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The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are being rolled out in classrooms across the nation. Many educators have been training on how to implement the Common Core standards in their own classrooms over the past two years. Many states have embraced the CCSS, while others are more skeptical about them. As of September, 2013, 46 states plus the District of Columbia have chosen to adopt the CCSS.
But, how do the CCSS apply to the STEM classroom? The standards set requirements not only for English language arts (ELA) but also for literacy in other disciplines, including STEM subjects. Literacy standards for grade 6 and above are predicated on teachers of STEM using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language in their respective fields. The 6–12 literacy standards in science and technical subjects are not meant to replace content standards in those areas but rather to supplement them.
This collection has been put together to highlight Science NetLinks lessons (many of which were created with as part of the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize funded by Subaru) that make use of non-fiction science trade books to help bring scientists and scientific research to life for students.
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Lessons
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K-2
In this lesson, students explore how animals eat plants or other animals for food by using the books of April Pulley Sayre.
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K-2
In this lesson, students learn that most of the food they buy in stores originally comes from farms.
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K-2 | Hands-On
Students learn about eggs and observe and describe changes in a variety of simple activities involving eggs.
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K-2 | Hands-On
This lesson is the first of a two-part series on how machines help people grow, package, transport, and store food.
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K-2 | Hands-On
This lesson is the second of a two-part series on how machines help people grow, package, transport, and store food.
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K-2 | Hands-On
In this lesson, students come to understand how sequencing the events in the book can help deepen their comprehension when reading.
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K-2
This lesson uses the book Sisters & Brothers: Sibling Relationships in the Animal World to explore the sibling relationships of different animals.
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K-2 | Hands-On
In this lesson, students will explore making shadows and tracking the movement of an object over the course of a day to look for patterns.
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K-2 | Audio
This students introduces children to the concept of animal camouflage.
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3-5 | Hands-On
In this lesson, students will explore how energy from the sun is necessary for life on earth.
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3-5 | Hands-On
In this lesson, students engage in meaningful observation of the natural world by sketching common birds in their area.
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3-5 | Video
This lesson should help students understand both the physical forces behind climate change, and the social responses to it as a means to preserve the health of people, the state of cities, island nations, and organisms.
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3-5
In this lesson, students explore the process of photosynthesis in the context of the world’s marine life.
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3-5 | Video
Students learn about the interdependent relationship between the Marbled Murrelet bird and the environment of old growth forests, such as redwood trees.
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3-5
In this lesson, students will perform simple experiments that will help them to explore unseen energy produced by the sun.
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3-5 | Hands-On
In this lesson, students are introduced to different types of scientific investigations, conduct their own, and explore how new evidence can modify theories.
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3-5 | Hands-On
This lesson shows that products and objects have lifespans so we need to recycle, reuse, and re-imagine new purposes for them.
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3-5 | Hands-On
In this lesson, students will learn about the life of science writer Vicki Cobb, read some of her books, and conduct hands-on experiments from her books.
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6-8 | Audio
Students will engage in the scientific processes of inquiry, teamwork, and communication by learning about and doing an experiment.
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6-8 | Video
Students develop an understanding of scientific research and environmental conservation by examining the work of scientists involved in studying and trying to save the Panamanian golden frogs.
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6-8
In this lesson, students engage in meaningful observation of the natural world that involves them in citizen science and adds to scientific understanding.
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6-8 | Interactive
Students learn that organisms can be sorted into groups in many ways using various features to decide which organisms belong to which group.
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6-8
This lesson introduces students to how the scientific enterprise, science, and technology were used in discovering and understanding dinosaur eggs found during a famous paleontological expedition in Argentina.
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6-8
This lesson introduces students to earth's moon and the eight planets in our solar system.
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6-8 | Audio
This lesson introduces students to Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a biologist who is using a combination of scientific fieldwork and lab experimentation to understand how a commonly used pesticide is damaging both frogs and their habitats.
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6-8 | Hands-On
This lesson allows students to apply the knowledge and skills acquired in the first lesson to developing a hypothesis, conducting their own scientific inquiry, and reporting their results just as working scientists do.
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6-8 | Audio
The lesson introduces students to the scientific basis of climate change.
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6-8
This lesson explores the contributions made to science and society by the naturalist, Jean Craighead George.
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6-8 | Hands-On
In this lesson, students discuss what heat is and how it travels.
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6-8 | Audio
In this lesson, students explore scientific inquiry by performing a hands-on activity about clouds by author Robert Gardner.
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6-8
In this lesson, students will first read Team Moon and then divide into teams to further investigate one of the challenges of the Apollo 11 mission.
