INTRODUCTION TO WHALE FACTS 

At the beginning of the Whale Study I wanted the children to look through as many of the non-fiction books as they could as well as gather some information and be accountable. 

Material: I had about 15 information books on whales and paper with a whale border.  You could just use lined loose-leaf, but my children respond very well to ‘interesting paper’, so I use it.

Procedure: I divided the children in heterogeneous groups of two or three depending on the number of children that you have.  They were given a book to start off with and they chose where they wanted to work.  The expectation for them was to read part of the book and copy a sentence or two about whales.  After 10 minutes we rotated to another book and repeated the procedure.  We worked very diligently for the next 40 minutes at which time we shared our knowledge with the other students.  What I liked about this activity was that it was simple to set-up and to monitor.  At first the children did not see themselves as researchers and were not sure what to write done.  After a few examples (e.g. The Blue Whale is the largest animal that ever lived) the children were thrilled to realize that they could find out facts independently.