Here’s a wonderful new book from nonfiction writer, Melissa Stewart and Maine teacher Nancy Chesley with whom I worked at one point in my teaching career. I love the “wonder” prompts that begin the lessons and I love the combination of nonfiction and fiction texts for science students. Thanks to the Nerdy Book Club blog and Melissa Stewart!
After writing more than 150 science books for kids, I finally 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.
The story behind the book traces back to 2006. That’s when I began to realize 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.
Here are two great articles I read as I was just getting started:
- Camp, Deanne. “It Takes Two: Teaching with Twin Texts of…
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