Polar Animals

Our first and second graders recently completed a unit on Polar Animals.  Each class chose an animal to study for the month of February.  We asked questions, did research, wrote reports, and created things!  The kids learned SO MUCH and really improved on their Reading and Language Arts skills while doing so.  We were able to target many ELA common core standards with this unit.  (This was all done during reading group, but we tied in lots of Science and Social Studies!)  We used a LOT of Thinking Maps!  

Some of the items are from units we have purchased. Others are things we created.

At the end of the unit we created a display in our hallway for everyone to see.  Even the big 5th graders enjoyed our display and learned information from our reports!!!   Here are some pictures of our display.  Sorry the pics are not the best.  I did it with my phone at the end of the day Friday and it was really windy!!  (Our school is an open school, which means our doors open to the outside.  So, our hallways are outside.  We are only about a block away from the beach, so when it is windy, it is WINDY!  Thank goodness for Gorilla Tape!)

FYI: Mrs. Szlosek is our resident first grade artist!  She DREW the walrus and the penguins!

Walrus (Mrs. Szlosek's class)

Real life size!!

Arctic Hare (Mrs. Treur's class)

Penguin (Ms. Gilbert's class)

We were writing Biographies the following week, so I used our class penguin to model!  My class does a take home penguin project every winter!

Each student was assigned a different penguin.  We went to the computer lab and they researched which continent they live on!  

Real life size of the smallest penguin!

Real life size of the largest penguin!

We measured and graphed ourselves against the Emperor penguin.

Most of us are taller than one!

Polar Bear (Ms. Fischer's class)

That is how big a polar bear's paw is!

Polar Bears can be 10 feet tall....WOW!

The students each picked their favorite "item" that they worked on during the unit to display.  This way everyone had something hanging!  At the end of the hallway we hung a poster board and marker for visitors to leave us comments.

Meredith