How To Easily Write Animal Reports With Kids

Are you looking for a simple, step-by-step strategy for teaching your students how to write animal reports? Support your students as they work through the report writing process by following seven simple steps.

What is report writing?

Report writing is a type of informative writing. ... and what is informative writing? Informative writing is meant to give information to the reader. The information increases the reader's knowledge about a topic. So ... when students write a report, they are learning to share information with others. And as teachers isn't that our goal?

Why teach animal report writing?

We want kids to practice their writing ... and kids love animals ... so ... writing animal reports is a great way for students to practice their writing skills! As they write their reports, students learn how to:

• conduct research to find out about their animals,
• write sentences that contain important information, and
• create reports that provide information to their readers.

Writing Teacher's Roadmap

If you are following the Writing Teacher's Roadmap, report writing is perfect for Action C - Writing in the Content Areas. The goal of Action C is to have your students complete different writing activities in the Science, Social, Health, etc. Writing differentiated animal reports are perfect to motivate reluctant writers, get beginning writers and ESL students writing, and provide writers who need a challenge with the opportunity to write more detailed reports.

7 Steps of the Animal Report Writing Process

There are seven steps to the animal report writing process. They are:

• Step One: Choose Your Topic
• Step Two: Research Your Topic
• Step Three: Make Jot Notes
• Step Four: Write a Draft
• Step Five: Revise and Edit
• Step Six: Write a Good Copy
• Step Seven: Illustrate Report

How To Write An Animal Report - 7 Steps

The following steps are illustrated using pictures of the templates found in the Animal Report Writing package. Whether you use this package or your own materials, follow this process as you walk your students through the report writing steps.

Step One: Choose A Topic

There are different ways that students can choose the topic for their animal reports. Students can:

• choose their own topic.
• pick an animal out of a hat.
• be assigned an animal.

Step Two: Research Your Animal

Students can use different sources your students to find information about their animals depending on the resources you have available. Students can use:

• websites such as National Geographic For Kids and San Diego Zoo,
• books and magazines from library, or
• trading cards.

Step Three: Make Jot Notes

Making jot notes is a difficult skill for students to master. Provide your students with jot note templates with targeted questions to support them with this process.

Step Four: Write a Draft

Once students have finished writing their jot notes, they can write their draft reports. Students take the information they have gathered on their jot note templates and make them into paragraphs for their reports.

Step Five: Revise and Edit

Teachers can support their students as they revise and edit with differentiated writing checklists. Choose a checklist that matches the individual learning needs of your students. Students work through the checklist to make their writing better.

Step Six: Write a Good Copy

After students have went through the editing and revision process, they are ready to write a good copy for their report. Students can use differentiated templates or their own writing paper for the good copy of their reports.

Step Seven: Illustrate Report

The last step of the report writing process is adding color with illustrations to enhance what students have written in their reports.

How to Differentiate Report Writing

• Give reluctant writers templates that require them to only find one fact for each research category.
• If students need a challenge, provide them with a template that encourages them to find three or more facts about each research category.

Materials shown in this blogpost are a part of The Animal Report - Differentiated Templates resource. It is available on TeachersPayTeachers and as a part of the Writing Teacher's Roadmap Club.

Until next time,