Archive for the 'process skills' Category

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: Look! Look! Look!

Published by Stephanie on August 31, 2009 in process skills and book review. 0 Comments

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Look! Look! Look! written and illustrated by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace with Linda K. Friedlaender, is a fun, potentially interactive book that highlights creative methods of observation..  A simple picture viewed from the various perspectives of each mouse (Kiki, Kat, and Alexander) results in several different demonstrations of those observations through the use of colors, shapes, and creativity.

Kiki, Kat, and Alexander, three curious mice, borrow a postcard of a portrait from the 1600’s that arrived for The Bigley’s.  They find all sorts of new things in the portrait by working together and listening to each others ideas.

“Look through my viewing frame,” said Alexander. “Look at her hand!”
“Look what I see!” said Kiki.  “Jewels!”
“Look here!” said Kat.  “I see patterns.” (Wallace, p. 7-9).

Alexander sees lines and shapes in the portrait and uses markers and an easel to draw them for Kiki and Kat.  Kiki and Kat both take turns adding to the drawing the different shapes they noticed themselves.  Using different shapes and lines to create the lady helped Kat to notice yet another way of creative the portrait.

Kiki, Kat, and Alexander continue to find new ways to view and create the lady until The Bigley’s arrive back home and they have to return the postcard.

The book has a wonderful illustrated glossary in the back that defines the concepts presented in the book, such as color, lines, patterns…etc.  It also includes instructions on how to create your own postcard which would be an excellent way to incorporated the book into a meaningful activity.

Curriculum Connections
This book and its possible related activities relate wonderfully to the K.1 SOL which states that, Students will conduct observations by (a) using direct observation, (b)  observations re made from various perspectives, (c) observations are described pictorially as well as verbally.

Additional Resources

  • Nancy Elizabeth Wallace provides instructions on her website on how to create the viewing frame used in the story.  Students could create these, decorate them if preferred and then hold them up to things they find/observe in their own classroom.
  • The website teAchnology provides observation worksheets that help introduce the concept of observation.  This may be a good follow-up challenge to add an interactive activity to a lesson about observation.
  • This game helps kids learn how to recognize and complete patterns.  More games are available here.

Book: Look! Look! Look!
Author/Illustrator: Nancy Elizabeth Wallace
Collaborator: Linda K. Friedlaender
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish Children
Publication Date: March 2006
Pages: 40 Pages
Grade Range: K-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-7614-5282-9

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: A Hunt For Clues

Published by Ryan on August 31, 2009 in process skills and book review. 0 Comments

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A Hunt for Clues written by Anne Miranda and illustrated by Michele Noiset chronicles a young girl’s search for her her pet cat Puff.  The young girl, Mary Sue, solicits help from a boy named Burt and his dog True Blue who he claims “can hunt for clues.”  Mary Sue met Burt and True Blue in the park during her search for Puff, and the duo proved to be incredibly valuable.  True Blue used his sense of smell to sniff out clues about Puff’s whereabouts as Mary Sue and Burt identified each object and pieced together all the clues to find Puff.A Hunt for Clues can be used at the kindergarten level to aid in the student’s processing skills.  The student will have to follow the clues uncovered by True Blue, identify the objects, and attempt to understand why the found objects are important  to locating Puff’s whereabouts.

Curriculum Connections
A Hunt for Clues is connected to the K.1 Scientific Investigation, Reasoning, and Logic Standard of Learning that requires students to conduct investigations in which basic properties of objects are identified by direct observation.

Additional Resources

Book: A Hunt for Clues
Author: Anne Miranda
Illustrator: Michele Noiset
Publisher: Modern Curriculum Press
Publication Date: 1996
Pages: 16
Grade Range: Pre-Kindergarten-Kindergarten
ISBN: 0-8136-2148-8

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: Seven Blind Mice

Published by Kristin on August 31, 2009 in process skills and book review. 0 Comments

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Students learning about their five senses for the first time will love Seven Blind Mice, written and illustrated by Ed Young.  This colorful picture book employs a simple storyline to show readers how important our senses are to our everyday lives.

