Next week we start the story, “Honey Bees” from Reading Street.  It seems so weird to read and learn about Honey Bees in JANUARY.  I really wish Reading Street could align their stories with the seasons (#teacherproblems).  I decided that I would introduce reading for research in my small groups.  The students will use a variety of texts to locate facts about bees. I will use the basal, reading a-z stories, and a variety of texts I have pulled from other sources.  We will work to locate 6 interesting facts about bees.  We will talk about moving past the obvious.  Yes, bees are yellow and black!  We don’t need to put that down as a fact.  Once the students have chosen 6 facts, they will circle their favorite 3 facts that they want to include in their research writing piece.  We will work together to add those 3 facts to the graphic organizer.  We will also work on a topic sentence and conclusion as we fill out the graphic organizer.  I have made a graphic organizer with labels so students can easily transfer the information from the graphic organizer to their writing paper.   I will post the student’s final products after they finish.
If you are interested in checking out my packet for this activity you can find it {here}.