Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley Biography Study

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share with you our biography research study on Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley. I chose to start with him for several reasons. First, we love this book and it's a classic. Second, it worked perfect with the season we're in currently. Also, it's a quick read so it's easy to take notes on. And last, the subject of snow always fascinates kids. We started off by talking about how and why we do research. The boys helped me make a list.

1. Pick your topic/Subject
2. Collect your resources (books, internet, videos, newspaper, etc.)
3. Ask questions (this will help determine what to look for)
4. Organize your research

Here are the 3 books we used. Our main text for the research was Snowflake Bentley. The other two were just fun reads. 

We also used these QR codes that I put together for the boys. You can grab your free copy here.

We talked about the importance of citing your source. The boys used index cards to do their research.

Authors Last name, first name.Title. Where it was published:Publishing company, date of publication.

Research Portion:

The research part was new to both boys. They wanted to copy everything word for word so I had to do a lot of modeling. I used this resource here to guide me and how to teach them. 

The boys had 3 index cards with three questions to lead their research. We focused on his childhood, adulthood, accomplishments, fun facts, and quotes. 

Here he is looking for some fun facts.

Turning Their Notes into Paragraphs:

After the research portion was over the boys had to turn their notes into full sentences and write each of their paragraphs. 

One thing I loved about the resource we used is after each paragraph was written the boys had

to go back and highlight their 3 must haves. They did this for each of their 5 paragraphs. 

Writing his introduction paragraph.

Final Draft:

The boys edited and chose to type out their biography report. 

Art:

We always try to incorporate some art into all our units. The boys made snowflake paper cut outs. 

The boys wrote down four character traits of Wilson Bentley around the snowflake.

The boys really loved learning all about Wilson Bentley we can't wait to learn about all the other great people we have lined up.

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