Penguins!!!

This stretch of year can be the hardest.  All the excitement of the holidays are over and winter is really setting in.  So I'm trying to keep their interest (and mine!) and enthusiasm going and what better way than cute little penguins?!

There are so many penguin themed resources out there and my students were so into it that I actually carried this theme for the first two weeks back after break.  Why stop a good thing?

We started by reviewing the strategies that good readers use (what we have been learning in December) and despite two weeks off, I'm happy to report they easily remembered: ask questions, make predictions, and summarize.  Whew!  It actually stuck with them:)

We first made a list of all the things we think we know about penguins.  We talked about how this helps activate our schema.  We also made a list of questions we have about penguins.  I then partnered them up and had them choose a penguin book (my county library had tons).  I gave the students a graphic organizer for them to record summary sentences as they read.  As I walked around the room as they were working I made a note of places where students were struggling to understand a vocabulary word or the meaning of a particular section.  Later, I used these examples to introduce the 4th reciprocal teaching strategy: clarify.

We read a lot about penguins.  A lot.  They were so motivated.  I did read alouds, shared reading, partner reading, and guided reading.  During and after reading, we recorded important and interesting facts about penguins.  This is when I get so excited about teaching reading.  I love when they are authentically motivated and engaged in reading.

Are penguins a part of my curriculum?  Totally not.  But I love to use a theme like this and teach reading strategies (like ask questions, make predictions, summarize, and clarify).  I modeled these strategies and the students also had lots of opportunities to utilize them in their reading with varying levels of support.  Exploring all of these penguin books was also a great opportunity for them to utilize their knowledge of nonfiction text features.

The students wrote an informative piece using the facts and we did a fun directed drawing to display with their writing.  We do informative writing pieces quite often and they do so well with these now (but clearly we didn't edit and revise these:).

We also revisited the cubing strategy (see my Grinch post here for more details on cubing).   We used the information we learned from all of our nonfiction reading about penguins and did some higher level thinking.  I have been terrible about remembering to take pictures lately, but here is a page from the cubing activity.

Our district hired a consultant to model some research based strategies for teachers.  She did a lesson with our class so that the K-1 teachers could observe.  I felt a little bit of "affirmation" because part of her lesson involved the students arguing for or against penguins making good pets.  Kinda neat that of all the strategies and activities she ended up modeling one that I had just done.  Every so often I feel like I kinda know what I'm doing:)

You can click here to get a FREE copy of the penguin cubing sheets, graphic organizer, and writing paper that I used for the informative writing.

Next up, more cold weather connections-polar bears!