With the power of stories you can generate student interest in nature and the environment while building skills across the curriculum! Using contemporary and classic children's literature as springboards to learning, this resource offers dozens of stimulating extension activities that engage young learners and teach them important concepts and skills in science, social studies, language, math, music, and art. You'll find puzzles, word searches, suggestions for computer projects, and more for such beloved titles as The Little House, Water Dance, and Brother Eagle, Sister Sky. Many of the activities are presented in reproducible format, so they're ready for the classroom. And lists of resources for further study are given for each book. Grades K - 4: (adaptable to higher levels).
Recent scholarship on children’s literature displays a wide variety of interests in classic and contemporary children’s books. While environmental and ecological concerns have led to an interest in ‘ecocriticism’, as yet there is little on the significance of the ecological imagination and experience to both the authors and readers – young and old – of these texts. This edited collection brings together a set of original international research-based chapters to explore the role of children’s literature in learning about environments and places, with a focus on how children’s literature may inform and enrich our imagination, experiences and responses to environmental challenges and injustice. Contributions from Australia, Canada, USA and UK explore the diverse ways in which children’s literature can provide what are arguably some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children might have with ‘nature’. Chapters examine classic and new storybooks, mythic tales, and image-based and/or written texts read at home, in school and in the field. Contributors focus on exploring how children’s literature mediates and informs our imagination and understandings of diverse environments and places, and how it might open our eyes and lives to other presences, understandings and priorities through stories, their telling and re-telling, and their analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.
Contains over thirty instructional units which show teachers how to use famous children's books to introduce their students to the life, earth, and physical sciences.
Well-known authors, Carol and John Butzow consider over 25 picture books and correlating integrated activities in all curricular areas that provide examples in nature for children to observe, describe, and appreciate.
Recent scholarship on children’s literature displays a wide variety of interests in classic and contemporary children’s books. While environmental and ecological concerns have led to an interest in ‘ecocriticism’, as yet there is little on the significance of the ecological imagination and experience to both the authors and readers – young and old – of these texts. This edited collection brings together a set of original international research-based chapters to explore the role of children’s literature in learning about environments and places, with a focus on how children’s literature may inform and enrich our imagination, experiences and responses to environmental challenges and injustice. Contributions from Australia, Canada, USA and UK explore the diverse ways in which children’s literature can provide what are arguably some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children might have with ‘nature’. Chapters examine classic and new storybooks, mythic tales, and image-based and/or written texts read at home, in school and in the field. Contributors focus on exploring how children’s literature mediates and informs our imagination and understandings of diverse environments and places, and how it might open our eyes and lives to other presences, understandings and priorities through stories, their telling and re-telling, and their analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.
Several hundred books that can help encourage acceptance and respect of other cultures are organized by broad category, then by type. Also includes ideas for using the book in the classroom.
This long-awaited revision of a popular book provides information and activities to assist educators and parents in exploring the local environment with children. Fact-filled essays introduce each subject, followed by field-tested, experiential activities that engage students in learning about the natural world. 115 illustrations.
The English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities held its annual meeting in 2006 at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania. The conference theme was “Literature, Writing, and the Natural World.” This collection grows out of the conference and indicates the desire to understand all aspects of our relationship with the natural world, the function of literature in clarifying that relationship (in ways science and politics cannot), and the role of the literature teacher-scholar wanting to respond to pressures of environmental change. In these times, interpretation is a vital task, not only for the way it educates us about our attitudes toward nature, but because it develops the crucial skills of looking closely, engaging, reflecting, and responding. One could argue that, as a culture, Americans are behind the curve in understanding the ways we depend upon a healthy relationship with nature, and one way (among many) depends upon examining it through texts and textual representation. When the writers here dig into The Main Woods, Jayber Crow, the poetry of Pablo Guevara, or the movie Crash, they are contributing to our understanding of the ways in which we view nature and how that view plays a role in the way we relate to nature. These days, many disciplines engage global warming and other environmental issues routinely, and the literature classroom should be no different. Just as we read a book and address fundamental themes such as “What does it mean to love?” or “How do we develop identity?” we should also be asking “What is my responsibility when I decide what resources to use?” If we understand literature as equipment for living in a warming world, we may be able to help students make some sense out of their world and some decisions about how to act.
This book is about the intersection of storytelling and science. Recognizing that humans are hard-wired for narrative, this collection of new essays integrates the two in a special way to teach science in the K-6 classroom. As science education changes its focus to concepts that bridge various disciplines, along with science and engineering practices, storytelling offers opportunities to enhance the science classroom. Lesson plans are provided, each presenting a story, its alignment with science (Next Generation Science Standards), language arts (Common Core State Standards) and theater arts standards (National Core Arts Standards). Instructional plans include a rationale, preparation, activities and assessment.
