Non-Fiction in Kindergarten Day Three, Four and Five

If you missed day one and two, click here!

Otherwise, here they both are simply stated.
Day one: Choose your animal absent from any suggestion.
Day two: Research your animal.

Then we moved on to day three. After we had done our research, students needed to do something with this new information. It would be hard for some of them to choose just one or two bits to share in their book. We talked, a lot, shared with peers and narrowed down what we thought readers would appreciate knowing the most. What that really means is, what each of them liked best! Who knows better than a kindergartener what a kindergartener wants to read?
Then they got busy drawing and writing this new information. Again, it was a pin drop kind of moment. I know all you teachers out there know what this feels like, when it is all going like a freshly oiled engine. The sound of work and concentration always amazes me. I try to remember to relish in these moments because not every day is like this!

Then it was time to share all the work! This could have been a long process because by now several students had multiple pages (3-4) and EVERYONE NEEDED to share. It was just too important to each of them. Some days are like this, so I got my computer and they read to me while I typed. Then I projected the stories and read them to everyone. It proved to be a little more efficient and now I had their stories typed up too! From here I hit print and day four was approaching!

I have to admit, when day four arrived I was a bit overwhelmed. Spring break was literally around the corner, what was I going to do, finish, not finish? How was I going to handle all this work? I took a breath and we marched on.
We got to work with some mentor texts. We looked at non-fiction book titles. What was interesting about them; were they to the point or exciting? Did non-fiction books have dedication pages? Did we need them too? It looked like this was optional. However, a title page and title, well that was in every non-fiction book we looked through. Kids got busy creating titles, covers, and title pages.
We had made it all the way to Friday. Our third grade buddies came for a visit to check in on our project and students practiced reading their stories. We hadn't begun illustrating the actual pages but I thought that might be just what we'd need when we got back from our week off, so we breaked!