Posts Tagged Common Core & NGSS

STEM Tuesday– Astronauts and Space Travel — Book List

By on March 10, 2020   /   Astronauts and Space Travel, STEM Tuesday  

STEM Tuesday CoSTEM Costume Contest

So you want to be an astronaut! What’s next? According to Chris Hadfield, who spent two tours aboard the International Space Station, you need to get a good education. Learn new things. Fortunately, we’ve got a list of books for that.

ASTRONAUTS:

Cutting-edge Astronaut Training, by Karen Latchana Kenney

This book shows how astronauts train for space missions, what type of gear they need, and the technology they use. Readers visit the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston and learn how astronauts aboard the International Space Station used a 3-D printer to manufacture a wrench needed for urgent repairs.

 

Chasing Space Young Readers’ Edition, by Leland Melvin

Astronaut Leland Melvin knows how to solve problems, whether on the football field or aboard the space shuttle. He shares a personal and realistic journey through astronaut training and space travel. Includes hands-on STEAM experiments at the back.

 

Lost in Outer Space: The Incredible Journey of Apollo 13, by Tod Olson

Written like an adventure novel, this is a true story about the mission to the moon that nearly ended in tragedy. Two hundred thousand miles from Earth, an explosion rips through the spacecraft. Readers follow along with astronauts in space and mission control on the ground as they race to fix the problem.

 

 

From Farmworker to Astronaut: My Path to the Stars, by José M. Hernandez

When he was ten years old, José M. Hernandez watched astronauts walk on the moon. From that point, he knew he wanted to go to space. Encouraged by his father (You can do this, m’ijo!), José made a plan for school, college, and beyond. Rejected 11 times from the astronaut program, he didn’t give up and finally made it aboard the Space Shuttle.

NASA:

Countdown: 2979 Days to the Moon, by Suzanne Slade; illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez

Getting to the moon began with a dream – an outrageous idea – that we could land a man on the moon and bring him safely back to Earth. The challenge: to do this in a decade. Written in verse, this book documents the Apollo program, providing full spreads to highlight the astronauts for each mission.

Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow, by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich

NASA was established in 1958, and in that time it has launched spaceships, shuttles, telescopes, and space probes. It’s landed men on the moon and rovers on planets. Packed with photos and profiles of lesser-known contributors to the space program.

 

The Apollo Missions for Kids: The People and Engineering Behind the Race to the Moon, with 21 Activities, by Jerome Pohlen

Each of the seven chapters focuses on a specific aspect of rocket science. Sidebars profile scientists, engineers, and mathematicians involved in the Apollo missions. Hands-on activities include orbital mechanics, engineering the lunar lander skin, and replicating an experiment done on the moon.

Moon Mission: The Epic 400-year Journey to Apollo 11, by Sigmund Brouwer

Relive the Apollo mission as one of the astronauts. Experience all of the life-or-death challenges and near disasters, that occurred or were predicted, in the centuries long quest to walk on the moon. Each chapter is broken into three stages (like a rocket) and is chock full of history, STEM, and a science mystery to solve.

WOMEN IN SPACE:

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson, by Katherine Johnson

Written in an engaging, authentic voice, 100-year-old Katherine Johnson weaves history, segregation, civil rights, and African American culture into a conversational discussion of her life as a mathematical prodigy and computer at NASA.

 

Galaxy Girls: 50 Amazing Stories of Women in Space, by Libby Jackson; illustrated by students from the London College of Communication

Fifty stories of amazing women around the world essential to our missions to the moon and space. Includes female astronauts, mathematicians, engineers, physicists, test pilots, and aerospace psychophysiologists. As well as a timeline and “your own mission” plan.

 

To Fly Among the Stars: The Hidden Story of the Fight for Women Astronauts, by Rebecca Siegel

History remembers the Mercury 7 as America’s first space heroes. But there were 13 female pilots (air racers, test pilots, and flight instructors) who secretly completed the same astronaut tests. A look at the systemic sexism they battled to prove their right to become astronauts. Includes historic photos, glossary, and notes.

