Books to Inspire Learning: Nomad Press

Often as teachers we have a terrific theme (Survival, Balance, Interdependence) or topic (Transportation, Inventions, Rain Forest), and plenty of awesome trade books with which to explore that theme or topic, but what we're missing is the "hands-on" component. Hands-on has become almost a buzz word that I dislike when simply slapped onto a math curriculum that might use manipulatives for one lesson each week. But what I mean here by hands-on is projects, experiments, activities, and explorations that use "stuff" to help students truly understand what they're learning.

When I taught third grade, for example, high school students who returned to visit their old classroom didn't reminisce about worksheets, basal reader stories, or spelling quizzes. They instead fondly recalled when we created a working model of the Erie Canal lock system out of milk cartons, or a paper mache mountain to model the water cycle in the Appalachians, or when Mr. Schoch lit the classroom reading rug on fire trying to demonstrate how fire needed oxygen to burn. And that was just September!

You might be saying to yourself, "Keith, I love ideas like that (with the possible exception of setting the rug on fire), but where can I find the time and the ideas to make that happen?" Nomad Press has the answer. I recently discovered this publisher while ferreting out free resources for teachers, and boy, I wish I had owned their books two decades ago when I started out in third grade!

First of all, the books. From their Explore series, Nomad shared with me their Explore Colonial America and Explore Transportation titles. Both contained the coolest projects, experiments, and activities! But the design of the books themselves is very smart. While both books would be helpful to the teacher, they're also are super kid friendly and readable on the elementary level. Both books contain text inserts featuring Words to Know (vocabulary, with easy-to-understand definitions), Guess What (cool facts, which some of my students would read in their entirety before reading the rest of the book), Then and Now (contrasting technology in past and present) and occasional fact boxes, containing relevant whos, whats, whys, and hows. The projects are explicitly titled (Make Your Own Water Compass) while the experiments present titles in the form of a question (What Floats? What Sinks?), getting students into the practice of forming a hypothesis when exploring an unknown concept. (Explore Colonial America also includes "spotlights" on each of the thirteen colonies).

If you want a better sense of what this looks like, Nomad provides free sample downloads of a project or experiment from each book at their site. The site itself is an exemplary resource for parents and teachers. In addition to book summaries and samples, you'll also find neat sidebar features including Latest News (cool facts from science and nature), This Day in History (great topics for discussion and writing), Word of the Day, and Did You Know? Overall, it's an extremely clean site which begs further exploration. Somewhere in that site, yes, they are selling books, but not at the expense of the user experience.

Individual book summaries (such as this one for Amazing Biome Projects) make for interesting reading, because they include not just the book's contents, but also related web sites, related resource books, a media kit containing fact sheets and author interviews, and endorsements. In recommending Amazing Biome Projects, for example, Greg DeFrancis, Director of Education Montshire Museum, said:

This high-powered tour of ecological principles is chock full of information, activities, and science vocabulary. The indoor and outdoor activities connect kids to the science being discussed in each chapter. Science educators and parents will be thrilled with the amount of information the author has packed into Biomes.

If you teach math, science, or social studies, I highly recommend Nomad Press. Give their site a look, try just one of their titles, and I think you'll be hooked! And also, whether you're a teaching novice or an old vet like me, be sure to check out their teacher titles, such as The New Teacher's Handbook: Practical Strategies and Techniques for Success in the Classroom from Kindergarten Through High School and The Power of Positive Teaching: 35 Successful Strategies for Active and Enthusiastic Classroom Participation. Perfect titles for those seeking professional development reading selections for their PLCs.

Name to Know: Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

Under what rock have I been living? That's a question I asked recently over at my How to Teach a Novel blog. A couple readers emailed and suggested I repost here, since the reason for that rhetorical question would be of interest to teachers here as well.

I simply wondered how it took so long for me to discover Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. She's an author, and I do recognize a couple of her titles. But somehow I missed that she has also created this awesome site (absolutely no hyperbole intended) containing original teaching guides for picture books (over eighty of these!), YA books, and poetry. All for free! All Tracie asks in return, if you like what you see, is that you buy a copy of one of her recent books. Pretty good deal: free resources and one of her critically acclaimed titles for your library.

Personally I found teaching guides for many books I'm hoping to include in future blog posts including Abe's Honest Words, Daniel Boone's Great Escape, River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, and Mama Went to Jail for the Vote.

So in a rare move, I'll shut up now. I'll let Tracie's web site speak for itself (and you can check out her blog as well). Thanks, Tracie, for your terrific resources!

Making Books in Real Life

Many teachers, especially at the lower grades, enjoy making books with their students as a follow-up activity to sharing picture books. To this end I highly recommend you visit MakingBooks with Children, Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord's elegant website on creating simple books with children. (And yes, my fellow English teachers, it is, indeed, MakingBooks, without a space between the two words).

