What if Mercy Watson was not a pig!? Imagine if she were a different animal altogether! In these activities, students get a chance to learn about another animal and use creative writing to re-write the story of mercy Watson to the Rescue. These activities have three parts : Research, ABC Book, and Creative Writing.
Research
Students will need to choose an animal. Ideally, try to have students choose an animal for each letter of the alphabet. Perhaps assign a letter to eaqch child and let them choose an animal that begins with that letter.
Use a library visit to find resources. A basic encyclopedia and one trade books is sufficient. perhaps an article from an online database or a Zoobook magazine would also be a nice addition.
Students will return to Read Write Think. This time they are going to use the Animal Inquiry graphic organizer.
This is a great time for a mini-lesson on using the table of contents and the index! The graphic organizers on these pages ask students for specific infoprmation about their animal's habitat, its babies, what it eats, and more.
To help guide students, here is another task card fro them to use. Again, this is an activity that could be done as a class group in the computer lab, or independently at a center.
Here is John's sample graphic organizers for Chimpanzees.
ABC Book
After students have completed their research, you may want them to create a product with the information they have found. They could write a small report, but here is an another option.
Students could create an M is for Mercy, animal ABC book using Microsoft Powerpoint. They will need their information from their graphic organizers and they will need to go online to find a few images of their animal.
Here is a Power Point Starter for students to use.
To use the starter you need to click on the link and let it open. Then, right click and choose Edit slides. Finally, click File Save As and give the file a new name for each student.
Students simply type their information into the appropriate places and then insert their images. The slides can then be copied and pasted in the correct order to make the ABC book.
Here is John's page, C is for Chimpanzee. You will need to click to make his animation begin!
Creative Writing
Now that we have done our research, we need to tie our work back into the book, Mercy Watson to the Rescue.
Students will again return to Read Write Think. This time, they will work again on two features of the student materials :
Students will use what they have learned about their animal to complete these graphic organizers about a whole new version of the story Mercy Watson to the Rescue.
Again, Here is a link to two task cards that you can laminate and provide for students to guide them through the use of the Read Write Think interactive. They also make good posters.
Mercy Watson Story Map Task Card Two
Mercy Watson Plot Diagram Task Card Three
You will want to remind students that this time, they are making up the information for a whole new story!
When students have completed the graphic organizers, they are ready to use them to write their own new story!
Here is John's story about
