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.

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).

One Grain of Rice

One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale
by Demi

Universal Themes:Cause and Effect, Change, Ingenuity, Magnitude, Patterns, Resourcefulness, Wisdom

Before Reading Questions

• Who here receives an allowance? Are you required to work for that allowance?
• Would you walk my dog each day if I paid you $2.00 a day? Would you do it if I paid you just one penny a day?
• Suppose I paid you one penny on the first day, two pennies on the second day, and four pennies on the third. What pattern develops? Would you work for that pay for one whole month? Let's each make a guess as to what the total number of pennies would be by the month's end.
• Today's tale is set in India. Who can locate India on our map? What can you tell me about India?

Summary

Long ago in India, a raja ruled wisely and fairly. Or so he thought. He was wise in that he required much of the rice that was grown to be stored away, in case of famine. He was fair in that he would provide the people of the land with rice, should famine ever strike.

When it does, however, the raja is reluctant to let the rice go (even though it was never his, of course). "Who knows how long the famine will last?" he wonders to himself. "What if there is finally no rice left, not even for the raja himself?"

One day a clever young girl named Rani does a small favor for the raja, who wished to reward her accordingly. He's surprised when she asks for just one grain of rice. Today, that is, and then two the next day, and four the next, and so on for thirty days. The raja agrees, stunned that the girl should not want more.

Over the next thirty days we see the rice being delivered by a colorful procession of animals. We also see the amount of grains delivered each day growing larger and larger, until the author/illustrator is forced to use fold-out pages to show the dozens of elephants required to bring the rice on the last day.

As Demi proves in her chart at the book's close, this simple doubling pattern produces 1,073,741,823 grains of rice (compounded total) by the end of thirty days. If this were pennies, the sum would total $10,737,418.23.

The raja is dumbfounded by the math, and dismayed by his new-found scarcity of rice. Rani informs him that the rice will be used to feed the people, but that she will leave a basket for him if he promises to be "wise and fair" from then on. And he does.

After Reading Questions

• Were our guesses about the total number of pennies for thirty days close to what Rani received?
• At the beginning of the book, the raja believes that he is wise and fair. If that's so, then why wouldn't he share the rice with his people?
• At what point did the raja begin to realize the effects of the doubling?
• Why didn't the author tell us about every single day?

Extension Ideas: Language Arts

• Compare this book to The King's Chessboard, a similar mathematical tale also set in India. Have students discuss and list the differences. They may also want to compare and contrast the two rulers, and compare and contrast the two beneficiaries, noting their motives in their requests for the odd form of payment.
• The book is full of authentic, specific words such as implored, famine, and plentifully. Discuss with students how context clues helped to define those words. If a word could not be defined through context clues, did that affect the reading of the story?
• Compare this story to other Indian folktales. Are there common characters or themes?

Extension Ideas: Math

• Rather than offer math ideas, I would like to introduce my readers to Mathwire, an awesome math site which features lesson plans for math-related picture books, as well as free, downloadable related resources for classroom use. For One Grain Of Rice, for example, the site features a lesson plan with pdf handouts, and an interactive website called The Million Dollar Mission. 
• On that same Mathwire page you'll discover Two of Everything, a Chinese folktale describing a pot which has magic doubling powers. This book makes another terrific comparison piece for discussion.

The World According to Ben Hillman

How Big Is It?
by Ben Hillman

Universal Themes:
Comparisons, Juxtaposition, Magnitude

Slam dunks are no problem for this guy.

Polar bears are the largest carnivores on Earth. And when they stand on their hind legs, they’re the tallest. The biggest polar bear anyone ever saw stood at astounding 12 feet tall (3.7 m.). That’s two feet higher than the rim of a basketball net.

from How Big is It?

Before Reading Questions

• How big is a slice of bread? Who can show me? (Students will typically use hands to illustrate the dimensions, and some students will even use two fingers to show how skinny it is).
• How big is a school bus? (Students will now either try to guesstimate its true length in feet, yards, or meters, or will try to compare it to the room they're sitting in, or against the size of a car of other vehicle). Can you show me how big it is?
• How tall is a polar bear? Is he were standing on his hind legs, would he be as tall as me?

