Every day, birds come to the feeders at the classroom window for a mid tweet snack and to say hi to the students in Lynn Bartlett and Iva Profaci’s Kindergarten class at Duzine Elementary School. Curious to know more about their guests, the class endeavored to learn about backyard birds of the northeast. The aspiring ornithologists filled in a chart of what they already know birds CAN do, HAVE, and ARE, known as a sentence pattern chart. After a few library visits to conduct diligent research, the students selected the most common birds to focus on: bluebirds, robins, finches, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, cardinals, and dark-eyed juncos. They then wrote facts on sticky notes onto another chart with columns for each bird. 

Students rolled up their sleeves and got to work painting posters of the individual birds. Students charted facts about the specific birds in structured sentences, which they cut out and pasted on the posters. They also walked around outside, gathering twigs, sticks, “fluff,” string, and whatever else could be used to create their own nests, which they will be making with real mud like their feathered friends. 

Let’s give some big loud chirps to these students for their great work!