In keeping with the season, winter, the primary students read a story by Jan Brett called The Three Snow Bears. The storyline, following a similar structure as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, features the Eskimo Aloo-ki, her sled dogs, and the polar bears Papa, Mama, and Baby.We discussed the elements of the story and brought it to life by creating a story board for the hallway.
The students collaborated to make sure each character was colored and cut out. Then, we worked together to lay out the pieces to show the story. In addition to the storyline, Jan Brett did a beautiful job of introducing many unique Arctic animals in her story as well. We used her website to help us learn more about those animals.
Our finished The Three Snow Bears storyboard!
Some students compared and contrasted The Three Snow Bears and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
The students were so interested in learning about the Arctic and Antarctic regions that we decided to continue our study. We learned about Arctic foxes, narwhals, beluga whales, Eskimos, penguins, and polar bears.
Since we are becoming experts about the Antarctic and Arctic wildlife, each student chose one Arctic/Antarctic topic about which to research and write a non-fiction paper. After they chose their topic, students used non-fiction books, Epic books, internet searches, and classroom resources to find facts to put on notecards.
They used these notecards to compose their rough drafts using these questions prompts to guide their writing:
1. Where does it live?
2. What does it look like?
3. What does it eat?
4. What predators does it have?
5. How many kinds (species) are there?
6. What are some facts about it's babies?
7. What are some fun facts?
After writing their rough drafts, Mrs. Boltz helped make revisions. A second rough draft was written and edited for errors. Then, final draft writing began! To prepare their non-fiction writing for display, students found photos of their animals and printed them.