The story begins when seven blind mice are surprised to find a new object by their home.  One by one, the mice use their other senses in an attempt to identify this new object, and each mouse becomes convinced that he has solved the mystery correctly.  ”One day,” Young writes, “seven blind mice were surprised to find a strange Something by their pond.  ’What is it?’ they cried, and they all ran home.  On Monday, Red Mouse went first to find out.  ’It’s a pillar,’ he said.  No one believed him.”  The text continues in a similar fashion until each mouse has guessed what this new Something is.  Only readers are able to tell why the mice have different opinions, but the wonderful illustrations do a great job of camoflauging the actual object (an elephant!) until the end of the story.

Curriculum Connections
Seven Blind Mice is a great book for initiating discussion about the five senses in a kindergarten classroom.    Children must stop and think about how being blind would affect their perception and must also consider the lesson on the last page of the book: “Knowing in part may make a fine tale, but wisdom comes from seeing the whole.”  The mice learn that perception is dependent on many things, and students should think about how each of their senses allows them to learn different things about the world around them.  The book might be used to satisfy SOL K.2 by encouraging students to think about how using their senses can help them to identify objects in their environment.

Additional Resources

Book: Seven Blind Mice
Author: Ed Young
Illustrator: Ed Young
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Publication Date: June 2002
Pages:  40
Grade Range: K-3
ISBN: 0698118952

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: The Great Graph Contest

Published by Michael on August 31, 2009 in process skills, math and book review. 0 Comments

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The Great Graph Contest written and illustrated by Loreen Leedy is a colorful children’s book that tells the story of a graph contest between two friends.  During the contest a salamander, Beezy, and a frog, Gonk, create different graphs using everday items such as cookies, bathing suits, and rocks while a third friend, Chester the snail, judges.  Each time one friend creates a graph, the other tries harder to make a better one.  Each graph is judged by creativity, correct math, and neatness showing children how everyday observations can be displayed as graphs.  At the end of the book there is a few pages that explain each how each graph was created as well as the type of graph.  The use of vivid pictures and unique items allow the children to see that making graphs can be fun and useful.

Curriculum Connections
This book is designed to work with students on both the introduction of graphs as well creating graphs from observed data.  This book can be introduced as young as Kindergarten to introduce tallying all the way up to 4th grade to explore more difficult graphs such as Venn Diagrams. It would be most appropriate for 1st and 2nd grade SOL’s:

  • 1.14: The student will investigate, identify, and describe various forms of data collection (e.g., recording daily temperature, lunch count, attendance, favorite ice cream), using tables, picture graphs, and object graphs.
  • 2.17: The student will use data from experiments to construct picture graphs, pictographs, and bar graphs.
  • 2.19: The student will analyze data displayed in picture graphs, pictographs, and bar graphs.

Additional Resources

  • Kids AOL Homework Help  provides a few activities to help children understand how to use and read graphs.  It provides an audio lesson plan that explains how a student can use graphs to show how she is both like and unlike her classmates, as well as quiz that tests childrens ability to read graphs.
  • Scholastic  provides a lesson plan that can be used to introduce graphs to kindergarten students that can be altered to work with older students as needed.
  • 1st Grade Templates provides templates for excel worksheets that students can use to experiment with graphs andcan also be used as whole class activities to create graphs from observed data.

Book: The Great Graph Contest
Author/Illustrator: Loreen Leedy
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication Date: September 2005
Pages: 32 pages
Grade Range: K-4
ISBN-13: 978-0823417100

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: The Magic School Bus and the Science Fair Expedition

Published by Jamie on August 31, 2009 in process skills, book review and science. 0 Comments

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The Magic School Bus series, written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen’s, has been helping children learn about different spheres of education curriculum for years. This specific book, focusing on a science fair expedition, gives the students in wacky, Ms. Frizzle’s class different ideas for science fair project topics by studying the scientific method and famous scientists throughout the ages.

This colorful and wild story, about a teacher who takes her students on crazy adventures, describes science as asking questions and testing ideas, as explored by studying and “interacting” with different, famous scientists throughout history. The students meet and learn about, through easily understood language conversations, the specific achievements and contributions of such scientists as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, and Albert Einstein, and how they came to make such discoveries using the scientific process. By using specific famous examples, and relating them to the scientific method and scientific process skills, the students in the class were able to learn about scientific concepts, questions, and discoveries. The students begin their journey in a science museum exploring different topics for a science fair project and continue by traveling through the ages, meeting different scientific characters and finding out how and why they made their discoveries. Each page of the story offers side-information that is helpful for the students. For example, when the students meet and talk with Galileo, side assignments are shown, describing how Galileo was able to make his discoveries in relation to the basic ideas about science and the scientific method:

‘How Scientists Work’ by Keesha.

