Researching the U.S. Military Branches

My students are very interested in anything involving the military it seems, and devour all my books on topics about weapons, the military branches, wars we have fought, and anything else related to the military. Beginning with Veteran’s Day, my 5th and 6th graders started researching a branch of the military. I divided them into groups, and they drew from a basket to see which branch they were researching so there was no fighting about it. We covered the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. The assignment was to research that branch and then we made True/False PowerPoints with the information.

The first class we spent talking about the Big 6, note taking, and starting research at World Book Online. (Students can also access this at home, see Mrs. DuBois if you can’t remember the login and password.) The next class, they finished up research and wrote 3 true/false statements and answers that add additional information on paper. Once they had that on paper, they started their PowerPoints. We finished these (mostly) in the last class. Some of the kids still need to add clip art or backgrounds, but they got the information portions finished. They each had a title slide with citation information included, along with 3 true/false sets. Here are some of their statement sets:

The students seem very interested in the topic, but are having a hard time with the true/false aspect, putting notes in their own words, and remembering to cite their sources. I am modeling each part each class and hope that practice will help them get better at it!