Plants With A Cool Factor

3rd grade has been working on plants and reading about Venus Fly Traps, so we thought it was a perfect time for a plant research project to get the kids reacquainted with research since summer break. Working with partners, they each drew the name of an interesting plant, did the research, then created a powerpoint. A simple project, but they really got excited about designing the powerpoints, color schemes, and so forth. Main goals for the kids included paraphrasing and citing sources. Students really struggle with taking notes in short phrases, so I modeled it first. They did a pretty good job! Here are some of the notes they ended up with.

After the note taking, they used their notes to write out what they wanted the powerpoints to say. This way they were sure to use their own words and practice using notes.

Once they had their sentences, they created their powerpoints. Then, the fun started. After entering all their information and citations, they could get creative and play with fonts, colors, backgrounds, and pictures. We talked about representing their plants, so not using backgrounds of things like fireworks. I also showed the students using an example how certain colors won't show up very well and certain fonts work fine for titles, but not for large blocks of text. They did a good job and got creative. Here are a few slide sets that resulted. 

We are all so proud of all our students!