They observe nature (Galileo looked at Jupiter).

They gather evidence (Galileo saw that Jupiter moved and it had moons).

They use logical thinking (Galileo connected the facts he had learned).

The pages of this book are colorful and filled with illustrations that help students understand basic science concepts. Aside from the main storyline of the book, conversations and interactions between characters are offered which help students understand facts and ideas in a more simple dialogue. The “Gallery of Scientists” provides the basic premise of the book; teaching students that science is all about asking questions and testing ideas.

 Curriculum Connections
This book is great for helping students understand the basic definitions of science and the scientific method, through the exploration of specific case studies and biographies of famous scientists. The students will learn to plan experiments, formulating hypothesis and drawing conclusions (SOL 3.1 (c)(j)), as well as making observations and predictions, based on cause-and-effect relationships (SOL 4.1 (a)(b))  This book is also an important resource for students to find ideas for science projects and research topics.

Additional Resources

  • This quiz provides an interactive assessment to test children’s knowledge about the scientific method. The quiz compiles 10 different questions about the scientific method, with correct answers and detailed explanations given for each question.
  • This lesson plan is directed for grades 5-8, yet can be modified to fit younger grade levels. The lesson plan aims to teach students about the scientific method and different processes in science. Students will use their imaginations and creativity to role play the different parts to many of science’s life processes, using the specific steps of the scientific method, and then watch as other students in the class “perform” their specific process.
  • This activity/worksheet could be used as a single lesson, or as an ongoing research project/ book report for students learning about a specific scientist. The template provided helps children complete a “Bio of a Famous Scientist.” The students will choose a scientist and learn biographical information, such as why they were famous, how they made the world a better place, and a word to sum up the specific scientist.
  • This game is an interactive matching game. Students will match each square term of the scientific method with it’s correct definition.

Book: The Magic School Bus and the Science Fair Expedition
Author: Joanna Cole
Illustrator: Bruce Degen
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 48
Grade Range: 2-4
ISBN: 0-590-10824-7

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: Hands Can

Published by David L on August 31, 2009 in process skills and book review. 0 Comments

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Hands Can written by Cheryl Willis Hudson and photographs taken by John-Francis Bourke is a rhyming children’s book that teaches children to learn with a hands-on approach. This book uses bright and colorful photos of children using their own hands to do many different things from waving “to say hello” to touching “things high and low”. Every page is a different color with a different child in each photo showing the reader that hands can say “I love you” as well as “tie a shoe”.Curriculum Connection
This book should be introduced at the kindergarten level when helping children understand their five senses and also when introducing the physical properties of an object.

K.2 - Students will investigate and understand that humans have senses that allow one to seek, find, take in, and react or respond to information to learn about one’s surroundings.

a) fives and corresponding sensing organs

K.4 - The student will investigate and understand that the postion, motion, and physical properties of an object can be described.

c) textures (rough/smooth) and feel (hard/soft)

Additional Resources

  • Clapping Games - This website introduces teachers to a number of different songs that can be sang while the children learn to clap to the rhythm.
  • Healthy Hands - An effective website for teachers that want to teach their children how to wash their hands effectively.
  • Hands On - A website generated that helps teachers come up with different ideas on how to teach science which allows kids to be hands on.

Book: Hands Can
Author: Cheryl Willis Hudson
Illustrator/Photographer: John-Francis Bourke
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Publication Date: 2003
Pages: 26
Grade Range: K-1
ISBN: 0-7636-1667-2

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: Rare Treasure

Published by Ann R on August 31, 2009 in process skills, biography and book review. 0 Comments

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Rare Treasure Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries written and illustrated by Don Brown is a brief biography of her life and a small window into the field of paleontology.

