Penguin Fun!

Our penguin unit was so much fun! The children really enjoyed all of the activities with our genre unit using the story, Tacky the Penguin! Tacky day was a riot! We also spent a great deal of time reading nonfiction passages and books about penguins and watched some great videos like the IMAX movie, Survival Island. The unit finished up with the students writing their first expository writing piece on the species of penguin that they selected to research. They had a blast imagining to be penguin research scientists, preparing a report. Here is a peek at some of the activities during our unit:

Tacky Day!

We started our research with a gallery walk to read the penguin posters around the room.

Our research stations~ Each group had fact posters for their penguin species.

 The students took notes using bullet points and key phrases.

 Notice the cute penguin projects hanging from the ceiling! :)

We practiced non-fiction text features and print type with this computer lab activity. Each student used bold, highlight, color, italics, underline...in Word.

 Then it was time to take our notes and write a draft. Notice the question lead in these samples:

 We use partner pairing cards to find classmates to work with during peer editing!

 Each student published their piece. Our reports are quite impressive! Wait until they come home and you can see for yourself!

 Finally, the scientists shared their reports in the author chair.