writing to learn more.

Dr. J. Richard Gentry is the author of Raising Confident Readers, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write–From Baby to Age 7 . Follow him on Facebook , Twitter , and LinkedIn and find out more information about his work on his website .

Calkins, L. M. (2003). The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Feldgus, E., Cardonick, I. & Gentry, J. R. (2017). Kid Writing in the 21st Century . Las Angeles, CA: Hameray Publishing Group.

Fountas, I. and Pinnell, G.S.(2013). The Reading Teacher. 66 (4) 268-284.

Gentry, R. (2006). Breaking the code: The new science of beginning reading and writing . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Gentry, R. (2000). A retrospective on invented spelling and a look forward. The Reading Teacher . 54 (3) 318-332.

Graves, D. H. (1983). Writing: Teachers and Children at Work . Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Justice , L.M. , Pence , K. , Bowles , R.B. , & Wiggins , A. ( 2006 ). An investigation of four hypotheses concerning the order by which 4- year- old children learn the alphabet letters. Early Childhood Research Quarterly , 21 ( 3), 374 – 389 .

Ouelette, G. & Sénéchal, M. (2017). Invented spelling in kindergarten as a predictor of reading and spelling in grade 1: A new Pathway to literacy, or just the same road, less known? Developmental Psychology . 53 (1) 77– 88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000179

Palmer, J. & Invernizzi, M. (2015). No More Phonics and Spelling Worksheets . Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.

Reutzel, D. R. (2015). Early literacy research: Findings primary-grade teachers will want to know. The Reading Teacher . 69, (1), 14–24. DOI: 10.1002/trtr.1387 © 2015 International Literacy Association

Reutzel , D.R. ( 1992 ). Breaking the letter- a- week tradition: Conveying the alphabetic principle to young children. Childhood Education , 69 ( 1 ), 20 – 23 .

J. Richard Gentry, Ph.D. , is an expert on childhood literacy, reading, and spelling. He is the author of Raising Confident Readers: H ow to Teach Your Child to Read and Write—Baby to Age 7 .

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Research Skills Lesson Plan: Be a BrainPOP Expert

Submitted by: angela watson.

In this research skills lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades K-8, students use BrainPOP and/or BrainPOP Jr. resources to conduct independent and/or collaborative research on a selected topic. The focus of this lesson is to support students in identifying their interests and following their passions in an educated manner. Students will share their research findings with the class using web 2.0 tools or other presentation methods.

Lesson Plan Common Core State Standards Alignments

Students will:.

• Conduct independent and/or collaborative research on a selected topic.
• Share research findings with the class using web 2.0 tools or other presentation methods.
• Access to BrainPOP's website or mobile app
• BrainPOP Expert Certificate page from BrainPOP Educators
• Computers for students to use or mobile devices

Preparation:

Lesson procedure:.

• Share a few of your own areas of interest with the class: a historical period you're fascinated with, a favorite genre, a science topic you love to read about, etc. You may want to share props or photos, as well. Explain that these are different from your hobbies, but sometimes hobbies and work opportunities develop from your interests.
• Tell the class you'd like to learn more about the things that are fascinating to them! Ask students to think about topics they've learned about in school or in books and online, then turn and talk to a partner about some science, social studies, math, health, or literacy topics that interest them.
• Pass out the blank BrainPOP Expert Certificates to the class and explain that students will be researching a topic they care about, and that's they'll become a certified BrainPOP expert through their work!
• Give students time to explore the notebooks in BrainPOP or BrainPOP Jr. and select one that interests them. You may choose to allow students to work in pairs or groups. Have them write their selected topic and name on the certificate. On the back, they should write the names of 3-6 movie topic pages (depending on your students' ability levels) that they intend to explore in order to become experts in their chosen area. Alternatively, students can use their mobile devices to submit their movie topics to you via Google doc or form, Edmodo, etc.
• Have students pass their certificates in for your approval. Help students narrow or expand their topics as needed and ensure that they have selected appropriate movies to help further their understanding.
• The following day, conduct a class brainstorm session to determine the criteria students will need to meet in order to earn their certificates and the BrainPOP Expert status. List students' ideas on the board. For example, they may wish to watch each movie, take the corresponding quiz, and complete one feature activity.
• If needed, provide note-taking sheets, graphic organizers, or other support for students to use in recording what they learn. Outlines, webs, KWL charts, 5 W charts, item/description charts, and more are available on the Graphic Organizers page.
• Explain that students will be able to choose a presentation method to share their research with the class. Allow them to brainstorm some possible ways they can communicate what they learned: Voicethread, a blog post, video, podcast, PowerPoint, Prezi, poster, skit, etc. Alternatively, students may want to set up a visual display of what they learned and set up stations around the classroom. Students can walk around to each display and talk with the class "expert" on each topic.
• Give students time in class or at home to conduct their research. Check in with them frequently to provide support and guide students in their thinking.
• Assign each student a time to present or share their newfound expertise. At the conclusion of each presentation, award each student their BrainPOP Expert Certificate! Encourage students to share their area of expertise with their families.

Extension Activities:

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8 Module 8: Research-Based Instructional Strategies

Guiding Questions for Module 8

• What are research-based teaching strategies?
• How do effective teachers think about teaching strategies?
• How do effective teachers maximize the use of research-based teaching strategies?

Introduction

The act of teaching is a performing art. Like musicians or actors, teachers are always focused on their audience. We aim to engage, inspire, and inform. Like other performers, we know some of our techniques are more effective than others, and we consistently seek to hone our craft. A master violinist practices scales every day to improve her performance. In a similar way, a master teacher attempts to think of more interesting questions, meaningful examples, and useful feedback. The act of teaching is both art and science, imagination and skill.

The Universe of Effective Teaching Strategies

Scores of variations and combinations of teaching strategies exist from which teachers may choose. The best teachers are aware of the universe of teaching strategies and carefully select the right combination while teaching a particular subject to a particular group of students. Again, there is no “magic bullet” or perfect strategy, and all require a skillful, competent, artistic teacher to breath life into them. The first step, however, is understanding something about the universe that is available to you–the article below does just that.

Read: Beck, Charles R. “A Taxonomy for Identifying, Classifying and Interrelating Teaching Strategies.” The Journal of General Education JGE. 47, no. 1 (1998): 37-62.

