Penguins!

We had so much fun learning about penguins this week!  We began our study by filling in our penguin schema chart.  We knew a lot of fun facts about penguins!  During our shared writing, we read nonfiction books about penguins.  As we read, we added facts to our new learning, asked questions, and found out we had some misconceptions.  We also discussed nonfiction text features.  We found out that nonfiction books sometimes have a table of contents which helps us locate information.  They also have labels, diagrams, maps, and glossaries.  

During writing we wrote our own nonfiction books about penguins.  This came from Deanna Jump's Penguins unit on Teachers Pay Teachers.  

Here is the front cover of our "All About Penguins" book.  

We made sure to add a table of contents.  

We drew a diagram of a penguin and labeled it.  

We wrote a page that described what a penguin is.

We wrote about baby penguins.  

Last, we wrote about what penguins do.  We found out that penguins are very playful.  They slide, hop, swim, and even surf!  

As we were reading and learning about penguins, we added our new learning to our penguin tree map.  This helped us organize our information for when we were ready to write.  

We also took a break from our nonfiction penguin books to read about our favorite penguin, Tacky!  We read several books about Tacky and brainstormed words to describe him.

We also compared Tacky to a real penguin using a venn diagram.  Then everyone got to make their own Tacky!

On Friday, we ended our study of penguins by making a fun penguin snack!  We used oreos, icing, and candy corn to make these adorable penguins!  They were so yummy!  

 Next week we will be learning about walruses and polar bears!  We will also learn about groundhogs and Groundhog's Day.  I can't believe it is already February!