Polar Bear Writing Unit

I had so much fun with my polar bear writing unit. I learned how to use the green screen, learned new facts about polar bears, and just plain had a great time.

We used the green screen pictures to go along with our polar bear pet stories. Learning to use the green screen was so much fun. My little guy was such a trooper as I practiced on him. The app that I used was Green Screen by Do Ink. It costs $2.99. It is very easy to use.

We used graphic organizers for our pre-writing and rough draft. They can be found at my TPT store.

 

I found a great polar bear pet story about a man who actually had a polar bear pet. It had a video that I showed my students. It helped my students to be able to gain an understanding of what it would really take to own a polar bear. The story can be found here.

We also read polar bear books and then did animal reports on what we found out. Here is a list of books we used-

Nonfiction

•Born to be Wild Little Polar Bears- By: Valerie Guidoux

•Polar Bear Math- By: Ann Whitehead Nagda and Cindy Bickel

•Wild Bears! Polar Bear- By: Jasona and Jody Stone

Fiction

•The Three Snow Bears- By: Jan Brett

•Big Bear Little Bear- By: David Bedford and Jane Chapman

As we read the books students filed out a book study page.

 Students were also able to watch videos found on National Geographic Kids and fill out fact pages.

Students then used the information they learned to write an animal report about polar bears. They used pre-writing and rough draft pages.

I work with students with limited expressive abilities. I created a chart to help students be able to convey the information they wanted to let me know. I found the hardest was what polar bears eat.

We also used the Polar Bear word bank extensively.

We used the cute polar bear template found here to hold up our animal reports.
We also used a great Ranger Rick magazine. It had such great pictures Dec/Jan 2016.