Penguin Projects: Research in Pre-K

Research, non-fiction text, table of contents, bold print... These are all words that have become second nature to our pre-K students this winter. 

Pre-K students are partnering with their fourth-grade buddies from Mrs. Kinney's class to research certain types of penguins. Using the fourth-graders' iPads, they are finding all kinds of information, pictures and videos to make a presentation in Keynote that will be shared with the school next month. 

Our 4- and 5-year-olds have even taught the fourth-graders a thing or two! On our first day of research, the children were asked to find out the habitat of their penguin, its enemies or predators, what food they eat, etc. Many of them discovered that one particular bird was a main predator of the penguin chicks, but they could not find the name of the bird online.

The pre-K students read a non-fiction text about penguins and figured out the answer! We then taught the fourth-graders how to use a table of contents to find which page featured the predators. On that page, the bird's name was marked in BOLD print because it was important. What a great moment for both students to be able to learn from each other!

We can't wait to turn our research into a movie featuring paper mache models of the penguins and their habitats. We will create these models in the next two weeks! Then, we'll take our information and make an iMovie to share with the school.

Stay tuned for more from the pre-K research team. Our movie trailer will be coming soon!