Polar Bear, Polar Bear, How Do You Survive?

We've successfully survived the first week back at school, even with the arctic temperatures the new year has brought us!! With a new year, new units of study were started in Language Arts and Writer's Workshop this week. We are going to be writing "All About" non-fiction books in Writer's Workshop, so I've tied it together Language Arts and we are doing a class inquiry on polar bears.

To start our inquiry, I asked the students "How can a polar bear survive in the arctic in such cold temperatures?". This prompted many ideas and a quick turn and talk to discuss their initial thinking. Of course everyone wanted to share their ideas, so each student wrote something they thought they knew about polar bears and placed on our class R.A.N. (Reading and Analyzing Non-Fiction) chart.

To start confirming, changing, or peaking their curiosity I read aloud a simple non-fiction book. We began moving some of our stickies on the R.A.N. chart to "What I Know is True" and "I don't think this any more". We also added some stickies to the "New Facts" column.

To finish off the first inquiry session, each student had to write a wondering on a sticky to post on our R.AN. chart.

On Day 2 of our inquiry, I launched the session with a short clip from Discovery Education on polar bears. We again moved around and added new stickies as a class. I was confident in my class' ability to do some inquiry on their own so I sent them off with their inquiry books and a Google Presentation (which you can grab a copy of below!) with videos and links about polar bears. They recorded "New Facts" and "Wonderings" in their books.

{Grab a copy of my polar bear Google Presentation by 

clicking on Google Slides above. Select File and Make a Copy}

We finished up the session with some additions and changes to our R.A.N. chart. I feel as though our inquiry is off to a good start, considering my class promptly checked out all the polar bear books from the school library and are gathering facts during lunch hour :-).

The plan is for at the end of our polar bear inquiry the students will create a short "All About" book using Google Presentation. Stay tuned for the final products!