Research-based Teaching Strategies

Researchers have studied teaching strategies for decades and we now have evidence of those strategies that seem to have greatest influence on academic achievement.  Robert Marzano (2017) conducted a meta-analyses of education research on teaching strategies to see which strategies seemed most related to student academic achievement—at all levels and across all subjects. Interesting ideas.

Here are Marzano’s top nine teaching strategies in order of effect size (i.e., actual effect on student achievement):

• Comparing, contrasting, classifying, analogies, and metaphors . (Effect size=1.61 or 45 percentile points)
• Summarizing and note-taking . (Effect size=1.0 or 34 percentile points)
• Reinforcing effort and giving praise . (Effect size=0.8 or 29 percentile points
• Homework and practice . (Effect size=0.77 or 28 percentile points)
• Nonlinguistic representation . (Effect size=0.75 or 27 percentile points)
• Cooperative learning . (Effect size=0.74 or 27 percentile points)
• Setting objectives and providing feedback . (Effect size=0.61 or 23 percentile points)
• Generating and testing hypotheses . (Effect size=0.61 or 23 percentile points)
• Cues, questions, and advanced organizers . (Effect size=0.59 or 22 percentile points)

Read: Hoover, Clara. 2006. “Research-Based Instructional Strategies.” School Library Monthly 22 (8): 26–28 .

Marzano’s strategies, however, are only as good as the teacher employing them. His list of “high-yield strategies” are popular throughout the United States; however, Marzano warns about their possible misuse.

Read: Marzano, Robert J. 2009. “Setting the Record Straight on ‘High-Yield’ Strategies.”  Phi Delta Kappan  91 (1): 30–37.

EDCI 702: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Vontz and Lori Goodson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Brown Bag Teacher

Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change the World.

January 12, 2020

Organizing Research in 1st & 2nd Grade

Independent research in 1st and 2nd Grade is not something that just magically happens. Organizing writing is not something that just happens automatically. Both of these skills have to be explicitly modeled and scaffolded for students. The great news? When given the opportunity, students rise. The Common Core Standards ask our 1st and 2nd grade students to “Participate in shared research and writing projects”, as well as, “…gather information from provided sources to answer a question.” Our students are very capable of participating in real-world research with the appropriate scaffolds, supports, and explicit instruction. But how do we get there?

Where Do We Get Our Research in 1st & 2nd Grade?

Initially, research in 1st and 2nd Grade begins with books ( Pebble Go and National Graphic Kids are some of our favorites). I’ll also print articles and books from Reading AZ and Read Works if they are available. (If you have RAZ Kids, then you can just assign the Reading AZ texts to specific students and they can access them online. #savethetrees). Starting with print resources help me better manage the research and allows us to learn basic research skills before integrating technology.

Then, we slowly branch to ebooks using EPIC . I’m able to create topic specific collections for students and share them directly to their EPIC accounts. From there, we model using videos from YouTube ( SciShow Kids ). Now, the SciShow Kids videos are on Epic , so it’s even safer!! (Note – These are 6 and 7 year olds. In my classroom, they will not have the privilege or responsibility to freely roam the internet or YouTube.)

Finally we branch into online databases (all KY schools have free access to Kentucky Virtual Library) and teacher-chosen websites. I link specific websites students are allowed to visit from Google Classroom. As we explore these online resources, we have frequent conversations about internet safety and internet expectations. When online, our choices should always help us become better readers, writers, and humans.

Scaffolding research collection in this way allows me the opportunity to model expectations for each resource and how to use it, as well as, ensure students are safe.

Why Organize Research in 1st & 2nd Grade?

Organizing and structuring writing is not a skill that is innate within students. Students have to be explicitly taught executive functioning skills – such as organization. Additionally, when we research I don’t want students just copying down an entire book or webpage. The world’s most random collection of information will not be helpful in sharing our learning down the road. Researching in 1st and 2nd Grade means we invest the time to learn, read, model, practice, and tweak together.

When teaching students to gather and organize information, there are DOZENS of structures for doing it. As a teacher, I typically pick 3-4 different ways that are developmentally appropriate for my 1st and 2nd graders, as well as, lend themselves to the types of research we will be doing.

Planning of Instruction

Reading and writing are forever connected and they should be. We can leverage each one to ensure that students see both subjects in context, as well as, part of their daily lives. Additionally, as I am preparing for our research unit , we will leverage whatever we are learning in science and/or social studies. This ensures students have the background to do specific research about a topic, rather than “All About Monkeys”.

As new strategies for organizing research are explored we do not abandon all the others. Rather, the strategies we learn are ones that can easily be combined. Sketch noting is the best example of this. It can be a part of a concept map, questions and answers, and/or creating subtopics.

As I introduce ways to organize writing , I will typically do it as a part of our reading or science mini-lessons. The strategy is modeled in the context of content and then, we practice again together during writing. Next, students typically work in partners to try the strategy out and ultimately, they work independently. Some students will need more teacher support in independently researching and that’s okay.

Sketch Noting

Sketch noting is typically the first way students to collect research. It is the most kid-friendly and non-threatening. As a class, we read a text from our science or social studies learning and then, consider the big ideas. (At this point, we haven’t talked about developing a research question, so our information gathering is broad.) We talk about the ideas and what symbols or pictures represent them. Then, we discuss importance of including captions that contain important vocabulary, people, ideas, and numbers. Sketch notes don’t need to be in complete sentences, so it’s fine to write single words, bullets, or fragments.

Teaching students to create subtopics is a great way to start narrowing the research field. From all-the-random-facts to these-facts-fit-the-subtopics-I-have-chosen, students are to start differentiating between important information and “fun extras”.

The use of subheadings is easily modeled using the table of contents in informational texts. We spend time looking at these texts, noticing what subtopics the author chose to write about, and what types of information he/she included (and didn’t include).

As students choose subtopics, we put each subtopic as a heading on a different page in their writing notebook. Then, research collected for each subtopic is placed on the page specific to the learning. This can be done using bullets or sticky notes. Although expensive, I prefer the sticky-note route. It allows the details to be easily manipulated/moved around and seem less daunting for students who are reluctant writers.

