Penguin Fun!

     This week we started a penguin unit in my class. I had so much fun creating our first nonfiction unit. My kinders are really enjoying the real pictures in the books and learning all of the interesting facts. To begin the unit I asked the students to share anything they already know about penguins. I put their responses on sticky notes. I then explained what a nonfiction text is, and we went through the books and looked at the labeling, close up pictures, and subtitles. I pointed out the Emperor penguin in some pictures and told the students that the Emperor penguin is the tallest penguin. We then graphed whether we thought the Emperor penguin was taller than us. The next day I told the students I had a surprise for them and I brought out a 4 foot tall Emperor penguin I made out of paper. We estimated how many unifix cubes tall we thought he was then proceeded to measure him with unifix cubes. The penguin was 66 unfix cubes tall if you were wondering :)

     I added the post-it notes from what we knew about penguins before doing any reading under What do we know about penguins? As we continue to read books and find out more about penguins we are adding more post-it notes under the new learning heading.
     After reading some more we filled in a penguin bubble map with important facts. You can download it below :) I made it into a poster using our poster maker and laminated it so it can be reused!  Also below the download is a picture of what we filled in as a class.
Penguin Information Bubble Map

     After filling in the bubble map, we began working on our own nonfiction penguin fact books. Below you can grab a copy! I copied the first two pages back to back and the second two back to back on light blue paper, so the jacket of the book would be blue. I will post samples once they finish. Penguin Fact Book

FYI for some reason the lines of the book are showing up dotted in this window but when you click download, the pdf is fine!

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