We know that a big part of the CCSS is to include more informational texts into our students' reading. I quickly discovered I had a "gap" in my reading diet - the genre of informational texts! To help me fill the gap this year, I am going to participate in Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesdays! This is a great link-up hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy. Please visit this website to see other educator's link-ups. My goal is to read at least one informational text each week and post information on the blog. The more books and subjects I read, the more I can encourage (my #OLW for 2014) other teachers to use in their classroom!
Earth Day has come and gone, but it's important to celebrate and protect our home everyday.
I paired 2 very different texts together to educate students about our valuable resource - the water on our planet.
The first book is One Well: The Story of Water on Earth by Rochelle Strauss. This book is a wealth of information. The author did a fantastic job organizing information so that it's categorized in an accessible way for children. They can read the book cover to cover and learn a vast amount of information, or they can read particular sections to gain specific information. The author covers topics about the importance of water for people and animals, how water is home for plants and animals, recycling water, freshwater vs. salt water, how water is disappearing, not staying clean, and finally, what we can do to help sustain this invaluable resource. The author refers to water as "the well", which gives an image of something needed, not something overlooked. There is also an amazing index at the back of the book. Informational text specialist, Sunday Cummins, shares some great ideas on her blog on how to use this book in an intermediate classroom.
After reading this book of incredible information, sharing the amazing prose from the book Water Can Be... by Laura P. Salas will be a welcome treat for students. This book demands to be read multiple times. Once to enjoy the language, another time to soak in the beautiful illustrations, another time to think about what they learn on each page, and a final time to read the information the author includes in the back of the book about how water is used on each page. There is a fabulous Nerdy Book Club post the author wrote that gives amazing background information about the author's journey when writing the book.
Enjoy these non-fiction picture books. What did you read this week?
I featured Water Can Be... today, too! It's beautiful! I hadn't heard of One Well: The Story of Water on Earth, so thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Michele, for this lovely post! I love ONE WELL, too. A beautifully written book!
ReplyDeleteI love Laura's poetry about water, a 'must' book for a study, showing how poetry can tell us things, too. One Well looks very good, too, Michele. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThese are such gorgeous titles, Michele. We had a bibliography project last year which we have done in collaboration with the National Library here called Project Splash! Asia lwhere we compiled a list of water-themed titles - while there is a decidedly Asian theme, I also recommended a few global titles such as the two books you shared here.
ReplyDeleteI want to read both of these titles. Both of them are on my radar. I loved A Leaf Can Be. . . One Well is in our school library. Must read it soon. Thanks for the reminder.
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