By now I hope you have heard your child talking about their expository 5-paragraph essay on a famous person. We have been working hard to research and learn all the chosen subjects. As you can imagine research, note-taking, paraphrasing, and outlining are tough tasks for fourth graders!
Just to update you...all students should have at least 1 book (I think we have everyone taken care of-finally!)and are limited to 2 Internet resources. We have spent time in class learning how to "google" and check the validity of sights. We also went to the library and learned how to use the Grolier Encyclopedia
Today we worked on a rough outline.
Introduction
Paragraph 2 (topic)
Paragraph 3 (topic)
Paragraph 4 (topic)
Conclusion
Students chose the topics/main ideas for each paragraph based on what they had found in their research. We are now working to color code our notes. For example, if paragraph 2 is about Abe Lincoln's childhood I would underline all facts about his childhood in blue.
We have discussed the fact that not all facts we have found will be in our 5 paragraph essay.
This is such a learning process that I have not set a due date for the final product. I am basing our timeline on the students progress and understanding as we go. At this point some students are becoming information saturated as they keep gathering more and more information. I am encouraging them to begin evaluating the information they have!
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