First Grade Research Writing | Unit 8 | 20-Day Workshop

Turn “I wonder…” into a report a reader can learn from. Curious Researchers is a four-week first-grade research and informational writing unit that helps children ask useful questions, find information, take short notes, and turn facts from two sources into clear writing. The lessons move from shared beaver research to a chosen investigation about beavers, woodpeckers, or bats, followed by checking, revising, and sharing.

Fox and Raccoon give the month a continuing story: they are building a nature exhibit and need research that will teach their visitors something. Across 20 connected mentor scenes, their questions, mistakes, and discoveries model the same decisions children practice in their own writing.

Your download includes:

• 20 sequenced daily lessons with student-friendly targets, timed teaching steps, modeling guidance, shared practice, independent writing, and opportunities to confer and share.
• Eight original source texts: six instructional texts about beavers, woodpeckers, and bats, plus a separate river-otter assessment pair.
• Four complete partner activities—Question Lab, Source Search, Note Nest, and Report Rescue—with directions, cards or challenge pages, mats where needed, checking keys, and no-cut options.
• Color teaching anchors that model finding information, explaining facts in your own words, using both sources, organizing notes, and checking accuracy.
• Student planning, drafting, revising, illustrating, and publishing pages with generous drawing space and primary writing lines.
• Task-specific differentiation, multilingual learner support, extension ideas, and guidance for choosing the next teaching response.
• Fillable weekly class snapshots for 28 students, comparable entry and exit writing tasks, teacher-created exemplars, and optional conference notes.

You receive a bookmarked, 135-page teacher guide and a separate 48-page student packet. Project the color teaching resources and print only the pages your writers need. Student pages with printing lines use black-and-white artwork.

Part of Writers Academy’s Writing Detectives series. This unit can be taught on its own. Digital PDF download; no physical product is shipped.