Trade books in math and science

My challenge to myself this year both as a literacy coach and a parent is to find more interesting books in math and science: there are many out there at all levels. If they match the students' reading level or are read aloud in class, trade books can help students broaden background knowledge, make connections and most importantly, feel excited about the topic! We checked out some recommendations from Science Books and Films that I found in this Edutopia article as well as some of Kathleen Baxter's great "gross out books" recommendations.
Where in Wild-- amazing illustrations that capture the ways both predators and prey use camouflage
What's Eating You? Parasites: the Inside Story-- great use of cartoons and humour to communicate interesting facts about parasites. Solana was fixated on the "Deadly Delivery" malaria page. Another bonus page "The Two-Host Tapeworm Game." Gross but fascinating!
Ouch! How Your Body Makes it Through a Very Bad Day is another winner: up close and personal views of every day body functions, definitely relevant to middle school students.
To be continued!

Trippo Mondo

I'm still on a quest for useful educational apps for my Droid. We had fun with Trippo Mondo-- Solana translated a phrase in Russian and then sent it to me by email. Nice tool for language learning and would be fun in a class with ELLs of different language backgrounds for community building activities, translating, etc.

My First Prezi!

Made my first prezi for "Creating Passionate Readers" talk! Obviously still a novice at Prezi, but see enormous potential for student presentations. Click on the link below to get the full view.

Creating a Passion for Reading on Prezi

More science!

We tried out Google Sky Map on my Droid this weekend to look at the night sky. It was pretty exciting to identify planets and constellations. We'd need more research to know what some of the other abbreviations and symbols meant. For some reason, it's even exciting to point at the setting sun or the moon and see them identified on the Droid. Solana ended up giving me some instructions on how to freeze the image to examine it more closely. I'm still challenged in looking for safe educational apps for kids on the Droid-- the Iphone is way ahead in this arena.

science lab

We turned the kitchen into a science lab this morning. Solana created a new color that she proudly named "br-black."