Summary

Ben Hillman has created four wonderful books which illustrate the magnitude of real life objects by comparing them with more common phenomenon with which students are familiar. How Big Is It?, How Strong Is It?, How Fast Is It?, and How Weird Is It? have quickly become nonfiction must-reads for the upper primary and intermediate school set.

As shown above from How Big Is It?, the largest polar bear on record is a whopping 12 feet! Yes, students will be surprised to hear that a polar bear is taller than their classroom ceiling, but the surprising juxtapositions created by Ben Hillman drive home each book's concepts in a really powerful, fun way.

Have some reluctant readers? They will devour these books! The text is as wonderful as the pictures, and is in no way dumbed down for the young audience for which it is intended. In speaking about the Akula (Shark) Submarine, for example, Hillman writes

This leviathan of the deep is one of the most dangerous submarines imaginable –
a giant submersible weapon of mass destruction.

Many of the contextual clues needed for comprehension are provided by the illustrations. Some words, however, are not made clear by the pictures alone, and the reader's curiosity will promote an interest in word study.
As seen in this description of our polar bear from How Big Is It?, the text, like the illustrations, uses similes, metaphors, and hard data to create memorable juxtapositions,

For short distances, a polar bear can charge along at 25 miles per hour (40
km/h) – almost as fast as the fastest Olympic sprinter.

From How Strong Is It?, a description of human hair's amazing strength:

The average human hair can support 2 to 3.5 ounces without breaking. That doesn't sound like much, but the average human head has more than 100,000 hairs.
And blondes have more than most. About 140,000 hairs per blonde... So how many princes can Rapunzel handle? Do the math. Her two golden braids can hold at the
very least 17,500 pounds of princes!

All four books are a blast! They make excellent nonfiction read-alouds due to their brevity and brilliance, and the individual topics need not be read in any particular order. How Strong Is It?, for example, features twenty-two two-page spreads, with a full color picture on the left (running onto the right page),
and an article-length text appearing on the right.

Visit the author's site for an up-close preview of these books. Students especially enjoy the cool roll-over feature used to illustrate the sample pages provided.

After Reading Questions

• What do you think of the illustrations? Why are they so startling?
• Which topic was your favorite? Why?
• Who heard a simile that the author used to make a comparison? What other methods did he employ that helped us to understand how big (strong, fast) things were?

Extension Ideas: Math

• Many of the topics are backed with mathematical data. When this data is actually used, the author explains it well, but stops short of showing us "the math." Have students work in pairs to "show the work" that the author left on certain pages. In the above example of Rapunzel, for example, is the math correct? Does 140,000 blonde hairs equal a strength of 17, 500 pounds?
• Extend the math. Use the facts given and ask additional questions. For example, "If princes weigh 200 pounds each, then how many princes can climb Rapunzel's hair at once?"

Extension Ideas: Language Arts

• After reading a selection, show students a number of words which you've selected from the text. Have students sort them into categories of Explained by the Picture, Explained by Context, Not Explained. Use this exercise to begin a discussion of what good readers do when they encounter unknown words.
• Have students research a word whose meaning is unclear (for example, the word leviathan above). Does it have a base word that helps to define it? Does it have a Greek or Latin root? Why did the author choose this word instead on another? (a leviathan is not just a monster, it is a huge mythical sea monster)

Extension Ideas: Science

• As students learn about their own science concepts, encourage them to create Hillman-like images and texts. Students studying animal adaptations, for example, might be asked to juxtapose a feature of their animal with a comparable (yet different) every object. A turtle's shell is as hard as what man-made material? An iguana's tongue is as long as, or as sticky as, what common objects?
• Have students use collage or cut and paste on the computer to create visual juxtapositions of phenomena not shown in Hillman's books.