Concept Mapping

Additionally, concept mapping is very similar to creating subtopics. Ultimately, this strategy becomes a little nebulous. Often times I will introduce it before subtopics sometimes after. There is no hard and fast rule. If taught after subtopics, we will create concept maps with ALL the information and then, create subtopics into which to sort the information. If teaching after subtopics, we natural embed subtopics into our mind maps.

The student sample belows shows a general collection of information with some sketch noting. That’s okay! It is a signal to me, as the teacher, we may need more support in structuring our thinking or we may not be focused on a specific research question.

Question & Answer

Hands-down the question/answer strategy is THE most effective for helping students explore specific research questions and avoiding the “All About” book filled with lots of random facts.

To begin this strategy, we read an informational text aloud and identify a sentence or idea in the text that we want to learn more about. We write this sentence or details from the text on a sticky note and stick it at the top of a page in our writing journal. From there, we make a bulleted list of questions from that detail. What do we want to know more about? What would our reader want to know more about?

Now, as we read/listen/write, these become our research questions. This strategy is gold because it means students are driving the inquiry, we are looking at something specific, and the questions will determine which sources we need. Therefore, using multiple information sources become authentic.

We Have the Information…Now What?

Now that we have completed research on several different topics, questions, and/or questions, we are ready to publish and share our learning. The science or social studies unit our learning aligned with determine how the information is shared. Sometimes we use Google Slides, paragraphs , letters, and sometimes we’ll share our ideas in a speech.

Research in 1st and 2nd Grade is a tough task. There will be missteps – not so great mini-lessons, skipping of steps, moving too fast, hard-to-find-research topics – and that’s okay. All of these things help us, as teachers, and students grow. Research in the real-world is not perfect, and it shouldn’t be in our classrooms either.

So, my challenge to you – offer students real opportunities to learn and research without over scaffolding. Be brave in teaching students’ strategies that allow choice, flexibility, and curiosity to reign. You’ve got this, friends.

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April 22, 2024 at 4:51 am

Thank you for providing a useful framework for using sketch notes as an information gathering tool, especially in the early stages of research before developing specific research questions. If you are also feeling free, you can try some online games like a small world cup .

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9 High-Yield Research-Based Instructional Strategies and How I Would Use Them

Written by Joshua Prieur, Ed.D.

Teachers , see how Prodigy's game-based learning tools can enhance your everyday teaching strategies!

• Teaching Strategies

What is a research-based instructional strategy?

What are the 9 high-yield instructional strategies, 9 ways i would use high-yield instructional methods in my teaching strategies, how prodigy uses research to support game-based learning.

• Research-based instructional strategy vs practice

In my eight years as a classroom teacher and a school administrator, I came across many different instructional strategies that educators can use to help their learners engage with curriculum content.

But did you know research has shown that some teaching strategies are more effective than others?

In this article, I cover the nine types of high-yield instructional strategies! I also provide examples for each so that you can put impactful, research-based instructional strategies to work in your classroom to get the best student learning outcomes possible.

Research-based instructional strategies are strategies that have been identified, by independent research, to be the most effective at influencing student learning outcomes and student achievement.

For years, researchers have worked tirelessly to understand the most effective teaching methods with the goal of improving classroom instruction.

Here are some influential educational research studies about instructional strategies:

Dr. George L. Gropper's 1974 book entitled Instructional Strategies

His text covered several competencies that instructors should have, including:

• Understanding how to properly sequence instructional content
• Considering the variety of content that should be provided to learners
• Determining the volume of practice that learners need to attain skill mastery

Dr. Charles R. Beck’s 1998 article entitled A Taxonomy for Identifying, Classifying, and Interrelating Teaching Strategies

This article helped develop categories for the various instructional strategies that are commonly implemented to engage students in learning content.

His goal was to bring cohesion to professional development and further advance the field of research in this area.

Drs. Robert J. Marzano, Jane E. Pollock, and Debra J. Pickering’s 2001 book entitled Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement

This book made a huge splash because it identified 9 “high-yield” instructional strategies that were shown to have an outsized impact on student learning. In 2012, a second edition was published.

In order of impact, the 9 “high-yield” instructional strategies that Drs. Marzano, Pollock, and Pickering defined are:

• Identifying similarities and differences
• Summarizing and note-taking
• Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
• Homework and practice
• Non-linguistic representations
• Cooperative learning
• Setting objectives and providing feedback
• Generating and testing hypotheses
• Cues, questions, and advance organizers

1. Identifying similarities and differences

There are four key cognitive elements to this strategy, “comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies” as outlined by Connie Scoles West and Dr. Marzano .

To make the most of this strategy, you’ll want to make sure that you’re anchoring yourself on a clear definition for each of the four key cognitive elements.

Once you’ve done that, you can model best practices for your students and keep them focused on the critical content. You might also support them by providing them with tools like graphic organizers.

2. Summarizing and note-taking

An instructional guide on this strategy published by Dr. Ria A. Schmidt and Dr. Marzano outlines some of the important steps associated with this strategy and, luckily, there are a plethora of ways to implement them.

You help students with summarizing by asking them to create mnemonic devices or even by giving them the opportunity to re-enact scenes from books you’re teaching.

3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition

Sometimes a little bit of praise can go a long way. But what behaviors should be praised?

Like Dr. Carol Dweck’s concept of a Growth Mindset , it’s important to direct praise towards reinforcing behaviors tied to the level of effort students put forth in their work rather than providing holistic (but unspecific) praise like saying, “you’re so smart!”

As an example, let’s say you have two students in class who have worked on an assignment, but time is tight, and you only have time to give one of them positive reinforcement.

One student has struggled to get through it but has taken the extra time and effort to really learn the concept and content while the other student breezed right through it effortlessly.

In this situation, you’d focus your praise on the student who worked extra-hard to persevere because it reinforces the behavior to work through challenges as learning occurs.

This works no matter the age and across content areas– all the way up to high school (and even beyond)!

4. Homework and practice

Regardless of whether it’s at home or at school, there is a reason for the saying “practice makes perfect.”

Students need to have the opportunity to engage in meaningful practice with the content they’re aiming to learn.

According to Drs. Marzano, Pollock and Pickering, an important consideration tied to the amount of homework that students get is their age. Ideally, younger students are assigned less work to complete at home while students who are older can take on a little bit more.