The story begins by letting the reader know that Mary was born in 1799 to a very poor family living in an English port town.  Her father taught her and her brother how to look for fossils at the nearby beach.  A fascination that started as a hobby became her life’s work at the age of 20.  Although she was able to sell the treasures she found, she remained quite poor.  “In 1823, Mary discovered her first complete fossil of a plesiosaur…a nine-foot-long creature.”  She went on to make many more important discoveries before she died in 1847, at the age of 48.

Curriculum Connections:  Rare Treasure Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries could be used as an introduction into the science of paleontology.  Students could learn about the simple tools used in her research (SOL 1.1b) and how and why their findings are arranged and classified (SOL 1.1c), utilizing measurement to the nearest centimeter (SOL 3.1e).  Building on that, students could learn how two or more attributes are used to classify their findings (SOL 2.1c), then, how the data from those findings are gathered, charted and graphed (SOL 3.1g). 

Additional Resources:

  • “Smithsonian Education” offers a lesson plan, activity, and worksheet to help students understand how an archaeologist does his/her job, as well as how to make and record observations in this field of study.  This directly relates common practices between archaeologists and paleontologists.  
  • “Discovery Education” offers a lesson plan, activities, and worksheets to help students understand the concept of scientific theory through the examination of information and artifacts related to dinosaurs, and how evidence helps to support a scientific theory.  
  • This interactive website allows students to independently utilize the computer to reinforce their understanding of paleontology through a simulated dig site, general information, and videos of students working an actual dig site.  

Book: Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries
Author/Illustrator:  Don Brown
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date:  2003
Pages:  32 pages
Grade Range:  K - 3
ISBN: 9780618310814

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: How Tall How Short How Faraway

Published by Bria on August 31, 2009 in process skills and book review. 0 Comments

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How Tall, How Short, How Faraway by David A. Adler is a children’s story designed to inform it’s readers about the different types of measurement and how they originated. How Tall, How Short, How Faraway displays units of measure by comparing the lengths to body parts such as fingers, arms, and feet. The illustrations in the book display different body parts that relate to the different measurements of both the customary and the metric systems.  Adler engages the students in hands- on activities throughout the book, asking the reader to “stand straight, with your back against the wall” and measure his or herself using units of measure of ancient Egypt.  Adler provides examples of everyday activities where measurement is used and accompanies these descriptions with bright, vibrant illustrations.

Curriculum Connections
This children’s story would be great as an anticipatory guide for a math or science lesson in measurement in order to provide the students with background knowledge of how systems of measurement were created as well as refreshing the knowledge they may already have of some of the units of measurement such as inches, centimeters, and feet.  How Tall How Short How Faraway emphasizes Virginia SOL 1.1 for the first grade in which students use tools to enhance observations, length is measured using standard and non- standard units, and simple experiments are used to answer questions.

Additional Resources

  • This lesson  forces the students to move around the classroom and measure a handful of items and then return to their seats and create a bar graph of all the items they measured.
  • These activities allow students to compare their personal foot length to that of the students around them which helps them to understand how the ancient civilizations used measurement. The students then go back back and measure exactly how long their foot is in inches and compares this measurement to that of a parnters.
  • This Teaching Today lesson plan provides students with a scavenger hunt around the classroom to find items that differ in length.  Afterwards, the students compare their items with those of their classmates.

Book: How Tall, How Short, How Faraway
Author: David A. Adler
Illustrator: Nancy Tobin
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication Date: June 2000
Pages: 28
Grade Range: 1-4
ISBN: 978-0-8234-1632-5

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: Starry Messenger

Published by Cory on August 31, 2009 in space science, process skills and biography. 0 Comments

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Starry Messenger, written by Peter Sís is an extremely child friendly biography of the famous philosopher and astronomist Galileo Galilee.  This book could be used with a wide variety of children of different ages and reading levels.

The main story line is easily followed by younger children, and is accompanied with extra information and quotes written in cursive for older students.  The illustrations, also done by Peter Sís, are interesting, yet very complex and filled with extra information for older students to pick out using the knowledge they acquire from the extra facts.

Starry Messenger begins by describing the world that Galileo lived in, giving more information about beliefs and traditions of the time:

“For hundreds of years, most people thought the earth was the center of the universe, and the sun and the moon and all the other planets revolved around it.  they did not doubt or wonder if this was true.  They just followed tradition… In those days, Italy was a country where many great artists, writers, musicians and scholars lived…In the city of Pisa a little boy was born with stars in eyes.  His parents named him Galileo.”

