Let's research a state!! It is that time to get busy with research reports. This seems to be a favorite unit each year. My students thoroughly love to research the states and complete the report.

With this package your students will have clear guidelines of what information to research for a state. They use websites or books to gather the information and then organize it into the suggested topics. They turn the topics into paragraphs. You can decide just how many topics/paragraphs to assign based on your needs. The directions and topics pages are editable for you to personalize!

Included is a list of student friendly websites. Students can find all the information they need to complete the report on these sites. I do check each year to be certain they are still active.

After researching and writing the report, students create a lapboard with the written report and other fun pages. This is the icing on the cake. They draw and color the state symbols. They could also locate graphics with a computer and print them to mount on the lapboard booklet. My older students enjoy making the lapboard and showing it off to the other students.

To start the reports we do a full report together. I model researching Nevada, since that is our home state. I walk the students through each step of the process showing them how to look at the websites and write the information in their notebooks in an organized way. We write the paragraphs together for Nevada and create the pages for the lapboard.

***Here is a free color sample of the Nevada State Report Sample report for you to download. Due to copyright restrictions on the graphics, I could not include it in this report. It had to be a separate file. Enjoy the sample!

Keep completed lapboards in a basket for students to read for the rest of the year, or display them as a showcase bulletin board :)