The great news is that homework or practice doesn’t need to be tied to rote bookwork that can be tedious.

There are many different ways that you can make it exciting for students such as encouraging students to practice learning through digital games like Prodigy Math or Prodigy English !

5. Non-linguistic representations

Asking your students to create non-linguistic representations of the material they need to know is a great way to encourage creative thinking (especially for your visual-spatial learners) within your instructional practices.

Sometimes, creating a graphic representation of something you need to learn is a great way to cement a picture in your mind for recall or application later.

This highly creative strategy can be easily applied in the classroom by asking small groups of students to put together a thinking map or storyboard to help them outline critical elements of a text they’re working through.

6. Cooperative learning

Get your students working in small groups! That’s the name-of-the-game for this instructional strategy. However, there are a few key elements to keep in mind to make the most of it

Ideally, you’re able to take the time to carefully formulate groups so that they include students with varying ability levels. Once you’ve got the groups formulated, it’s best practice to ensure that the students are assigned roles so that each has ownership over the task.

In addition, cooperative learning often works best when you’re able to circulate around the room to monitor the small groups and provide support.

When you need to have students complete highly rigorous and complex tasks — especially if those tasks benefit from students who each bring unique abilities to the table — then getting students working in a small group is a great way to help them build interpersonal skills while also sharing ownership in the finished product.

7. Setting objectives and providing feedback

A strategy that’s commonly used to drive effective meetings is to start by stating the overall goal so that participants know the planned outcome right from the start.

That same anchoring strategy can be effectively used by teachers in the classroom.

By writing the educational standard (or a version of it that is in more student-friendly language) up on the board, students will know where their learning journey will take them for the day.

8. Generating and testing hypotheses

Get your students thinking by asking them to generate hypotheses. This strategy can be a fun way to get all of your students engaged.

Asking students to determine what’s about to happen and then having them participate in an experiment is a great way to get them active in their learning.

But hypothesis generation isn’t just reserved for science class. Reading a new book? Show the students the front and back cover and ask them to write down their hypothesis for what will happen at the beginning, middle and end of the book!

9. Cues, questions and advance organizers

It can be a real challenge to help students get a sense of which material they should be focusing their attention and energy on.

One great way to help students learn how to focus is to provide them with advance organizers or a list of guided questions that they should be thinking about as they engage with learning materials.

Ready to start a new book but want to keep your student focused on certain elements of it?

Create an advance organizer that covers the specific material you want to cover. It could be a list of vocabulary words, character descriptions, or even a plot graph.

This can be a great tool to support metacognition, which is helping students think about the way they think!

1. Visualize similarities and differences with tools

Identifying similarities and differences can be simple. Let’s say that you’re teaching 2nd grade and you’ve just read the class a book.

After reading, you can start a discussion about similarities and differences and use a Venn Diagram tool, such as Read Write Think by NCTE .

2. Use note-taking templates

Most students don’t have natural-born summarizing and note-taking skills. They’ll need your help to learn how to take effective notes.

Taking the time to train them to take effective notes using templates can help them to learn what to focus on — and is a skill that will help them in higher education!

3. Display students' work often

When students have worked extremely hard on a task, it’s a great opportunity to reinforce effort and provide them with some well-deserved recognition .

One great way to recognize students, in addition to verbal praise, is to post the student’s work up on the classroom wall for everyone to see as an example.

Best of all, this can be done across all subjects, like English, math and social studies.

4. Make homework fun with game-based learning tools

Getting students to complete homework and get much-needed practice can sometimes be a challenge.

Students may have after-school sports, family responsibilities, or other things that compete for their attention. It can also be tough to motivate students to crack open a textbook and start answering math questions.

This may be the perfect opportunity to leverage Prodigy Education’s digital game-based learning tools .

Tools like these can provide a fun way for students to interact with the learning content they need to know.

5. Foster learning with audible or visual representations

An interesting way to get your students involved in non-linguistic representations is by having them tap into their creative side and build out storyboards.

As you’re working through literature and focusing on key events in the text, students can create storyboards or generate thinking maps as a means of showing what they have learned in a way that isn’t writing-based.

This can help them to create a mental picture in their minds that’ll help them to remember content!

6. Try a group-based approach

Getting students involved in cooperative learning is a great way to promote student engagement. One fun way to do this is through a group-based book study.

First, strategically prepare balanced groups so that each group has a mix of students with different learning styles and personalities. Then, choose texts that are leveled appropriately for the students in the group.

Depending on their age, you may want to support them in introducing the task and defining roles for the different members of the group.

Once they start their group work, you can circulate between the groups and support them through the process!

7. Align on learning goals and display them clearly

You can implement setting objectives and providing feedback super easily!

Section off a portion of your whiteboard using painter’s tape and keep the learning goals in the same place so that students know exactly where to look when they want a refresher.

By referencing the goal during your lesson, you reinforce the connective tissue between your lesson and what students need to know, especially as you conduct formative assessments like quizzes to monitor for growth towards academic achievement.

8. Encourage experimentation

One fun way to help students generate and test hypotheses is through group-based science experiments in class.

To accomplish this, you’ll need to prepare a few sets of experiment materials and carefully consider the composition of your groups.

As students work to test their hypotheses, you can observe how they’re working together on their problem-solving journey.

Want some inspiration? Here’s a list of 60 easy science experiments !

9. Incorporate reciprocal teaching techniques into your lessons

You may enjoy implementing the reciprocal teaching technique as you employ the questions, cues and advance organizers strategy.

Since this follows the ‘I do, we do, you do’ formula, you can create an advance organizer for students to reference throughout the lesson.

You can include key questions that students should be thinking about as they’re completing their learning activities.

You can also make advance organizers for any lesson as an accommodation for special education students as appropriate.

We believe that game-based learning can be one of the most effective strategies that teachers and parents can use.

We’ve carefully looked at academic research to help inform how Prodigy Math and Prodigy English are designed.

According to Partovi & Razavi (1998), digital games can create high levels of motivation in students. That’s why our philosophy of education, Motivation First! helps continuously guide our thinking and helps us to build a meaningful and fun learning experience for students. 

We also think hard about how we’re presenting students with learning content, which is why we take a student-centered approach to pedagogy .

