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STEM Tuesday– Extinction– In the Classroom

By on October 11, 2022   /   Extinction, STEM Tuesday  


Extinction is a tough theme. I struggled with my emotions a bit as I read through books from this month’s list. All the books I read balanced the threat of extinction with hope for staving it off. This included providing actions individuals can take to make a difference to species threatened with extinction. More on that below. First, here are the books I read. All were exceptionally well done and worth the read.

Tree reaching into the sky.

Champion, The Comeback Tale of the American Chestnut Tree
by Sally M Walker

I married a guy who loves trees, so it’s no surprise that this book caught my eye. Plants and trees often seem forgotten when discussions of endangered or extinct species arise. This book covers the importance of the American Chestnut in American history and culture and how it was almost wiped out. Then it looks at the different ways scientists are trying to save this tree from extinction.

 

A lone giraffe walking across a desert with blue sky and shadowy mountains in the background.

Giraffe Extinction: Using Science & Tech To Save the Gentle Giants
by Tanya Anderson

My sister loves giraffes, so of course I had to read this book. I learned so much about giraffes that I didn’t know! This book also includes great descriptions about things like the IUCN Red List and taxonomy.

 

 

Yellow bird with mouth open.

Large, fuzzy beeWhere Have All the Birds Gone? And Where Have All the Bees Gone?
by Rebecca E. Hirsch

I love birding and am a Scouts BSA Bird Study merit badge counselor. I’ve also been rewilding my yard, repopulating it with native plants. Some of my favorite visitors are the different types of bumblebees that visit our native wildflowers. Given that, this duo of books from Rebecca Hirsch were must-reads for me. They gave me a greater understanding of what’s driving bird and bumblebee species to the edge of extinction, along with things I can do to help bring them back from that edge (some of which I was already doing, like planting native plants).

 

Learn Some Terminology

When you learn about threatened and endangered species, you hear lots of new terms related to them. And that’s in addition to the levels used in the IUCN Red List. Now would be a great time to find out what the following terms mean and how they relate to extinction.

Terms to explore: extant, extirpated, extinct, invasive, naturalized.

(Hopefully I didn’t forget any big ones.)

Explore Your Local Area

Endangered and threatened species classification is done on many levels. Explore what species are threatened or endangered in your neck of the woods. Have each student pick one to explore further.

What is its natural habitat? Why is the species threatened? How many are still in existence in the wild? What is being done to protect the species?

Have students educate each other about what they’ve found. Then have them pool their information in the following activity.

[If you’re having trouble finding this information, start with your local parks, Fish & Wildlife, Department of Natural Resources, or conservation organizations.
Some New Jersey resources are:
NJ Fish & Wildlife (Department of Environmental Protection) – https://dep.nj.gov/njfw/wildlife;
Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey – http://www.conservewildlifenj.org;
the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service NJ Field Office – https://www.fws.gov/office/new-jersey-ecological-services/species.]

Graph It Out!

If you read about multiple species, you’ll notice repetition among the things that are driving them towards extinction. It’s not just one thing, either. Usually, there are multiple factors working together to drive species to die out.

Have each student research a different threatened or endangered species (or even one that has gone extinct). Find out what factors are/were negatively impacting the species.

Combine all the collected information into a graph or chart to show the most common factors driving species to extinction. Is it habitat loss, fragmentation, pesticide use, or something else?

What would be the best way to illustrate this? A bar graph? A pie chart? Something else?

Take Action

Once you’ve learned about lots of species needing help in your area, you’ll probably be a little depressed and/or scared. The best thing to do is to take some action that will make a difference to those threatened species. Look for ideas in the books on the booklist or in the other resources you’ve accessed.

A few ideas include:
Stop pesticide use on lawns and fields. This could include lobbying your local school board or town/county/city council.
Create a native plant garden or pocket meadow. (If you search the internet, you will find lots of resources to help.) There are lots of local Native Plant Society chapters that could help with this.
Participate in a Community Science program to help collect data on species – see the June 2022 post to help with this.

Bonus Read

I recently read a fabulous photo essay about seabeach amaranth, a plant species that made an amazing reappearance on the New Jersey coastline. Check it out here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8ef3760b8f46470b91847762f10437af

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Woman with short hair and sunglasses, sitting on the ground cutting long brown reeds.

Janet sometimes helps out with conservation projects – here she’s helping cut reeds to stock an insect hotel.

Janet Slingerland is the author of over 20 books for young readers. In her spare time, you can often find her out in her yard, creating habitat for plants and animals. Learn more about Janet and her books at janetsbooks.com.

