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Whether we teach in a STEM lab, media center, or regular classroom, we all need to find effective ways to support students when failure occurs. How To Solve a Problem by Ashima Shiraishi is a wonderful picture book to use for this purpose!  Featured Picture Book:
How To Solve a Problem (2020) By Ashima Shiraishi Illustrated by Yao Xiao Summary: How To Solve a Problem is the true story of Ashima Shiraishi, a world class climber who started at the age of six. Told in the first person point of view, Ashima refers to the mountain she has to climb as “a problem”. Throughout the story, illustrated with large bright colors, she shares her struggles, failures, challenges, and finally successes! She specifically shares how she learns from her mistakes to persevere and triumph. Related Themes and Standards: SEL: Perseverance Positivity Problem-Solving ELA: Metaphors and Similes Personification Science: Gravity Geology STEM Ideas: A great book to use when teaching the Engineering Design Process! 1. If you are tying this book into a Geology unit, have students build a model of Ashima’s mountain using clay, Play-Doh, or other materials. See if they can incorporate all the features she mentions in the story. You could then move on to a rock and mineral study. 2. In the story, Ashima maps out her path up the mountain. This would be a great book to incorporate into a lesson on maps, elevation, and contour lines. Have students create their own map with these elements. 3. Ashima is a free climber, but you could use this story to have students engineer a simple machine to help a beginning climber scale a mountain. Use little action figures and recyclable/dollar store items to test out their designs. 4. The last few pages of the book include many of the mountains Ashima has climbed (and at what age). To integrate math, have students research the heights of the different climbs and create a chart or graph. How else could you use this amazing picture book? Share in the comments!
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Non-fiction picture books can create a wonderful foundation for building hands-on STEM activities. Glaciers Are Alive by Debbie S. Miller is a perfect choice if you teach anything related to glaciers, cold-weather habitats, geological history, global warming, adaptations, or other glacier-related topics!  Featured Picture Book:
Glaciers Are Alive (2023) By Debbie S. Miller (@DebbieMillerAK) Illustrated by Jon Van Zyle (Interesting info - they both live in Alaska and Jon is the official artist of the Iditarod!) Summary: Glaciers are complex features on our planet that have a life cycle of their own. They support numerous living creatures, from those that are gigantic to microscopic species. This book traces the interactions these creatures have with various parts of glaciers, introducing vocabulary in a kid-friendly way full of onomatopoeia and imagery! Related Themes and Standards: SEL: Respect for nature and animals ELA: Personification Metaphors Onomatopoeia Imagery Vocabulary Science: Glaciers Animal Adaptations Seasons Habitats Water cycle elements Geology STEM Ideas: 1. Have students recreate the effects of glacial movement on the surface geology by freezing ice cubes with sand and/or stones in the bottom. Here’s a great resource from Better Lesson with directions! 2. Have students recreate the extensive pressure involved in glaciers by carrying out this Teacher Vision lesson using marshmallows. 3. This blog post at Little Lives has neat ideas from sensory tubs for our little scientists, to creating Glacial Gak to simulate the slow movement of glaciers, to a neat activity using ice cubes and marbles to show how melting glaciers affect coastlines! 4. Have students choose one of the living creatures mentioned in the story to research and create a model of the glacial habitat. 5. Have students use information from the story to create a 3D model of a glacier using Tinkercad (print if you have time and access to a 3D printer) 6. Have students recreate parts of the story in Canva and create a 2-minute video to teach others about glaciers. 7. Drones are being used to place sensors on remote glacial surfaces to monitor climate change. Supplement the story with this article about drones and glaciers. Have students engineer model glaciers and sensors to attach to their drones. See if they can fly their drone and place the sensor at the top of their glacier. Feel free to leave your ideas in the comments! #BetterTogether! First of all, Happy New Year! I hope this year holds some amazing adventures for you! I am not usually into the whole One Word wave, but this year is a little different for me. As many of you know I retired last July after 32 years in public education. Having been immersed in the elementary education world for that long and then venturing out into the "real world" is like journeying to a new galaxy. Yes, it is that profound. Those of you who have been in education for a long time know exactly what I am talking about. We have our own vernacular, our own expectations of "the system" (some good, some not so good), our own ways of navigating successful interactions with children and adults depending on our "school roles", adherence to tight schedules (especially in elementary school where you have to plan and backup plan for every minute of the day); the entire culture of public education (although very different from when I first entered it all those year ago) is unique. When I left that structured system, a system that had been a major part of my life for over three decades, I felt a sense of disequilibrium! Although I have really been enjoying spending more time on my picture book writing interests, working on some contract projects for Drone Legends, and getting out and walking, it is a VERY different lifestyle. Embedded in my educator brain is a sense of guilt:
So, to combat these feelings and wean myself off the expectations (often unfair) that are engrained in many of us in the education world, I've decided to embrace my One Word for 2024!  I'm going to reimagine what it means for me to be successfully educating others through different work - namely drone curriculum development, my STEM newsletter, and super fun author visits!
I'm going to reimagine what it means for me to be a picture book author by dipping my toes into the traditional publishing world - querying for an agent. I'm going to reimagine what it means to celebrate my new normal which may include spending time reading, taking pictures, exploring nature, checking my new trail cameras - and yes, it is okay if it's in the middle of the day! As a huge STEM advocate, I continually tout the importance of the imagining step when leading kids through the engineering design process. I am REALLY looking forward to 2024 - my REIMAGINING step! What are you reimagining this year? |
Kim CollazoSTEM Advocate and Picture Book Author Archives
April 2024
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