Rainforest Mini Research Project, Non Fiction Writing

Last week we begin our non-fiction writing unit.  I had our students learn the process of writing non-fiction writing pieces by writing about a subject they knew a lot about.  This week I will be teaching them how to do research and take notes on a subject.  They will all have the same topic, doing research on the same information and using the same resources to do research. 

The topic of our papers this week will be rainforests.  The kids must find information on...

What is a rainforest?

Animals of the rainforest?

Humans living in rainforests?

Our students will have  websites and videos that I will teach them how to read and pull information from.  I am also providing them with a short non-fiction reading on rainforests they may also use as a resource. 

Their goal is to read and pull out information for each sub-heading above.  They will then take their notes and write their non-fiction reports.

Resources to use

Enchanted learning Rainforests
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/rainforest/

Wikipedia Rainforests
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest

Amazon Rainforest Slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/aquadante/rainforest-interactive-for-3rd-grade

Kids Mongabay-Rainforests
http://kids.mongabay.com/

National Geographic-Rainforests
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/rainforest-profile/

NeoK12
Great set of short videos!
http://www.neok12.com/Forests.htm