 

STEM Tuesday book list prepared by:

Sue Heavenrich writes about science for children and their families, from space to backyard ecology. Bees, flies, squirrel behavior—things she observes in her neighborhood and around her home—inspire her writing. A long line of ants marching across the kitchen counter generated one of her first articles for kids. When not writing, you can find her committing acts of science from counting native pollinators to monitoring water quality of the local watershed.

 

Maria is a children’s author, blogger, and poet passionate about making nature and reading fun for children. She’s been a judge for the Cybils Awards from 2017 to present. And a judge for the #50PreciousWords competition since its inception. Her poems are published in The Best Of Today’s Little Ditty 2017-2018, 2016, and 2014-2015 anthologies. When not writing, critiquing, or reading, she bird watches, travels the world, bakes, and hikes. Visit her at www.mariacmarshall.com

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STEM Tuesday– The Human Body — Interview with Author Sara Latta

By on February 25, 2020   /   Author Interviews, For Librarians, For Teachers, For Writers, Giveaways, Human Body, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the fourth Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

 

photgraph of author Sara LattaToday we’re interviewing Sara Latta, author of Body 2.0: The Engineering Revolution in Medicine, among several other titles. The book features modern biomedical engineering challenges, some of the STEM professionals who do it, and people who have benefited from it. (Check out the Kirkus review here! If you subscribe to SLJ or Booklist, you can see additional reviews at those sites.)

Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano: What’s the book about—and what was most important to you in deciding to write it?

Image of book cover of Body 2.0 by Sara LattaSara Latta: Thanks for having me on your blog! Body 2.0 explores the ways in which engineering, science, and medicine are coming together to make some remarkable advances in the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, neuroscience, microbiology, and synthetic biology. I begin the book with a brief history of biomedical engineering—arguably the first known example of which was a wooden toe found on an ancient Egyptian mummy—but primarily the book focuses on cutting-edge research and the scientists at the forefront of the research. That was important to me; much of the work I write about hasn’t even reached clinical trials. I wanted to show readers that they could jump into this research at a very exciting time.

 

CCD: Did anything about your sense of what was most important change as you developed the manuscript?

SL: I don’t know if it was most important, but at some point during the interviewing process I came to the realization that telling the story of the ways in which the scientists and engineers came to this point in their research would be really interesting to my readers. Several of them said they initially wanted to be medical doctors because they wanted to help people, but they didn’t have the stomach for it. One was an athlete who was inspired by his own injury; another transferred her love of Sherlock Holmes and detective work to scientific sleuthing. So I decided I had to create a separate section telling their stories.

CCD: What in the book most fascinated or surprised you?

 SL: Well, there was a lot! I’d been fascinated by brain-computer interfaces for several years, and even tried writing a sci-fi YA thriller using that technology a while back (it’s still in a folder on my computer). It’s really astounding how quickly work in the field—and other fields in the book as well—has progressed. I think that the work in synthetic biology holds enormous promise, not just in biomedical engineering but in other fields as well. The New York Times recently published an article about using photosynthetic bacteria to make concrete that is alive and can even reproduce.

CCD: I’d like to ask you a bit about your decisions about addressing ethics in Body 2.0. If I counted correctly, you spotlight three particular areas where scientific investigation and technological advancements raise important issues. Can you say a bit about your decision-making process about how much and what to spotlight, and your lasting impressions of the ethics related to this field?

SL: I told my editor going in to this project that I wanted to highlight some important ethical issues that some of this work raises, and she said “yes, absolutely.” It’s important to think about unintended consequences. I use the example that the discovery of petroleum as a cheap and plentiful source of fuel in the 19th century revolutionized the ways we lived, worked and traveled—and now we are paying the price with a global climate crisis. So I asked the question, what does it mean to be a human being when your brain is in a symbiotic relationship with a computer? Will these new technologies be available only to those who can afford them? One of the pioneers of gene editing recounted being jolted awake by a dream in which Adolf Hitler expressed interest in her work. It made her realize that “the ability to refashion the human genome was a truly incredible power, one that could be devastating if it fell into the wrong hands.”

CCD: As an author, what did you find most challenging about completing this book?

SL: Organizing all of the interviews and research I did for the book! I relied heavily on Scrivener and Evernote to bring it all together.

CCD: Can you say something about how you hope this book might impact readers?

