Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday 6.01.16 Simple Machines


Every Wednesday I join Alyson Beecher from kidlitfrenzy and other
kidlit bloggers to share wonderful nonfiction picture books.
The intention of today's blog is to give educational professionals
new nonfiction reading material and ideas to use 
with students to promote a love of reading nonfiction materials.


If your curriculum has started looking at the Next Generation Science Standards, you may have a unit that talks about simple machines, or perhaps you are using simple machines to develop a new tool or idea to meet then engineering design standard.  This is a great book that you may want to add to your library.

Simple Machines: Wheels, Levers, and Pulleys
Simple Machines: Wheels, Levers, and Pulleys
written by David A. Adler
illustrated by Anna Raff
published by Holiday House

Adler discusses many simple machines:  wedges, inclined planes, levers, wheels and axles, and pulleys.  With each machine, he 
  • explains what is is and how it works
  • gives examples so readers can connect the new understanding to something that is known
  • goes over the purpose of the machine with several examples
  • uses other vocabulary that students are likely to use with the machine - for example, with lever, Adler also uses the term pivot
  • illustrations match the text and are a good visual representation for new learning
This is a great nonfiction text that should definitely be added to school libraries.  If you are a classroom teachers who teaches simple machines or forces in motion, make sure you find a copy of this book!

2 comments:

  1. I've had students create Rube Goldberg machines, and they needed to learn about simple machines first so they could do well with the inventions. This sounds great, Michele.

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  2. Thanks for the recommendation! We do have a unit on simple machines in the earlier grades and I think the teachers would welcome this title.

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