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Be a Citizen Scientist and help NASA GLOBE Measure Trees!!

By on October 10, 2022   /   Articles, STEM  
NASA GLOBE Tree Challenge logo

Calling all teachers, parents, homeschoolers– here is a way to help the environment!

 

Have you ever looked up at a tree and wondered just exactly how tall it really is?  How did it grow that high? And does the height of the tree really affect the environment? YES!

 

Tree height can help scientists determine not how healthy the environment is but also let them know how much carbon is being pulled out of the atmosphere.

 

Sounds, cool, doesn’t it?

 

NASA GLOBE  (Global Learning and Observations to benefit the Environment)
is a program that encompasses many different parts of the environment. , NASA looks for help from the public
to gather data across the Earth and then compares it with data that it gathers from satellites in space.

 

There is a GLOBE Clouds program where you can identify clouds  Clouds

 

    and a podcast for that
Cloud Watching podcast image

 

and also a GLOBE TREES program  

 

NASA GLOBE Trees needs  YOU! 

 

Join the NASA GLOBE Trees Challenge 2022: “Trees in a Changing Climate” from 11 October through 11 November

NASA GLOBE Trees Challenge 2022

 

From the NASA GLOBE website:

Help us estimate the number of trees that make up your area and contribute to tree and climate science by sharing your observations of trees.

 

How to participate:

  1. Download the GLOBE Observer app and register an account.
  2. Estimate heights of trees around you using the Trees tool.* (Remember to always be safe and follow local guidelines when observing.)
  3. Optionally, use a tape measure to add data about tree circumference to your observations.
  4. Comment in the field notes about any changes you know have occurred in the area you took the tree heights, and if the trees appear healthy, unhealthy, or dead.

 

 

To learn more about the program and hear from Brian Campbell, NASA Senior Earth Science Outreach Specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight  Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, USA, take a listen to the podcast below. Brian is also the Trees Around the GLOBE Student Research Campaign Lead and the Trees Science Lead for the NASA GLOBE Observer citizen science program. Brian works with local to international students, educators, citizen scientists, and researchers in over 100 countries.

 

To hear the podcast, just click on the image:

 

Once you upload your tree data you can see if NASA has captured a picture of your tree from their satellite in space! You can compare the information from both sources and see how accurate the satellite data is.

The challenge runs from October 11th to November 11th, 2022. So get your apps ready and go out and MEASURE SOME TREES!!

 

This is a great challenge for teachers, classrooms, kids, families, parents, and grandparents. Let’s get TONS of data for NASA GLOBE. Then we can help figure out how healthy our planet really is.

Trees

 

 

 

 

 

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Interview & 2 Giveaways with Kerry O’Malley Cerra

By on October 7, 2022   /   Author Interviews  

I’m excited to share this heartfelt interview with TWO generous giveaways with all of you! 

Kerry O’Malley Cerra is an award-winning author of middle grade books. Her first novel, Just a Drop of Water, landed on five state reading lists, won the Crystal Kite Award, a Florida Book Award, and was named to VOYA’s Top Shelf Fiction list for 2014. Her second novel, Hear Me, is out now. Stay tuned for her forthcoming book, Make a Little Wave, expected to debut sometime in 2024 with Carolrhoda Books, an imprint of Lerner Publishing. Kerry’s work has received praise from The New York Times, Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, VOYA, and the Horn Book Guide calling her stories moving, perceptive, well-developed, and woven with an expert hand. Kerry lives in South Florida with her family and two poorly behaved rescue-dogs.

You can find Kerry on her website, Twitter, and Instagram.

Welcome back to the Mixed-Up Files, Kerry! I loved interviewing you for your debut middle-grade novel, Just A Drop of Water, and am thrilled to celebrate the launch of Hear Me with you.

What sparked the idea for Hear Me?

Thanks, Mindy. I always appreciate your support, and not only for me. You are a champion for many authors! Always! The thing about Hear Me is that I never wanted to write about hearing loss. I toyed with maybe someday writing a character who happened to have hearing loss without it being the central theme, but even that wasn’t something I was sure I wanted to tackle. So in the meantime, I wrote stories of abled characters. After talking with a friend about the need for books with accurate hearing loss representation—and still vowing I wasn’t the person to write that book—the whole first chapter came to me in detail. I’ve heard authors say some books write themselves, and I never understood that. In fact, I was a bit jealous of it. Imagine a story that writes itself! Well, this one did. I wrote the first draft in only four months. It was extremely cathartic for me—the whole thing feels somewhat like a gift, actually. I struggled for years to accept my disability, and sure, I feel like much of that time was wasted, but I also now know that I needed that time to grieve my loss.

