Every school year, one of the most rewarding units to teach as a literacy teacher is the All About Book/Research Writing Unit. This year in second grade, was no exception. The children were familiar with this process from first grade and were eager to take it a step further. I allowed the students to create a "top three" list of the top three topics they would be interested in researching and writing an All About Book about. Instead of just choosing animals, their categories were widened and open to biographies, science, and historical topics. This really allowed them to bloom into their own style as nonfiction writers. I tried to choose from their lists that I felt they would be most interested and highly engaged with, and I also tried to pair children together who had common interested on their lists. Although two to three kids were researching the same topic, they were only working together on the research portion because of our limited computers. The actual writing portion was done completely independently by each child. They were able to plan their chapters/sections, choose their own key words that would be included in their glossaries, as well as being the illustrators of their own books. Every piece of their books were created by them, which is why this unit takes time! Altogether with research, planning, writing, publishing, this took a little over four weeks. That is a long investment time for our seven and eight year olds! And my goodness-did they SOAR! I was just so thrilled with their progress and growth over those weeks and they truly deserved our fabulous author celebration at the end!
Below are photos I was able to take during the research, writing, and celebration process. As well as a little video at the bottom of the research portion. Enjoy!
Nonfiction Research from Lizzie Ortega on Vimeo.