We’ve specifically built learning supports like hints and video lessons into Prodigy Math, because we believe in supporting students with various learning styles.

We’re proud to continue to invest in understanding the academic and attitudinal impact of Prodigy Math , and we’re excited to do the same for Prodigy English.

The difference between a research-based instructional strategy and a research-based instructional practice

Research-based instructional strategies are strategies that were shown to have an outsized impact on student achievement in a large-scale study and cover broad categories that educators can leverage in their classroom.

Putting any of these strategies into action categories can help you as you aim to deliver research-based instructional practice (i.e., choosing to use what has previously shown to be impactful in student learning).

Want more professional development from Prodigy? Check out five PD strategies to help make your next session even more effective.

Sign up for your free teacher account for Prodigy Math and Prodigy English today and put game-based learning to work in your classroom!

Firstieland - First Grade Teacher Blog

Where learning feels like play.

Animal Habitats – A First Grade Research Project

Learning about animal habitats in first grade is always a fun and exciting activity.  Students love learning about different animals and this lesson makes it even more engaging when they get to build their own habitat!

Page Contents

What Is A Habitat?

To begin, we needed to understand the definition of a habitat and the animals that lived in the different habitats around the world. We watched a couple of short videos on Youtube to help us set the stage.

Choosing An Animal To Research

Pre-Writing Activities

Building Our Animal Habitats

Our Completed Animal Habitats

Writing Our Reports

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• ELEMENTARY TEACHING , LITERACY

How to Teach Research Skills to Elementary Students in 2024

Research skills are incredibly important in the world we live in today. When we come across a problem or a question, what do we do? We quickly search online to find the answer. We are using our research skills while we are doing this. Read below to learn how to teach research skills to elementary students! This will help you prepare your twenty-first century learners for the ever-changing world we live in. You’ll have the confidence to create opportunities to apply these skills to research projects like this animal research project .

What are Research Skills?

Research skills is the ability to search for information about a topic, evaluate that information efficiently, and share findings in an organized way.

What Research Skills do Elementary Students Need?

Your elementary students are required to learn research skills if your state uses the Common Core or TEKS.  Read below to learn what specific research standards your grade level covers.

Research Standards in Common Core

The standards listed below are a good starting point for figuring out how to teach research skills to your elementary students.

Kindergarten

• ELA.W.K.7 : Participate in shared research and writing projects.
• ELA.W.K.8 : With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

First Grade

• ELA.W.1.7 : Participate in shared research and writing projects.
• ELA.W.1.8 : With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Second Grade

• ELA.W.2.7 : Participate in shared research and writing projects.
• ELA.W.2.8 : Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Third Grade

• ELA.W.3.7 : Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.
• ELA.W.3.8 : Recall information from experiences or gather information from print and digital sources; take brief notes on sources and sort evidence into provided categories.

Fourth Grade

• ELA.W.4.7 : Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic.
• ELA.W.4.8 : Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; take notes and categorize information, and provide a list of sources. 
• ELA.4.9 : Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
• ELA.4.9.B : Apply grade 4 Reading standards to informational texts.

Fifth Grade

• ELA.W.5.7 : Conduct short research projects that use several sources to build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic.
• ELA.W.5.8 : Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources.
• ELA.W.5.9 : Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
• ELA.W.5.9.B : Apply grade 5 Reading standards to informational texts.

Research Standards in TEKS

The standards listed below are a good starting point for figuring out how to teach research skills to your students.

• Generate questions for formal and informal inquiry with adult assistance. (TEKS 12A)
• Develop and follow a research plan with adult assistance. (TEKS 12B)
• Gather information from a variety of sources with adult assistance. (TEKS 12C)
• Demonstrate understanding of information gathered with adult assistance. (TEKS 12D)
• Use an appropriate mode of delivery, whether written, oral, or multimodal, to present results. (TEKS 12E)
• Generate questions for formal and informal inquiry with adult assistance. (TEKS 13A)
• Develop and follow a research plan with adult assistance. (TEKS 13B)
• Identify and gather relevant sources and information to answer the questions with adult assistance. (TEKS 13C)
• Demonstrate understanding of information gathered with adult assistance. (TEKS 13D)
• Use an appropriate mode of delivery, whether written, oral, or multimodal, to present results. (TEKS 13E)
• Identify and gather relevant sources and information to answer the questions. (TEKS 13C)
• Identify primary and secondary sources. (TEKS 13D)
• Demonstrate understanding of information gathered. (TEKS 13E)
• Cite sources appropriately. (TEKS 13F)
• Use an appropriate mode of delivery, whether written, oral, or multimodal, to present results. (TEKS 13G)
• Generate questions on a topic for formal and informal inquiry. (TEKS 13A)
• Identify and gather relevant information from a variety of sources. (TEKS 13C)
• Recognize the difference between paraphrasing and plagiarism when using source materials. (TEKS 13F)
• Create a works cited page. (TEKS 13G)
• Use an appropriate mode of delivery, whether written, oral, or multimodal, to present results. (TEKS 13H)
• Generate and clarify questions on a topic for formal and informal inquiry. (TEKS 13A)
• Develop a bibliography. (TEKS 13G)
• Use an appropriate mode of delivery, whether written, oral, or multimodal, to present results . (TEKS 13H)
• Understand credibility of primary and secondary sources. (TEKS 13D)
• Differentiate between paraphrasing and plagiarism when using source materials. (TEKS 13F)

20 Research Mini Lesson Ideas

Below are 20 research mini lessons for how to teach research skills to elementary students.

• Research and What it Looks Like
• The Steps in the Research Process
• Types of Resources
• Text Features in Websites
• Finding Resources on the Internet
• Finding Information in Non-Fiction Books
• Text Features in Non-Fiction Texts
• How to Use an Encyclopedia
• Conducting an Interview with an Expert
• Reading a Newspaper and Getting Information from it
• Previewing a Text for Research
• Evaluating a Resource to Determine if it is Reliable
• Citing Sources
• Facts vs. Opinions
• Taking notes
• Paraphrasing
• Summarizing
• Organizing Information
• Writing Like an Informational Writer
• Presenting Findings

What are the Research Steps for Elementary Students?

