Teaching Physical Science Through Children's Literature

Inspired by favorite children's stories, this book is a complete guide to an innovative science education approach that helps teachers and parents capitalize on children's natural curiosity about the world around them to teach physical science. Pedagogical strategies for both reading and science are featured, and many lessons include suggestions for learning centers and masters for reproducible flip cards and data sheets. Each lesson addresses a category of the new National Science Education Standards and includes an easy-to-understand science explanation. For example, "Iron for Breakfast" captures students' imagination with the story Gregory, the Terrible Eater. After listening to this story, in which Gregory alarms his parents by preferring fruits and vegetables to tin cans and other metal items, students discover foods that both Gregory and his parents would be happy with--an iron-fortified breakfast cereal and drinks containing food-grade iron filings. Students use magnets to extract the iron and learn about nutrition and the magnetic properties of iron. In "Folded Paper Kites," students listen to The Emperor and the Kite, a tale about a child who uses her kite-flying talent to save her father's life, and then have fun building and flying kites while learning about flight. Teaching Physical Science through Children's Literature is based on a science-literature integration teacher-enhancement program funded in part by the National Science Foundation.