In addition to her free activities, she also offers teachers tips on the teaching process, tools, and materials. Her MakingBooks blog offers other terrific ideas, many of them related to the holidays.

Check it out. You'll be surprised how easy it is to create such wonderful books with your students.

Nurturing a Sense of Wonder with Nonfiction Books

When I picked up A Place for Wonder: Reading and Writing Nonfiction in the Primary Grades, I really intended to just skim it over. After all, I now teach only sixth grade (this book is aimed at teachers of lower elementary grades) and I teach only reading and language arts (whereas this book, at first glance, seemed to be pretty much about science). Well, I read the introduction, and about two hours later discovered that I had read the whole thing from cover to cover. Not just read it, but thoroughly enjoyed it, and couldn’t wait to pass it on to a teacher of those grade levels so that they could put its ideas into action in their classroom.

First, know this: Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough don’t write in the world of the hypotheticals. Every idea they share for helping children make nonfiction discoveries comes from their real-life experiences with kindergartners and first graders. Every lesson plan has been implemented in “real time,” and it shows through the anecdotal stories, the authentic and very funny student dialogues, and their suggestions for practitioners based upon their experiences.

This isn’t another book of themes or centers; this is an easy-to-implement series of lessons which will assist any teacher, in any school environment, in opening the eyes of curiosity. And while some will argue that children are naturally curious, I would point out that schools have a way of stifling that curiosity. Not purposely, not systemically, but simply through neglect. A Place for Wonder shows how to take that natural curiosity and channel it toward authentic and purposeful explorations of nonfiction topics. What particularly impressed me was the plans for children to write their own nonfiction books, complete with table of contents and glossary!

My wife is a kindergarten teacher so she’s already laid claim to my copy. Looks like I’ll be getting another for my daughter’s teacher. It’s that good! I recommend you check it out online at Stenhouse, and get a copy for yourself, for a colleague in the lower grades, or for your own child’s teacher.

And now a small leap. Houghton Mifflin and author Pamela S. Turner have been kind enough to share copies of The Frog Scientist and Prowling the Seas: Exploring the Hidden World of Ocean Predators, two upper elementary level nonfiction science books. Know that these are not picture books, but lavishly illustrated chapter books, filled with photos from the scientific field.

I know a number of colleagues who love to focus their energies on readability levels and "age-appropriate" texts. I find their arguments a waste of time. The practice of limiting children to certain books flies in the face of both research and the way that I personally came to love reading. As Jo Worthy points out in “A Matter of Interest: Literature that Hooks Reluctant Readers and Keeps Them Reading”:

Far more important than readability is interest. When students have strong
interest in what they read, they can frequently transcend their so-called
reading level. Indeed, many educators and researchers consider interest to be a
paramount factor in all learning.

My own breakthrough experience came at age seven when my father handed me a field guide about snakes. He knew from my daily excursions turning over rocks and logs that I had an interest in such creatures. A confident graduate of first grade, I did my best to make sense of the task of reading the detailed descriptions of each snake type; I would have been less likely, by comparison, to struggle as doggedly with a fiction novel. At one point I came across this line: “Due to their coloring, these snakes are often inconspicuous in lower hanging trees branches.” Unable to parse out the meaning, I asked my older brother what “in con spish us” meant. He asked me to spell it. He then asked to see the book. I saw him read the sentences before and after the sentence containing my troublesome word. He returned the book and said, “It means not easily seen. The color helps it to camouflage itself.” And on that day I learned not just the value of context, but also the value of collaboration.

So what’s the point? The point is, younger children can benefit in many ways from nonfiction texts that are above their reading levels. Like me, they can piece together, sort out, and through collaborative efforts. make some sense of what they’re reading, especially if they’re reading with self-determined purposes.

A book like The Frog Scientist, then, which illustrates its points with clear, objective photographs, is perfect for young readers seeking information on a topic of chosen interest. In addition to providing facts about our amphibious friends, Pamela S. Turner captures the scientific attitudes and habits required to conduct meaningful work. Such life and vocational skills are a huge part of the much-touted 21st Century Skills, which makes this book even more important.

The Frog Scientist was recently awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)/Subaru SB&F middle-grade science writing prize. The book trailer below features biologist Tyrone Hayes (aka The Frog Scientist).