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6-8 | Audio
By studying Thomas Edison's life and inventions, students will develop a broader view of technology and how it is like and unlike science.
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6-8 | Audio
In this lesson, students will use Internet resources to write a mock Wikipedia entry on the many ways technology is central to traveling to, working, and living on Mars.
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9-12
In this lesson, students discuss, summarize, and express alternative positions regarding a study on adolescent sleep.
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9-12 | Hands-On
This lesson will help students learn more about the predictive power of scientific theories and fossil evidence by studying the evolution of feathers.
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9-12 | Website
Using the sinking of the Titanic as a context, students can understand more fully why people in different situations and other cultures, past and present, might behave or have behaved differently.
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9-12
In this lesson, students explore the issue of ethics in medical research and, in particular, the issue of informed consent, in the context of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells.
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9-12 | Video
This lesson helps students develop an understanding of the characteristics and diversity of microbial life.
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9-12
This lesson introduces students to the study of human behavior and to develop their ideas about the importance of understanding mental health.
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9-12
This lesson will orient students to the kinds of treatment and care the mentally ill received prior to the 19th century—using the example of England’s Bedlam asylum.
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9-12
In this lesson students examine the impact and portrayal of mental illness in literature and further develop their ideas about mental health through the arts.
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9-12
Students learn why skepticism is important in science by looking at actual scientific studies regarding the effect of playing Mozart's music to infants.
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9-12 | Video
This lesson is about the scientist, Terrie M. Williams, and her research with the Hawaiian monk seal, KP2.
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9-12 | Audio
This lesson provides an introduction to conservation biology via the memoirs of a scientist who has traveled throughout the world to study and defend endangered species.
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9-12 | Audio
In this lesson, students explore how the human brain processes sensory and cognitive information, regulates our emotional life, and forms memories.
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9-12 | Audio
This lesson addresses the diversity of scientific research in the context of the story of how researchers learned about the giant redwoods in Northwestern California.
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9-12
In this lesson, students develop an understanding of air masses and the role they play in weather and climate.
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K-2
This lesson helps students understand that organisms, like chickens, have basic needs that must be met in order for them to survive and also begin to form an understanding of where food comes from.
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3-5
This lesson should help students understand that organisms have basic needs that need to be met in order to survive.
Tools
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K-12 | Website
This resource was compiled by Science Books & Films (SB&F) and contains information on how poetry can complement science instruction.
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K-12 | Teaching Aid
Science Books & Films (SB&F) offers book club guides for some of its most engaging popular science books.
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K-12 | Website
This resource from Science Books & Films (SB&F) contains links to reviews of recommended science trade books for all grade levels.
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K-2 | Teaching Aid
This tool explores Stars beneath Your Bed, a AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books winner.
Videos
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K-12 | Video
Learn how award-winning trade books and other engaging reading material can be incorporated into the science classroom with AAAS' Bob Hirshon.
AAAS Resources
Science Education and Literacy: Imperatives for the Developed and Developing World
Science 23 April 2010: Vol. 328 no. 5977 pp. 448-450
This article explores current language-based research aimed at promoting scientific literacy and examines issues of language use in schools, particularly where science teaching and learning take place in teachers’ and learners’ second language.
Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning About Science
Science 23 April 2010: Vol. 328 no. 5977 pp. 450-452
This article suggests students need help in learning academic vocabulary and how to process academic language if they are to become independent learners of science.
Learning to Read, Reading to Learn
Science 23 April 2010: Vol. 328 no. 5977 p. 447
This article introduces the special section in Science on Science, Language, and Literacy.
Opportunities and Challenges in Next Generation Science Standards
Science 19 April 2013: Vol. 340 no. 6130 pp. 276-277
This article discusses how aspects such as authorship, coordination among subject areas, and broader goals of college and career readiness give reason to believe that this effort will be more successful than previous attempts to use standards to improve science education
Literacy and Science: Education in the Service of the Other
Science 23 April 2010: Vol. 328 no. 5977 pp. 459-463
This article addresses how reading and writing can be used as tools to support inquiry-based science, and how reading and writing benefit when embedded in an inquiry-based science setting?
Supporting Students in Developing Literacy in Science
Science 23 April 2010: Vol. 328 no. 5977 pp. 456-459
This article outlines five instructional and curricular features that will promote students’ ability to read, write, and communicate about science so that they can engage in inquiry throughout their lives.
“Letter on STEM Education”
This news article discusses the Letter on STEM Education, published by the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, urging parents to demand better science classes.
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