The 2nd Grade Report

In my class today the students shared their reports on their favorite animals. My cooperating teacher put together a packet for the students to fill out as their reports. The first page was a table of contents. The second page was what their animal looks like. On this page the students could either draw a picture of their animal or print one out from the computer. The kids were more in favor of drawing their own picture and I loved that they chose to do that. It really showed how much the kids love being artistic and how creative they could be. A cheetah had purple spots, and if that isn't completely awesome, I don't know what is! 

The third page was what eat animal eats. Some of the kids were pretty detailed in their drawings with blood and guts for the meat eaters dinners. Most of the kids who drew like this were boys. This did not surprise me too much because it is not unusual for boys to be interested in those kinds of things. The fourth page was what their animal's life cycle is like. This was a cool page because it showed the student's understanding of life cycle's and it also showed there creativity with how they feel each animal looks at each stage of life. The last page was an interesting fact that was not common to most people. I enjoyed this because some of the facts were very interesting and almost unbelievable because of how weird they were. The final page was about the researcher. I felt that this page added a nice touch to the report because it allowed the students to tell the class not only why they chose the animal but also about themselves as a person. I found this artifact to be very useful and practical, especially for preparing a 2nd grade class for research papers.