Kerry after having unilateral cochlear implant surgery

When I wrote chapter 1 that first night, the last line (now the last line of chapter 2) set the trajectory for the story. And it shocked me. It was visceral. Completely unplanned. But I knew right then what the storyline would be. Rayne wants desperately to talk to her audiologist alone, but her mom isn’t having it. Rayne says in her head that she’ll never have the chance to ask the doctor the one question she wants answered most—can her parents force her to have the cochlear implant surgery even if she doesn’t want it? I’ll never forget the moment my fingers typed that line. It was like, holy smokes, that’s what the book is about. I was locked in.

So back to your question. The topic of writing a hearing loss story came from a conversation with a publishing-friend, but the story itself took on a life of its own. I’d love for that to happen again someday. It was quite powerful.

Your entire book is powerful, too. And so needed. Thank you for writing it! Here’s a trailer so readers can get to know Rayne. 

What do you and the main character, Rayne, have in common…and how is she different from you?

Kerry showing her cochlear implant at a school visit

Rayne and I both have parents who love us very much. My parents, however, gifted me the privilege of having a say in whether I wore hearing aids or not. I’ll always be grateful for that because I wasn’t ready to accept my loss at age sixteen. But it’s fair to note that Rayne’s hearing loss is much more sudden and much more progressive than mine was. Still, I wish her parents had taken a step back and given them all time to deal.

We’re also different in that Rayne learns to love and accept herself more quickly than I did. She actually taught me a lot as she came to life on the page. She’s strong, fierce, and utterly determined to be heard. I’m a lot like that now, but I certainly wasn’t at her age.

And yet, both Rayne and I struggled physically and mentally when we were initially diagnosed. We both tried to hide our disabilities. We both tried to overcompensate because we had something to prove. We both felt stuck in between a hearing world and a deaf one.

Mostly, I’d like to think we both preserved and came out stronger. Neither of us feels broken anymore.

 

I’m tearing up reading this. I have 75% hearing loss and totally relate to the broken feeling Rayne has. Thank you so much for sharing such a heartfelt story. What would you like to say to anyone who feels broken?

Do you mean broken as it pertains to hearing loss only? If so, I have to say my favorite part of the book is when Mr. Lazar tells Rayne and her parents that it’s okay to take a step back. To take time to grieve Rayne’s hearing loss. Because it is a loss. And with grief, the thing is, there is no time frame for it. So give yourself permission to deal how you need to deal. And while you’re doing that, find your people. Find the ones who support you, who don’t forget about your disability, who make small efforts to help you however you need. They are out there. I’ve found online support groups to be awesome, too. People there share daily wins, but we also use it as a place to vent. It’s a safe space where you know you’re not alone, and that you’re completely okay just as you are. Sometimes we all need that reminder—disability or not.

Yes! We all need to know that we’re not alone, and we’re okay as we are. Thanks for the reminder. 

What is the universal truth in Hear Me, that makes it so relatable?

This goes well with your above question, actually. I think there are two universal truths in Hear Me, so even if someone doesn’t know what it’s like to have hearing loss, I hope they’ll still connect to Rayne’s story on some level.

First, Rayne wants to feel heard. It seems so simple, but she feels like her voice, her feelings, her wishes don’t matter. She has no say in one of the biggest decisions of her life. I’m guessing most everyone at some point has felt unheard, so I think they’ll relate to Rayne’s utter frustration.

But also, Rayne wants to feel like she’s okay just as she is. This goes along with your question about brokenness above, but it might not necessarily be such a big dramatic feeling for everyone. Still, I think we all have some insecurities that keep us from feeling whole. Maybe someone doesn’t feel smart enough, or pretty enough, or popular enough, or liked at all. Maybe they struggle with mental health, or with sports, or making friends. No matter how big or small, it can lead to one feeling broken—or not enough—in some way. So they’ll identify with Rayne on that. Overcoming that feeling is her biggest arc in the story, and all that angst and worry is right there on the page.

I put a lot of time into getting that emotion on the page authentically so that all readers could connect and feel for Rayne—knowing full well they might feel it within their own lives, too.

 

What surprised you while writing and revising Hear Me?