Here are the 4 steps of the research process for elementary students:

• Choose a topic.
• Search for information.
• Organize information.
• Share information.

Ideas for Elementary School Research Topics

Below are research topic ideas for elementary students.

Animal Research Topics for Elementary Students

1. ocean animals.

Oyster, tuna, cod, grouper, shrimp, barnacle, barracuda, shark, bass, whale, lobster, starfish, salmon, clam, conch, coral, crab, sea otter, dolphin, eel, seal, sea turtle, flounder, octopus, sea star, haddock, jellyfish, krill, manatee, marlin, seahorse, sea otter, sea cucumber, sea lion, sea urchin, stingray, squid, swordfish, and walrus

2. Land Animals

Aardvark, elephant, frog, dog, tortoise, ant, anteater, antelope, fox, rabbit, baboon, camel, badger, owl, bat, bear, beaver, bison, rhinoceros, spider, bobcat, buffalo, bumble bee, butterfly, cat, chameleon, cheetah, chicken, chipmunk, cockroach, cougar, cow, coyote, gorilla, deer, donkey, dragonfly, eagle, emu, ferret, flamingo, goat, goose, hedgehog, heron, hippopotamus, horse, hummingbird, hyena, iguana, jaguar, kangaroo, koala, lemur, leopard, lion, llama, meerkat, mongoose, monkey, moth, mouse, mule, panther, parrot, peacock, pelican, peacock, pheasant, pig, platypus, porcupine, possum, puma, quail, raccoon, rattlesnake, sheep, skunk, sloth, squirrel, swan, termite, tiger, turkey, vulture, walrus, weasel, wolf, woodpecker, yak, and zebra

3. Endangered Species

Bengal tiger, polar bear, Pacific walrus, Magellanic penguin, leatherback turtle, bluefish tuna, mountain gorilla, monarch butterfly, Javan rhinoceros, giant panda, amur leopard, sei whale, Asian elephant, sumatran elephant, pangolin, African wild dog, amur tiger, blue whale, bonobo, chimpanzee, dugong, Indus river dolphin, orangutan, red panda, sea lion, vaquita, whale shark, yangtze finless porpoise, North Atlantic right whale, and yellowfish tuna

Resources for Teaching Elementary Research Skills

Below are resources for teaching elementary student research skills.

Animal Research Project

Learn more about the animal research project below!

What is the animal research project?

The animal research project is a printable and digital research project where students learn about any animal they choose. You can also choose the animals for them. The resource can be used over and over again all year long by just picking a new animal.

What grades is the animal research project appropriate for?

This resource includes tons of differentiated materials so it is appropriate for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students.

What is included in the animal research project?

The animal research project includes the following:

• teacher’s guide with tips and instructions to support you with your lesson planning and delivery
• parent communication letter to promote family involvement
• graphic organizers for brainstorming a topic, activating schema, taking notes, drafting writing
• research report publishing printables including a cover, writing templates and resource pages
• grading rubric so expectations are clear for students and grading is quick and easy for you
• research activities (KWL, can have are chart, compare/contrast Venn diagram, habitat map, vocabulary pages, illustration page, and life cycle charts)
• flipbook project printables to give an additional choice of how students can demonstrate their understanding
• flap book project printables to offer students another way to demonstrate their learning
• research poster to serve as an additional way to demonstrate student understanding
• poetry activities to offer students an alternative way to demonstrate their learning
• digital version so your students can access this resource in school or at home

4 Research Websites

Below are 4 research websites for elementary students.

• http://www.kidrex.org
• https://www.kiddle.co
• https://www.safesearchkids.com
• https://www.kidzsearch.com/boolify/

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Research Writing (Grades 1-2)

Our Research Writing lesson plan for grades 1-2 introduces students to the concept of research writing and the importance of being factually accurate in research writing. Students practice doing basic research and writing paragraphs based on this research with their classmates.

Description

Additional information.

Our Research Writing Lesson Plan for grades 1-2 teaches students about the importance of researching and reporting findings accurately and effectively. Being able to clearly and accurately inform and communicate findings through writing is a valuable skill that students will need in many areas of their lives. Gathering and summarizing key information will also be a powerful tool for academic reading and writing throughout upper grades and higher education. In this lesson, students are asked to use the information they have learned and their collaboration skills to create a group outline for a research paper and do shared research. Students will then work independently to write their own paragraphs based on this group research.

At the end of the lesson, students will be able to participate in shared research and research writing to create an expository paragraph that shares their findings.

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The 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan

Inquiry classrooms are magical places; creative, student-driven, and dynamic. But when it’s only the lesson you see unfolding, you’re missing half the show. For years, I’ve focused my coaching work on the pedagogy of inquiry, trying to demystify what inquiry looks like in real classrooms.

While it’s not as fun perhaps to write (or read) about what happens at the planning table, we cannot pretend that the magic of inquiry-classrooms just happens, well, magically. Planning for inquiry reminds me of the proverb: A river needs banks to flow. I see my lesson planning as creating the proverbial ‘banks.’ These banks provide the space and order necessary to encourage the freefall of ideas, divergent questions, and cognitive dissonance to take place.

In fact, I’ve found that lesson planning is the most creative part of my job. I’ve learned to embrace rather than dread it using this simple 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan.

Step 1: Connect with and question the content as a person, not as a teacher

Take off your teacher hat for a moment. How can you strengthen emotional bonds with and between your students within the context of this lesson? How can you share your own curiosity, doubts, and personality with students using the lesson as a vehicle? If the content isn’t important, fascinating, and/or relevant to you, it’s unlikely your students will find an emotional connection to it either.

• What questions still perplex and fascinate you?
• What relevant stories can you tell relating to the content?
• Are there metaphors that might be helpful to students?
• Do you remember the first time you learned this yourself?
• Are there websites that explore these questions and ideas in greater detail?

Here’s how I might approach the first step for an upcoming lesson. Let’s say I’m teaching Shakespeare’s Macbeth and we’re on Act IV, Scene I [1] . You may remember this scene by its opening line: “Round about the cauldron go…” or it’s repeated chorus: “Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” It’s an entire scene where witches create a complicated spell; full of challenging vocabulary and foreshadowing.

