Literacy in Science

My science methods professor Eric Brunsell, told me about one of his blogs ( http://www.edutopia.org/blog/engaging-students-science-tradebooks ) that is a good resource for teachers who are trying to incorporate more trade books and literacy into their science units. In the blog he states that there are newly released standards that have literacy built right into the science standards. This is because later in college, students will be required to read "sophisticated nonfiction" so in primary and secondary school students should be learning the skill necessary to read these types of texts as well as gaining the confidence to tackle them.

He also outlines a great way to get students reading a variety of science tradebooks in class. His idea is to have a mock book prize election. This is based off of the criteria from the journal Science Books and Films. Doing this will get the children excited about reading different science tradebooks so they can pick a "winner" and then they can see if the book they picked is also picked by SB & F. More details about this can be found using the url above.

There are also links to the winning books from SB & F which gives examples of picture books as well as young adult books. It is really important to find tradebooks that are high quality and that also are targeted to the correct age group. There are many important lessons that can be taught through these books, and that is not limited to content, but also to the literacy mentioned above.