Monday, March 31, 2014

Wild & Wonderful... Wolves!

I love teaching about animals. The kids this year have done so well with nonfiction -- they are fascinated by stories with science and social studies topics.  Last week we read several stories about wolves and made a book about the most interesting facts we learned.  I differentiated the wolf book this year by allowing for three different activities on the inside pages: tracing/writing the letter Ww with pictures that begin with the /w/ sound, copying sentences about wolves and drawing an accompanying picture, or sounding out sentences independently to share newly learned facts about wolves.

I forgot to take a photo of the cover, so here's an example of the cover from last year.


Check out what some of these kids thought were the most interesting facts:

"Wolves eat meat. Wolves can eat up to 20 pounds a day."

"Wolves live in deep holes in the ground or cave.  Their holes are called dens."

"People hunt wolves. Wolves fight back."

"Wolves travel in packs.  Packs have 8 wolves in them."

"Wolves have a good sense of smell."

"Wolves live in the snow."

"Wolves travel in packs."

"It can hear 10 miles away."


I feel like books of this nature show how hard children are willing to work when they're working on something that genuinely interests them. These kiddos not only remembered the facts, they sounded them out and drew amazing photos!  I am definitely allowing for this "write your own facts" option in the future.



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