Penguins....

Our journey with penguins began with a great non-fiction

story in our Reading Street Basal for 3rd grade, Penguin Chick.

Like any good 3rd grader, we first made a KWL chart of

our schema about penguins together.  Wow, we actually

knew quite a bit about this flightless bird, but still had plenty

of questions!

After reading our story and learning so much we embarked

upon our first, but not last "research" project this year.  

Mrs. Scholes took us to the computer lab where we were

assigned a particular breed of penguin.  After a quick lesson

on using google and how to search for "good information" we

were on our own.  We needed to find 8 facts about our penguin.

This was certainly not a one day project.  It was completed over

a 2 week period with lots of work.  Once we collected all of our

facts about penguins, it was time to get busy writing.  OHMYWORD

Mrs. Scholes made us write about these birds, and you won't believe

it, but they had to be in complete sentences with correct 

capitalization and punctuation!

The pictures below demonstrate our 4 step process:

Step 1:  Research about penguins and write them down.

Step 2:  Write a short paragraph with a topic sentence and

5 supporting details. (correct capitalization and punctuation)

Step 3:  Bring to Mrs. Scholes and she will correct any mistakes.

Step 4:  Rewrite the paragraph with changes and create an 

illustration of your particular penguin.

WHEW!  That was a lot of work Mrs. Scholes.

A note from Mrs. Scholes:

I was so very proud of the students' focus and attention

to this "BIG" project.  I hope you learned about patience

and how a project is one step at a time.  I was truly amazed

at your writing abilities and can't wait to do more with you

in the future!  GOOD JOB!