This ‘emotional brain dump’ was fun and took me no more than five minutes to accomplish. To get the students to connect with one another, I’ll ask them to share their favorite dishes and analyze the ingredients that go into them (thinking about the role of ingredients in making a dish or a charm so special and memorable).

Step 2: Get clear on the goals and assessments

This is usually where we start when lesson planning: our objectives. Think about what you want students to get out of your lesson, and how you might measure these goals (even imperfectly). What mix of formative assessments will you use? Are there authentic assessments (products, performances or presentations) that you can use to motivate them individually or in teams? What do you want students to know (content), be able to do (skills), and/or believe (dispositions) by the end of this lesson or unit?

Again, using the Shakespeare example, I might choose the following mix of content and skill-related objectives for my lesson. I try not to list more than five main objectives so that I can stay focused (less is more). I also really try to make sure I balance the knowledge, skills (especially communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration) and dispositions (patience, empathy, growth mindset) when listing out my objectives.

Step 3: Design the lesson and plot questions

Once I have a sense of the why and how , I am ready to create the ‘flow.’ This is where traditional lesson planning comes in. What’s your hook or anticipatory set? How much time do you think you’ll need to provide instruction before releasing students? Will assignments be rigorous enough, but not completely out of reach? Will students be grouped together, when and how? How will students be held accountable for their work?

As you go through the lesson sequencing, you’ll want to simultaneously think about the driving questions for this lesson (in the event that students don’t raise these questions on their own during the lesson), as well as ‘pivot questions’ that you can use to transition students to new activities or discussions. These questions are the ones you want students to really take time to think about. I often transfer these onto notecards and post them on the wall during a lesson and take them down as we address them. Students now alert me if there are questions still up on the wall.

Step 4: Check for questions, voice, and choice

After mapping out the lesson flow and the driving questions, I go back through it to check for two important things: opportunities for student questions and student choice.

Now, look back through each of your activities to make sure you’ve created time and opportunities for students to ask questions and make choices. Student voice (question-asking) and student choice are the bedrock of inquiry classrooms, so make sure you’re providing space and structure for these things. In my own lesson planning, I’d place an “X” next to activities that explicitly provide this. There is no rule around how much or how many opportunities you provide, although I’d strive for a 50/50 balance between teacher-directed/teacher talk-time and student-directed/student talk-time.

Again, using the Macbeth example, here is what my lesson plan might look like at this point:

A Note about Unit Planning

While this plan is designed for a lesson, you can easily adapt it for an entire unit. Rather than plotting out the activities in minutes during Step 3, simply extend them into days.

Great Questions

Questions are the energy source inside inquiry classrooms. Even though I’ve written out driving questions, there should be questions peppered throughout the lesson; coming from me and hopefully the students. I like to share a short list of Great Questions with my students. These questions are great regardless of the content or grade level. They are divergent and encourage clear and critical thinking (and are also perfect for laminating onto desks). These questions are especially helpful when students are leading their own small groups and having discussions together.

Step 5: Rapidly reflect

This step is often ignored, but is a critical part of the inquiry cycle because it requires us as teachers to flex our reflective inquiry muscles! This step shouldn’t require a lot of time, and can always be completed with the students after a lesson or a unit—after all, they’re some of your best evaluators, having engaged in the lesson from start to finish. Set a timer for five minutes and answer two simple questions:

• What went especially well?
• What would I do differently next time?

Here is what I wrote after trying out the Macbeth lesson:

Going through this process helps me reflect on perennial questions like: Did students pursue the anticipated line of inquiry? Did they latch onto a misconception and refuse to let it go? Was everyone is engaged; how do I know? Did students ask their own questions? Was it enough or too much student choice?

Successful inquiry classrooms may at times appear aimless and perhaps chaotic, but nothing could be further from the truth. Great inquiry lessons are actually some of the most carefully and thoughtfully planned learning events on the planet. Remember that a river needs banks to flow when thinking about guiding student inquiry. Be clear on why the river is flowing, where it’s going, and how it will get there. The Five-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan will allow you to keep your knees bent and not fall over.

To download a template of 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan , go to: https://www.inquirypartners.com/new-page-3 and click “Downloadable PDFs.”

[1] This lesson idea comes from Andrew Finley at West Seattle High School

Written by Kimberly Lasher Mitchell

Kimberly Lasher Mitchell is an international speaker on inquiry-based instruction and adjunct professor at the University of Washington College of Education in Seattle, Washington. A former teacher, principal, Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Director of Teach for All in Argentina, Kimberly is the founder of Inquiry Partners , an organization dedicated to supporting teachers with inquiry-based teaching practices. Her interactive teacher workbook, Experience Inquiry , is forthcoming from Corwin Press.

3 Ways Leaders Can Make Meetings More Engaging

Corwin connect’s top 10 posts in 2017, latest comments, pingback: approaching teaching: week of august 25, 2019 | approaching teaching @ aisk / august 24, 2019.

Sumna Rizvi / September 28, 2018

Hi! We’re just stepping into PYP as a school. For my personal understanding of how to make a inquiry based plan, I was scourging the net. You deconstructed and explained it so well…feeling motivated to try making one for my class! Thank you!!

Kimberly / October 1, 2018

Thanks for the feedback, Sumna! For even more deconstruction and demystification of inquiry as you implement PYP, please check out my new book: Experience Inquiry: https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/experience-inquiry/book259906 .

Michelle Greenfield-Sliwa / August 8, 2018

I can’t access the template – can you provide a direct link?

Kimberly L. Mitchell / October 1, 2018

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for reaching out. Here’s a link: https://inquirypartners.squarespace.com/config/pages

Let me know how it works out for you!

Sorry – here’s the correct link: https://www.inquirypartners.com/inquiry-lesson-plan-template-1/

Sarah / January 29, 2018

Kimberly, Once again you WOW me with your work. This definitely sums up an exceptional inquiry lesson and is very clear for everyone that reads it. I am going to share this with all IB coordinators in Alberta at our next meeting. Your amazing inquiry techniques resonated with teachers at all levels when you were here. Looking forward to using your book as a book study.Thank you.

Kimberly / January 29, 2018

Thank you, Sarah! The book should be out just in time for the start of the 2018 school year. I appreciate your support and look forward to continuing to collaborate with you.