Some of the extra information provides more fact filled tidbits for older children to consider when reading the story:

“Italy was a quilt of city-states, each with its own laws and government.  A common religion, the Catholic faith, was one thing they all shared, and the Church was a powerful influence…Until the age of eleven, Galileo was taught at home by his father.  Then he was sent to the Benedictine Monastery of Santa Maria di Vallonbiosa where he studied Latin, Greek, religion and music.”

Starry Messenger also helps explain to children an important aspect that is often glossed over:  the importance of the traditions of the ancient world, and that those traditions were so important to the leaders of the country, i.e. the Church, that Galileo was disowned for his beliefs because they were different.

“Galileo was afraid.  He knew that people had suffered terrible torture and punishment for not following tradition.  It could happen to him… Galileo was condemned to spend the rest of his life locked in his house under guard.  But he still had stars on his mind and no one could keep him from thinking about the wonders of the skies and the mysteries of the universe.”

Curriculum Connections 

VA SOL Science 1.1b and 1.1f: The student will conduct investigations in which b.) simple tools are used to enhance observations and f.) predictions are based on patterns of observation rather than random guesses

VA SOL Science 2.1a, 2.1g and 2.1h: The student will conduct investigations in which a.) observation is differentiated from personal interpretation, and conclusions are drawn based on observations and g.) unexpected or unusual quantitative data are recognized and h.) simple physical models are constructed.

Additional Resources

  • Peter Sís’ own website provides multiple lesson extension ideas and lesson ideas for many standards of learning in subject areas such as geography and history.
  • TeacherVision provides a lesson plan for older students, grades 6-8, including measuring with scales and using pendulums like Galileo used in his studies.
  • 400 Years of the Telescope expands upon the biography of Galileo, as well as gives extra information about the telescope.

Book: Starry Messenger
Author/Illustrator: Peter Sís
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: September  2000
Pages: 40 pages
Age Range: 4-8
ISBN-13: 978-0374470272

Teaching Process Skills with Children’s Literature: Big Tracks, Little Tracks Following Animal Prints

Published by Amie on August 30, 2009 in process skills, book review and science. 0 Comments

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Introduction:
Being able to classify and identify objects in the world has become an important apsect of the elementary curriculm. Children are required to be able to differentiate between different animals, especially relating to certain characteristics such as color and look. Big Track, Little Tracks is  a good book that describes how certain animals in the real world appear and characteristics that help differentiate them. This book provides an opportunity for the child to be a nature observer and what they will become in contact with during the observation. The author, Millicent. E Selsman and illustrator Marlene Hill Donnelly take children on the route of an observer and help them learn what scientists look for when making observations and classifications.

Summary:
This book takes children through a forest and other natural settings discovering different animals and the footprints that they leave. Throughout the book the children are introduced to a range of animals in sizes and paw prints becoming more inclined to establish the difference between the animals. In the beginning of the book the author provides an explanation of how detectives are able to determine who or what was at a specific site. ” One way is to look for the marks someone or something has made- fingerprints, footprints, the tracks made by bike tires.”  They have pictures of animals on one side of the page and on other page they have objects that are related to the certain animal. The book helps distinguish the difference between a cat footprint and dog footprint by providing exact detail of the difference between the two footprints.

Curriculum Connections:
This book could be used in the introduction of Science lesson plan. Before the lesson is given, the teacher could read the book to the class then explain what they are going to do during their lesson. They will be like the the nature observers and practice the skills that they saw in the book. They could be given sheets of the same prints that were used in the books matching the animals to their footprints.

The SOL’s related to the this book are:

K.1A)basic properties of objects can be identified by a direct observation of the objects

K1.C) objects identified will be described either through pictures or verbal

2.1C) classifying objects can be done by using two or more attributes

Additional Resources:

Animal Tracks Science Center Activities

Categorizing Animals

General Information
Book: Big Track, Little Tracks
Author: Millicent E. Selsman
Illustrator: Marlene Hill Donnelly
Publisher: HarperColllins Publishers
Publication Date: 1999
Pages: 32 pages
Grade Range: k-1
ISBN: 9780064451949