Early Elementary Shark report

Hi! Future Ticia 2023 here, I’m updating this to creat a much more usable Shark report lesson, so you can take this and use it in your own science lessons whether it’s for zoology or for another Ocean animals. Now back to past Ticia 2012.
To finish up our study of Swimming Creatures I had each of my kids choose their favorite sea animal to write a report on. I was able to predict exactly what animal each of my kids would write about.

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Shark report supplies

We used the stapleless book I shared about yesterday.

Research materials: for us this was a test of how well they understood our Swimming Creatures

However, if you just want some cool books to write an elementary shark report, these are the ones I recommend:

Sharks!– National Geographic leveled reader about sharks, this is great to get information for a beginning reader
Sharks– I’m working from memory here, but if I recall this is written for a more solid reader, but still in elementary ages
Sharks have six senses– another leveled reader, if I recall correctly this particular series is slightly more difficult than the National Geographic books
Honestly, your library will have lots of great books, I was looking for books that a first-grader could probably read

Planning what you want your student to create for their shark report

This was my son’s end of year first grade science report. He was a somewhat slow reader and I loosely based the requirements on the animal report from when I taught public school in first grade.

Title page with author
The book was to include at least five facts (I’ll link to some later more advanced animal reports I had the kids do later on)
The back of the book needed an about the author page
The book needed one illustration per fact.

My son’s elementary shark report (1st grade)

Today, I’m going to share Superman’s report, Sharks by Superman. Very original title.

Future Ticia 2023, I’ll be putting comments after the fact. I think my son’s handwriting actually got worse after this, not better.

Each page had one fact and an illustration of that fact.
Sharks hach (hatch) out of egt (egg) cas (cases).
Make sharks teeth are sharp.

The whale shark is the bigest (biggest) shark.
The Tiger Shark teeth are like a sa (saw).

Future Ticia 2023 here, as you can see for this particular report I did not worry about his spelling, because at the time he was a somewhat reluctant writer, my goal was more to get him writing about something he enjoyed and show off his knowledge than focus on his spelling. We did later talk about where it needed to be corrected.

Sharks hav (have) cartilage. (I let him copy cartilage).
Sharks are colb bloobb (cold blooded).
Two pictures of sharks drinking sprite (his favorite drink).

Future Ticia 2023, I did not include the second picture of the shark drinking Sprite, just trust me it looks very similar.

About the author page: Superman and his sharks.

Future Ticia 2023 I just love that illustration.

Then he made a visual aid of a shark, and read his report to two different adults, Daddy and Mrs. E. He was SO proud of himself. I don’t blame him.

I see a shark there, don’t you?

More animal reports for different ages

Over the years the kids and I have done many different animal reports. Some of them were more work, some were related to field trips to the zoo, but there was a lot of learning going on.

Creating visuals for an elementary shark report

Let’s talk about the visual he made.

Clearly it’s not an amazing representation, but at the same time it is 100% his creation.

I’m much more interested in finding out what they are interested and capable in creating, then guiding them in creating something.

There is a time for that, but as a teacher, I saw way too many projects that were obviously finished by the parents.

To make his “shark,” Superman raided the recycling craft bin, and some paint, and created a pretty credible shark from an empty juice bottle, random cardboard, and some tape. Then he covered it all in gray paint.

That is some problem-solving thinking there.

Have you ever had your kids do reports? Did you grade them? This time I didn’t, but I think next time I’ll use a rubric.

Let’s see what others did this week

I used to run a science linkie, and each week I would share a few posts that had linked up. These particular posts are the ones that are still live that I had shared then (side-effect of over 10 years of blogging, many of these blogs do not exist anymore)

The Homeschool Scientist shared about the snake they found and some follow up ideas.
Fit Kids Clubhouse shared about “Solid, Liquid, and Gas” for pre-schoolers using balloons.