After writing
more than 150 science books for kids, I decided to try something a
little different—a book for teachers that brings together science and ELA
instruction.
My co-author Nancy Chelsey and I worked on Perfect Pairs: Using Fiction & Nonfiction Picture Books to Teach Life Science, K-2 for three long years, writing and
testing and then re-writing each lesson. So you better believe that we’re thrilled to finally see it in print. Don’t
you just love the cover? We do.
The story behind this book
traces all the way back to 2006. That’s when I began to see clear signs that some children connect more
strongly with nonfiction books, while others gravitate toward fiction. As a
result, I started pairing thematically-similar fiction and nonfiction
children’s books and developing innovative content-area activities with the
books as a centerpiece. For example, here are a few pairings that could be used
for an early-elementary science lesson about weather:
The Rain Came Down by David Shannon, Blue Sky Press, 2000 & When Rain Falls by Melissa Stewart, Peachtree, 2008 (Gr K-2)
One Windy Wednesday by Phyllis Root, Candlewick, 1996 & I Face the Wind by Vicki Cobb, HarperCollins, 2003 (Gr 1-3)
Snow by Uri Shulevitz, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999 & Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Houghton Mifflin, 1998 (Gr 1-4)
I certainly
wasn’t the first person to advocate using fiction and nonfiction books
together. Two great articles I read as I was just getting started were:
·
Camp, Deanne. “It
Takes Two: Teaching with Twin Texts of Fact and Fiction.” The Reading Teacher, February
2000, pp. 400-408
·
Taberski, Sharon. “Fact & Fiction:
Read Aloud.” Scholastic Teachers. Internet
page at: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3344
When Nancy Chelsey and I met in 2008,
she was a science and literacy specialist working for the Maine Math and
Science Alliance. She was concerned with the way she saw teachers using
children’s literature to teach science. She was intrigued with my ideas, and we
began a series of conversations about the most useful and practical way to
combine the magic of children’s books with the wonders of the natural world.
When we realized that the Next
Generation Science Standards (NGSS) would require elementary educators to teach
science in new ways, we knew the time was right to create a resource that would
allow time-strapped teachers to combine key elements of their science and ELA
curriculum. The result is Perfect Pairs.
By bringing together Nancy’s tremendous
experience as an educator and my knowledge of science and children’s books,
we’ve created a resource that makes science easy to teach and fun to learn. We
hope you’ll give it a try.