Scottie N / January 6, 2018

You have provided such clear support for teachers to be facilitators of learning. These steps can be used in a class period for shorter inquiry or to guide learning for a longer projects. The process is so tightly aligned to best practice – I really appreciate your clarity. Thank you, Kimberly, for sharing!

Kimberly / January 7, 2018

Thanks so much, Scottie!

Julie Kalmus / January 4, 2018

I love the explicit separation of student questions and student choice. It’s an important distinction and one that I often muddle in my own practice. Thank you for a thoughtful and well-constructed road map!

Kimberly / January 4, 2018

Thank you, Julie!

Mary Kouyoumdzoglou / January 3, 2018

Kimberly, you have always been a leader in Inquiry. Even works in the primary grades. Best if schoolwide. Wishing your book to be a best seller.

Coming from one of the best elementary teachers I’ve had the privilege working with, this means a lot, Mary. Thank you!

bishnu / April 11, 2019

Hi Kimberly, Greetings from Nepal, I am working as a principal in a school where poor and orphan children studying together with day scholars. If you make a little time to visit this country (Nepal) I would love to see you in my school for teachers’ development program. I am looking forward for your positive response. thanking you

Kimberly / September 5, 2019

I would love to come to Nepal and work with you. Please get in touch with me via email: [email protected] . In the meantime, check out my book, Experience Inquiry. You can get started on inquiry together right away with the exercises.

Anne K / December 27, 2017

Thank you, Kimberly, for your thought provoking post. Step 1 is so important! Especially leading and guiding students in their inquiry by establishing a personal connection. That first step gives students the confidence to let their curiosity and questions ebb and flow within the ‘proverbial banks’.

Kimberly / January 2, 2018

Thank you, Anne! I agree that Step One is essential (and was never a part of my formal training).

Molly Sedlik / December 24, 2017

Finally! A step-by-step guide to put the inquiry wheels into motion. I love the concrete example offered here and cannot wait for Kimberly’s book to come out. Experience Inquiry will be a must-read for all stripes of teachers, parents and community leaders included.

Thank you, Molly. Connecting this work with non-profit leaders like you and those who work with adults is so important. I appreciate your interest and support.

Jodi Haavig / December 23, 2017

Thanks Kimberly for the great reminders and coaching around the importance of deliberate planning for inquiry. Among my key takeaways were to remember to encourage student voice and choice, but to also tend to those river banks and guide the inquiry experience. I’ll also be keeping a few of your “great questions” in my back pocket. Good stuff!

Thanks, Jodi. The great questions can also be taped onto students’ desks for quick reference. I appreciate your support!

kristin McInaney / December 22, 2017

I love this article and will share it with our PBL working group to help us design our intensives for next year. Thank-you for writing an article that outlines steps. Kristin

I’m so glad this will be helpful for your PBL work, Kristin. Let me know how it goes!

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Marie Menna Pagliaro, Ph.D.

• A Blueprint for Preparing Teachers
• Designing and Implementing the Curriculum
• Questioning, Instructional Strategies, and Classroom Management
• Academic Success
• Differentiating Instruction
• Educator or Bully?
• Exemplary Classroom Questioning

Research-Based Unit and Lesson Planning

• Mastery Teaching Skills
• Fork in the Road
• That Woman and the Mafia Don

Available from Barnes & Noble ( bn.com ), amazon.com and from the publisher at www.rowman.com or at 1-800-462-6420

Research-Based Unit and Lesson Planning presents a detailed, thorough, and comprehensive discussion of effective curriculum and instructional planning that leads to student success. Coaching rubrics facilitate implementation of the content so that teachers can improve their productivity.

Benefits and special features

• Presents information analytically

• Offers a context and rationale for planning based on solid research

• Provides numerous examples from different grade levels and subject areas

• Summarizes the content at the end of each chapter and at appropriate intervals

• Reflects a 21st century view

• Allows the reader to implement the content

Endorsements

Research-Based Unit and Lesson Planning is a “gold mine” and a comprehensive treasure that should on the working bookshelf of apprentice teachers, probationary teachers, newly tenured teachers, veteran teachers, and university teacher educators who prepare teachers. This book would be an eye-opener for senior political staff advisers to state and federal congressmen and senators who are self-proclaimed experts on the subject of schools and educational systems.

Anthony N. Baratta, Ed.D , Distinguished Professor of Education Emeritus; Chair, Division of Educational Leadership, Administration, and Policy; and former Chair, Division of Curriculum and Teaching, The Graduate School of Education, Fordham University, New York, NY.

Having run a successful charter school district that firmly ascribed to constructivist precepts, this book nails it! Parsing the constructs of learning into a meaningful sequence that the teacher can apply in the classroom while encouraging participatory education is a major accomplishment.

Rex F. Shaw, Ed.D . Retired Director, Teaneck Charter School, Teaneck, NJ

This book is an essential handbook for teachers who aim to build sound constructivist curriculum in their classrooms. Pagliaro provides necessary tools for teachers and instructional coaches to build strong foundations for learning by aligning clear objectives to student activities. School leaders should incorporate this text as key content in professional development sessions for all teachers seeking to improve or enrich their craft.

Emily Hyland , 10th Grade Team Leader/ELA Teacher, Urban Assembly School for Green Careers, New York City Public Schools

Bravo, Dr. Pagliaro. This book is tremendous–a phenomenal work of creative synthesis for a fundamental and key professional teaching and learning function. If teachers actually implemented what was in this book, no student would be left behind! Enjoyed in particular, the review of learning theory and found the coaching rubrics particularly unique and useful.

Vincent S. Ziccolella, Ph.D. , Educational Consultant, former Superintendent, Greeenburgh-Graham Union Free School District, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY

Research-Based Unit and Lesson Planning is a wonderful coach for helping novice and seasoned teachers plan for learning success in today’s diverse classrooms. This book explains traditional and contemporary methods for differentiating instruction, creating assessments, and planning learning experiences that will truly engage students, help them understand and master subject matter, and become independent, lifelong thinkers. This book is an essential tool for all teachers who seek to meet the challenges of the 21st century learner.

Janelle A. Simpson Cajuste , elementary teacher, East Ramapo Central School District, Spring Valley, NY

Recent Posts

• New Books by Dr. Marie Menna Pagliaro