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Main Idea and Details • Inferential
Main Idea and Details
Use Graphic Organizers • Inferential
SKILLS
STRATEGIES IN CONTEXT
MODEL The first thing I want 
Student Edition
Unit 2, pp. 154–167
Expository nonfiction gives information about the real world. Read for facts about emperor penguins that you might not know.
On a cold winter day in the frozen Antarctica, a female emperor penguin lays an egg. Now the father penguin takes over. The father rolls the egg onto his feet and into a brood patch. Here the egg will stay warm in a fold of skin covered by feathers. The father will care for the egg until the baby penguin hatches. Then he will care for the newly hatched chick. While caring for the egg and chick, the father does not eat. He lives off his body fat. He spends his time with other fathers. They stand close together to help keep each other warm.
As the father cares for the egg, the mother joins other female penguins that leave the rookery where they laid their eggs. They are hungry and must travel far to reach the sea. Once there each mother dives into the sea, using her flippers to swim in search of food. She feeds on sea creatures including krill, very small sea organisms that look like tiny shrimp.
While the mother is gone, the chick grows inside the egg. When it is time for it to hatch, the chick pecks at the inside of the egg. Soon the egg cracks and breaks apart, and the chick emerges wet and tired. The chick cannot survive in the cold, so it snuggles in the father's brood patch to stay warm.
After feeding, the mother makes the journey back to the rookery. On her return, she cuddles with her chick and begins to preen its down feathers. The soft down helps protect the chick from the cold. She also feeds the chick by bringing up food she had in her stomach and giving it to the chick.
Now she will stay with the chick and the father will go for food. He will feed himself and come back with food in his stomach for the chick.
The parents continue to take turns caring for the chick and going for food. All the time, the chick is growing. Soon it is big enough to leave the brood patch. It cuddles with other young penguins to stay warm, but it returns to its parents for food.
Over time, the chick grows waterproof feathers. Then the chick can go to the sea and hunt for food. In a few years, it will be old enough to find a mate and have its own egg.
Penguin Chick by Betty Tatham. Text copyright © 2002 Betty Tatham. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Copyright © Pearson Education.
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Climate
When you think of Antarctica, your first thought is
probably of the cold. Antarctica is indeed cold—in fact, it is the coldest place on earth. The coldest temperature ever recorded there was –128.6°F! It is also windy. Wind has been known to reach speeds of 200 miles per hour. Despite the cold and the wind, Antarctica does not get a lot of snow. In fact, Antarctica is a desert. It gets less than 10 inches of snow a year. What does such a desert look like? You would certainly see lots of ice; in fact, Antarctica doubles in size during the winter because of all the ice that forms along its coasts. You might also see a few rocks here and there, and on the warmer Antarctic Peninsula you would even see some plant life in the form of mosses, lichens, and algae. |
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