Integrating Writing and Science

I am always looking for ways to encourage my students to write.  This past week we started learning about the different animal groups in science (mammals, reptilies...) so I figured that it would be a great time to incorporate writing into science by creating animal reports.  We are doing one like this for each animal group we study.

These reports were teacher guided with the students filling in blanks.  I chose to do it this way as a way to provide students with a model for writing reports and as a way to insure that students get the important information we learned about each animal group in another manner (not just classroom discussion or from videos).  My goal is that after using these reports to model writing students will be better prepared to choose their own animal and crate a short report after the unit.