Teaching Students to Compose Informational Poetic Riddles to Further Scientific Understanding
The authors, Elizabeth M. Frye, Leslie Bradbury, and Lisa A. Gross, wrote about integrating informational writing and science content into poetic riddle composition. Reading and writing narrative texts is more predominate in an elementary curriculum that informational texts. Despite the Common Core State Standards advisement that informational texts encompass almost half of K-8 students' entire academic reading assignments, including science and social studies content areas. The authors recommend integrating informational writing with scientific and literature content to alleviate the gap between narrative and expository texts. The article describes …show more content…
The book covered adaptations and habitats of the “owl” main characters. It is an animal fantasy which includes scientifically valid facts about the differences in owl species, their needs, and their adaptations to specific environments. The teacher guided the students to interpret, transform, and recompose the scientific content they learned from the book into an informational poetic riddle collaborated on by the entire class. This was a way to shift students into inquiry-based informational writing without intimidating them and filling them with dread about future informational writing assignments. Moreover, the students found it to be far more exciting and less intimidating than writing a scientific research report. To initiate an inquiry-based investigation the teacher began by discussing the open-ended question, “What did you notice about the books?” prompting the students to think about the textual aspects of the book. The notes that the students took were then used to create a chart highlighting the structure of an informational poetic riddle, or “What Am I?” riddles. The result of the inquiry-based investigation gave the students further insight into the scientific context of the information that before had seemed to be just …show more content…
What do barn owls eat? Where do they find their food?
5. Describe the barn owl’s life cycle and breeding. How many eggs do they have? How long do they live? When are they grown?
• Day 3: The students began by answering two questions from the Internet workshop. The answers were noted from the perspective of an adult barn owl.
• Day 4: The students were paired for a second internet workshop. They were assigned one specific question about barn owls to which the students were to critically evaluate the information across multiple online sources. They used their research to recompose the information to create their contribution to our “What Am I?” class book.
• Day 5: The student teams read aloud their collaborative text with the class.
Through this instructional approach, the entire class constructed their “What Am I?” class
The authors, Elizabeth M. Frye, Leslie Bradbury, and Lisa A. Gross, wrote about integrating informational writing and science content into poetic riddle composition. Reading and writing narrative texts is more predominate in an elementary curriculum that informational texts. Despite the Common Core State Standards advisement that informational texts encompass almost half of K-8 students' entire academic reading assignments, including science and social studies content areas. The authors recommend integrating informational writing with scientific and literature content to alleviate the gap between narrative and expository texts. The article describes …show more content…
The book covered adaptations and habitats of the “owl” main characters. It is an animal fantasy which includes scientifically valid facts about the differences in owl species, their needs, and their adaptations to specific environments. The teacher guided the students to interpret, transform, and recompose the scientific content they learned from the book into an informational poetic riddle collaborated on by the entire class. This was a way to shift students into inquiry-based informational writing without intimidating them and filling them with dread about future informational writing assignments. Moreover, the students found it to be far more exciting and less intimidating than writing a scientific research report. To initiate an inquiry-based investigation the teacher began by discussing the open-ended question, “What did you notice about the books?” prompting the students to think about the textual aspects of the book. The notes that the students took were then used to create a chart highlighting the structure of an informational poetic riddle, or “What Am I?” riddles. The result of the inquiry-based investigation gave the students further insight into the scientific context of the information that before had seemed to be just …show more content…
What do barn owls eat? Where do they find their food?
5. Describe the barn owl’s life cycle and breeding. How many eggs do they have? How long do they live? When are they grown?
• Day 3: The students began by answering two questions from the Internet workshop. The answers were noted from the perspective of an adult barn owl.
• Day 4: The students were paired for a second internet workshop. They were assigned one specific question about barn owls to which the students were to critically evaluate the information across multiple online sources. They used their research to recompose the information to create their contribution to our “What Am I?” class book.
• Day 5: The student teams read aloud their collaborative text with the class.
Through this instructional approach, the entire class constructed their “What Am I?” class