Kindergarten Scientists: Extending Our Reseach!

Lately we have been learning about "Families, Feelings, and Friends." As you may remember, we read Stellaluna (about a bat who has to live with a family of birds) which made us wonder about real life bats and birds.  We generated a list of questions the students had, and I asked them where we could find the answers.  We decided to look in nonfiction, teaching books from the school library about bats and birds to find the answers to our questions.

The kids LOVED being scientists, researching all about bats and birds... which gave me an idea.  All the students have their own "Good Fit" book bags (courtesy of the JTEA) so their can read books on their level to themselves and to partners.  So, I asked them to find a book from their book bag about an animal and generate their own questions from it.

OUR BOOKS- AM 

 

 

OUR BOOKS- PM 

 

  

 

 These books gave us questions about animals, so we wrote those questions on post-it notes.  We asked things like:

"Why do bears sleep all winter?" Miles 

"How big can whales be?"  Max, Lauren, Brent, Joe, and Ariel

"Are tigers a kind of cat?" Jenna & Charlie

"Why do sea horses have a pouch?" Emma

"Can all birds fly?" Katie

"What do cows eat?" Nick D.

"Where do bears live?" Giovanni & Tina

"Why do bears climb?" Grace

"How do fish swim?" Mikayla

"What colors can snakes be?" Dylan, Dalton, Lexi, and Nicholaas H.

Just like before, we looked for the answers to our questions in teaching books from the library!

 

 Finally, we wrote the answers to our questions on post-it notes and put them on big posters.  As a culminating activity we shared our Research Posters with the kids in our class and them hung them in the hallway to teach other kids the things that we learned!  Parents, be sure to stop by the Kindergarten hallway during conferences to see all our hard work!!