I don’t want to give too much away for anyone who hasn’t read it yet, but the ending took me by complete surprise. I was 100% sure how the book would wrap up as soon as I wrote chapter 1, but something happened along the way that changed it entirely. I’m so glad for that and how it came to be because I think the ending is powerful. Sorry to be so vague. 🙂

 

Everyone can read your amazing book to find out what surprised you. 😊

I love how you use *** for missed words. At first, I found myself reading those parts slower, but then realized most of the methods I use to fill in words I miss hearing help fill in the blanks in your book. It might not be exactly what was said, but I’m pretty sure I catch the gist of it. It truly gives people a tiny glimpse of what it’s like to be in the shoes of someone who is hard of hearing or deaf. What tips do you use while trying to hear people that can help readers fill in those blanks? Can teachers modify this into a writing exercise with their students? 

On the page, readers will have an overall sense of the conversation, so that alone will help them figure out the general idea of what’s being said—even if they don’t know the actual words that are missing. This is true even as the conversations change in single scenes, but that’s not the case for me, at all, in real life. It’s incredibly frustrating when people switch topics. I have to work even harder to figure out what’s being talked about all over again. As you well know, this makes group settings uncomfortable and exhausting. But I don’t think the reader will have nearly as much trouble while reading this.

Mindy, I think your activity suggestion is fantastic! I’d love for teachers to have students take a page from the book and try to fill in the missing words. It would be so interesting to compare the assignments. Brilliant! 

Ooh, I love this, Kerry. I hope some teachers will share the results!

Do you have suggestions for people who meet someone who is hard of hearing or deaf? What can they do to communicate with them better? 

I want to note that I can’t speak for everyone when it comes to these answers. There is no one way to handle deafness. No right or wrong way to handle hearing loss. Some people are way more comfortable with their situation than others. But here are some general good practices to follow that I think will work for many. Always start by getting the attention of the person you want to speak to—so they’re aware and can pay attention. Don’t yell. Goodness, this is so offensive. For many of us, volume isn’t the issue. It’s clarity. Just because someone is hard of hearing or deaf doesn’t mean they’re dumb. They just need a little extra help. Face the person you’re talking to so they can read your lips. If you’re in a loud environment, know that this is exponentially more difficult, so be patient. Try not to forget about the person’s disability. It’s not one that is seen, yet it can be uncomfortable for some of us to have to constantly remind others of our need. These things really make me feel included and can sometimes be the difference for me continuing to socialize or go home, so I hope they are good tips for others with hearing loss or deafness, too.

 

Those are fantastic tips! They help me a lot, too.

What are you working on now?

I have another book, Make a Little Wave, coming out in 2024. It’s about a girl who’s trying to change shark fishing laws in Florida. And because the world still needs many more stories with disability representation, that character wears cochlear implants. Right now, I’m doing edits for that and a revision of a nonfiction picture book. I can’t talk about that one yet, but I hope to have good news on it very soon.

Also, I work as a high school media specialist. These days, that role feels extra charged politically, so it keeps me very busy.

Thanks so much for having me here, Mindy. I’m glad you loved Rayne’s story!

You’re welcome, Kerry. Thanks so much for joining us again. And wahoooo! I’m happy dancing about your upcoming MG. It sounds amazing! I hope you get an offer on your nonfiction picture book soon.

Giveaway time!

Kerry generously has TWO giveaways. Enter one or both of them on the Rafflecopters below. Winners will be shouted out on this post and e-mailed on October 14. 

One lucky winner will receive a copy of Hear Me. 

The winner is…

Joy Jones

A year after her hearing loss diagnosis, twelve-year-old Rayne’s doing her best to live a “normal” life and act like nothing’s changed. But her hearing keeps failing her. Even with hearing aids, she has trouble following conversations and hanging out with her friends the way she used to. Her grades are slipping, surfing is a bust, and she can’t understand the lyrics to her favorite singer’s new songs. Rayne’s parents are pushing for her to get cochlear implants, which could restore her hearing—though she would hear sounds differently. 

Rayne isn’t convinced the surgery for CIs is worth the risk and challenges. In fact, she’s terrified of it. She begs her parents to consider other options, but they’re not budging. 

With the surgery looming, Rayne sets off on a search for alternatives. Along the way, she discovers that “normal” can have many meanings—and that even though her ears may be broken, she is not.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Enter below to win a critique of up to 10 pages of your novel…(or one PB). 

The winner is:

Jaymie Patricia Heilman
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for stopping by the Mixed-Up Files! Good luck with the awesome giveaways. 🙂

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