AAAS Science NetLinks has put up an excellent K-2 lesson on food chains that uses Vulture View and Trout Are Made of Trees. It links with Project 2061 Benchmark 5 The Living Environment; and National Science Standard C, Life Science.  The National Science Teachers Association website has a section called  NSTA RECOMMENDS which points out good resources for science teaching. Here Come the Humpbacks was just added with a full review.

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Stars Beneath Your Bed: The Surprising Story of Dust is a natural for fulfilling the new science standards. That’s one of the things I learned when I attended NSTA and spoke on a panel of authors organized by Carrie Launius and hosted by Wendy Saul. Each of the educators at the conference gave activities to go with various books. Carrie worked with teacher to get them to consider how the book deals with cross-cutting concepts:

Patterns

Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation

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I’m speaking at the Indiana state conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics on Sunday and Monday. Here’s a lesson plan created by educator Margaret Goldsmith, who is co-presenting with me. She’ll cover the lesson plan at the end of my session talk.

Click here to download the lesson plan: One Is A Snail.

Thank you to Margaret for sharing. We met because she was teaching workshops on the book. She’s so creative as an educator. I’m her fan and it’s because of her math enthusiasm that I attended my first NCTM conference earlier this year. Love the vibe of the math education world. Just zaps my brain cells and makes me think, smile, and create.

ALA librarians called on collective wisdom to assemble a list of books great for use with autistic students, in this case, 7th graders. The list included Ant, Ant, Ant: An Insect Chant (illus by Park) ; Trout, Trout, Trout: a Fish Chant (illus by Park) , and Bird, Bird, Bird: a Chirping Chant (illus by Locke).   The list is here:  http://connect.ala.org/node/93738

Do you need to write a grant, justify author visit costs, or explain the value of my visit to an administrator?Below is a list of the standards that most schools apply during studies of my books in preparation for a visit, the actual talks I give to students, and follow-up work that flows naturally from my visits.

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Read The Bumblebee Queen. Pull out the chewiest, most evocative vocabulary and put it on sticky notes. Then move around the words to make a poem of your own.

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See how the teachers at Sandhills Elementary honor writing and analyze books.

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It is going to take me quite a while to process all the great teaching techniques I witnessed at Indian Hill Elementary and Indian Hill Primary, two schools in Cincinnati. Just look at what Mrs. Bauer and her class were doing with nonfiction. This is a classroom full of words. You can see their process on the walls.

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Educational Standards, Science

Secrets of Sounds: Studying the Calls and Songs of Whales, Elephants, and Birds

Science Standards:

Grade 4

4.1.1 Observe and describe that scientific investigations generally work the same way in different places.

4.1.3 Explain that clear communication is an essential part of doing science since it enables scientists to inform others about their work, to expose their ideas to evaluation by other scientists, and to allow scientists to stay informed about scientific discoveries around the world.

4.1.4 Describe how people all over the world have taken part in scientific investigation for many centuries.

4.1.5 Demonstrate how measuring instruments, such as microscopes, telescopes, and cameras, can be used to gather accurate information for making scientific comparisons of objects and events. Note that measuring instruments, such as rulers, can also be used for designing and constructing things that will work properly.

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