Biome Books

I had my kids make Biome Books this year ... yes,  high school students.

This is the first time of the school year I have freshmen biology students work on reading comprehension and summarizing information.  This year I gave them three days, sometimes I give them four (my expectations are a little higher if I give them more days.

They started with 5 sheets of white paper, folded like a hamburger (term taught to me by students, I discovered Foldables later).  Then they used a hand-held hole punch to make two holes in their book.  Then we used a rubber band and a paperclip to bind the book. (I really like the rubber band better than staples).  

Our new book has 18 biomes or ecosystems in it (up from 12), so the students were expected to complete 6 biomes per day (50-55 minute classes).  This is really fast paced, but it kept them on track a little better than when I given them 4 days.  Each biome was one page in the booklet.  This left the back blank to glue the book into their notebook.  They had to have 3-5 bullets per page and a drawing per page.  And the bullets should be 5 words or less -- this is really tough for them.

The students were asked to focus on two things: how the biomes are unique (different from one another) and adaptations of organisms in those biomes.  I divided points as follows. 

·         4 pts per page (title and facts)=72 points

·         1 pt per page (drawing) = 18 points

·         Color on all pages = 5 points

·         Title page (Title, Your Name, effort)= 5 points

And I have one student example:

Do you have students make books?  What are they over, how are they different from my biome books?