Have you seen this book? I found a copy of the book online written as a poem. We have been using it for some choral reading and fluency practice. At first, I simply told my students that the poem was a picture book, but I wasn’t going to show it to them. I wanted them to use their schema about penguins and think about the words of the poem to make a mental image.
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Next, I taught my students how to draw penguins using a step-by-step drawing lesson I found online (yes, it was on Pinterest). While modeling this, I told my students I was taking a risk by trying to draw something new right along with them. I think this gave them the confidence to take a risk, too. We tried drawing three different types of penguins on blank white paper.
After that, I had the students choose a mental image from the poem to draw into their notebooks. This meant that they couldn’t just use their drawing from the directed lesson. So, here are some snapshots of what our reading response journals looked like when we finished:
On the left, you can see the poem we glued into the journals. The yellow that you see is where students highlighted (with crayon or colored pencil) the rhyming words.
This student made sure to tell me that the lines around the penguins are because it’s sliding across the ice.
This one made sure to include some pink ice skates on the penguins.
This student made sure to include several scenes from the poem. My favorite part is that one penguin has feet that appear larger than it’s entire body!
The penguin on the right is the one that broke the ice and began to cry. I love how the student included a broken chunk of ice and that she attempted to draw her penguin upside down with only part of the penguin showing.
“boing, boing”
The penguin is saying, “Doc, my baby fell into the icy sea.”
The doctor on the other line is saying, “No more penguins sliding near a tree.”
Another student that attempted to include all the scenes from the poem.
I think this one speaks for itself 🙂
Once my students finished, I read them the book and showed them the pictures. They were VERY surprised to see that the penguins were wearing clothes just like humans.

I love this! It looks like your students really got into it and had lots of fun. Thanks for sharing!
Aimee
Primarily Speaking
You are a super teacher, Storie! I love all of these photos!
Irene
Learning With Mrs. Leeby