Prowling the Seas: Exploring the Hidden World of Ocean Predators is another well researched yet totally accessible book for children which focuses again on not just the creatures, but the scientists who work among them. Like The Frog Scientist, this book features amazing original photographs and accompanying detailed captions. Why are captions important? Watch your average reluctant reader (especially the boys) and they’ll page through books, simply looking at the illustrations. Occasionally, however, they’ll come upon an illustration so compelling that their internal sense of wonder will fire off multiple questions. This curiosity, in turn, drives them to read the captions in order to seek more information. Then their eyes may slide into the text itself, as they wonder what else there is to know about the illustration. Turner’s books do that: they sneak up and pull the reader into another world, and a whole new schema of understanding.

(A quick congratulations to Line of Alabama, and Wendy of Michigan, the winners of the Barefoot Books giveaway A Calendar Of Festivals: Celebrations From Around The World)

Explore the Wild Side with Sylvan Dell

I am not a lazy teacher; far from it. That's exactly why I appreciate a publisher like Sylvan Dell that has so much to offer students, teachers, and parents.


The award-winning science and nature books which define their niche are extremely colorful and well-designed. As a teacher who often reads books upside down (so that younger students can see the pictures more easily) I definitely appreciate the no-nonsense fonts!

What I especially like, however, is that each Sylvan Dell picture book features an educational section called For Creative Minds which features a number of teaching ideas and resources. For example, Sort it Out!(obviously intended for lower grades than this blog's target audience) features two pages of sorting cards which can be used for classification (a table is included for this) or Memory. But what teacher would want to cut apart such a beautiful book? Here's the good news. Each book's For Creative Minds is available for pdf download from the publisher's site. Check out the quality of the pages that accompany Sort it Out!.

How the Moon Regained Her Shape is an example more appropriate for fourth grade. It's a terrific Native American-influenced folktale which can be used to study that genre, or the phases of the moon, or even bullying. As you can see, the teaching materials for this book are a little more elaborate and mature. Turtle Summer: A Journal for my Daughter is on one level deceptively simple as a picture book, and yet on another level incredibly insightful as a journal of scientific observation of nature. Again, the For Creative Minds section provides parents and teachers with ideas which are as simple or involved as you choose. This kind of resource instantly increases the value of this book as an instructional tool in the classroom.

This, however, is just the beginning of what Sylvan Dell offers as educational supports for their books. At their site you'll also find Teaching Activities (30 or more pages!) for each title. These guides feature questions, cross-curricular activities, charts, vocabulary lists, games, glossaries, cloze activities, maps, and more. For the teacher who wants to take the picture book experience beyond the read-aloud, these Teaching Activities are priceless. Check out the Teaching Guide for Ocean Hide and Seek. Dozens of options (yes, options; don't try to do them all!) to support a simple, beautifully illustrated book which students will want to view over and over again.

Still need convincing? How about online, self-checking, interactive quizzes? Alignment to state standards? Online Ebook previews of each title?

I'm impressed. This is one publisher that definitely fulfills their end of the bargain. Go and see for yourself what an amazing website this young company has created, and explore some more titles while you're there.

I love it when my job is so easy!

The Privileged Status of Story

"I have read that the mind treats stories differently than other types of information. It seems obvious that people like listening to stories, but it’s not obvious how to use that in the classroom. Is it really true that stories are somehow "special" and, if so, how can teachers capitalize on that fact?"

The answer to this question is well worth a read for any teacher desiring to put the power of story into their daily instruction. Cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham addresses the topic of the application of story in the classroom in his excellent article The Privileged Status of Story, one of his many Ask the Cognitive Scientist columns at the AFT's American Educator.

Daniel first defines story using four features commonly agreed upon by professional storytellers (playwrights, screenwriters, and novelists). These features (sometimes called the 4 Cs) are Causality, Conflict, Complications, and Character. Even if a teacher chooses not to tell "stories" in the traditional sense, employing just one of these features can have a profound impact on every lesson, helping to create learning that is interesting, memorable, and easier to comprehend.

Many of his ideas can be adapted to the use of picture books in the content areas. Be sure to read all the way through; you'll find great practical applications throughout!

Upcoming post: Play Ball! Baseball Picture Books

The ABC's of Content Area Picture Books

ABC books, while at first glance not worthy of consideration by us "serious" upper grade teachers, provide nice models for extending topic knowledge. Sleeping Bear Press, for example, has several excellent ABC titles such as A Is for Anaconda: A Rainforest Alphabet and B Is for Battle Cry: A Civil War Alphabet. Using these picture books as models, your students could create similar ABC books for any topic you're presently studying.

A graphic organizer, such as this ABC Brainstorm or this Alpha Blocks Chart (both found at Readingquest.org), makes the prewriting part of the lesson simple; students can then individually be assigned one letter of the content-area alphabet to illustrate for a classroom-created book.

(By the way, Sleeping Bear press provides free teaching guides for most of their beautifully illustrated ABC picture books, such as A is for Anaconda: A Rainforest Alphabet).