My class' obsession with non-fiction!

It's official.

My class is completely, utterly, and totally all in on non-fiction. Any non-fiction book they can get their hands on, they are begging me to borrow and read. Not only are they begging me to let them read any non-fiction book, they are using said non-fiction books to write their OWN non-fiction books! You might think that I put them up to this, but no... they came up with this all on their own. They. are. obsessed.

This, as you may imagine, makes my little kindergarten teacher heart SO HAPPY. And it pretty much sums up how amazing my class is this year. I'm not exactly sure how it began, but a couple of boys found some non-fiction books in the book center and started pointing out all the facts and pictures and asking loads of questions about everything. This evolved into requesting more books, which evolved into the creation of their own! They've been reading and writing about bats, plants, spiders, insects, planets, you name it! I took a few pictures of their sweet little books. They are so cute with the illustrations, too... they are leaving no detail unturned! The best part is they are being independent learners throughout the whole process and practicing their questioning strategies without even realizing it!

Here's a few pictures I snapped of their non-fiction books in process. I think I've gone through an entire ream of this writing paper in about a span of 8 days.

Bats

Plants

Space

The best thing ever occurred when one of my little boys was creating his space fact book shown above. The "Planets" book he was reading was a brand-new version, one that did not include Pluto as a planet. He was asking me to read off the names of all the planets to him, and when he noticed that I didn't say Pluto, he pointed to a rather bright star on the page and says, "Is this one Pluto? You didn't say Pluto! Pluto is a planet too!" And I said, yes, yes, it is a planet (CAUSE IT TOTALLY IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE. ahem.) So he included it on his own in his version of the book. Ha!

Most of my class has decided that this is the thing they will work on when they finish their work early -- and are you kidding me, a self-made fast finisher activity that involves little to no effort on my part to prepare and keeps them engaged and learning? This is a dream come true! I hope they never get tired of it!

To add to their sudden passion about non-fiction, real live caterpillars have arrived in our classroom, and my kiddos could not be more excited. Because they had all the extra practice at using non-fiction, the questions and schema they were coming up with on the very first day I introduced caterpillars was at such a high level! I think a couple of tears came to my eye. This is one of the best things about teaching, when your students become passionate about their own learning! I just had to share!