SL: Biomedical engineering is all about improving the quality of life for people with diseases or injuries, whether it’s helping a person with quadriplegia become more independent or growing a bladder for a kid with spina bifida. I hoped to inspire idealistic young people interested in science, medicine, or engineering, who are also interested in making a positive difference in the world.

 

Win a FREE copy of Body 2.0: The Engineering Revolution in Medicine!

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

Your host is Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano, author of National Geographic Kids Ultimate Space Atlas, Running on Sunshine, andA Black Hole is NOT a Hole, among several nonfiction books for kids. As a STEM Education Consultant and co-founder of two STEM education organizations, STEM Education Insights and Blue Heron STEM Education, she develops STEM curricula, supports STEM education research, and provides professional development for teachers. Along with several STEM Tuesday contributors and other great authors, she’ll be participating in NSTA’s Science and Literacy event in Boston this spring. She’ll also be co-presenting with author Cheryl Bardoe.  Grab a sneak peek now, but better yet, stop by and say hello!

 

 

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STEM Tuesday– The Human Body — Writing Tips & Resources

By on February 18, 2020   /   Human Body, STEM Tuesday  

STEM Tuesday CoSTEM Costume Contest

A Place for Primary Sources

Reading the books on this month’s booklist, the following quote from Carla Mooney’s HUMAN MOVEMENT: How the Body Walks, Runs, Jumps, and Kicks jumped out at me:

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org“Primary sources come from people who were eyewitnesses to events. They might write about the event, take pictures, post short messages to social media or blogs, or record the event for radio or video. Why are primary sources important? Do you learn differently from primary sources than from secondary sources, which come from people who did not directly experience an event?” (p 41)

What a great question! Nonfiction authors typically use a mix of both primary sources and secondary sources (which are created after an event and often summarize and synthesize primary sources) in their books. And this month’s booklist provides fodder for a rich discussion about primary sources and how they are used in narrative and expository nonfiction.

 

Primary sources in narrative STEM nonfiction

Young writers may have more experience with primary sources in narrative nonfiction. These sources may include government documents, letters, diaries, and newspapers from a specific period.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgFor a good example of how authors use primary sources in narrative nonfiction, look at Catherine Reef’s FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: The Courageous Life of the Legendary Nurse, a biography of Florence Nightingale. The book itself is a secondary source. Reef wasn’t alive more than a hundred years ago when Nightingale lived. Instead, Reef’s book analyzes and synthesizes several sources including primary sources, and she identifies these sources in the bibliography. They include Nightingale’s collected writings, her letters from Egypt, and her notes on hospitals and nursing. Can you find others?

 

Authors use primary sources in narrative writing for many reasons. First, they reveal a character’s opinions, feelings, and inner thoughts. For example, using Nightingale’s own writings, we hear her say, “Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity – these three – and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?” (pp 5-6) You can tell from this quote that Nightingale wasn’t impressed with the typical gender roles assigned to women of the 1800s.

 

Primary sources also provide sensory details only first-hand observers might know. Reef quotes the cleric Sydney Osborne, who worked with Nightingale in a field hospital saying Nightingale had “‘a face not easily forgotten … pleasing in its smile, with an eye betokening great self possession, and giving when she wishes, a quiet look of firm determination in every feature.’” (Prologue) Unless we had a photograph of Nightingale, this description may give us the only information we have about how she looked. For writers, such detailed descriptions of characters, settings, and events provide the building blocks for writing scenes. And writing in scenes is how we make a book come alive for readers.

 

Activity

Look at the bibliography of FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. What primary sources you can identify? The names of the authors, as well as the publication dates, might give you clues. You can look at the notes (just before the bibliography) to get more information.

 

Primary Sources in Expository STEM Nonfiction

When writing about scientific topics, authors use primary sources too, though their purposes might be different from narrative writers. Primary sources for science books include interviews with scientists, data from experiments, theses, specimens, lab notes, technical reports, patents, and some scientific journal articles if they describe original science research.

 

Let’s look again at Carla Mooney’s HUMAN MOVEMENT: How the Body Walks, Runs, Jumps, and Kicks again. Now turn to pages 93-94 and look for the PS icon. How does using information from the University of Texas scientists’ research add to your understanding of the topic?

 

In science writing, primary sources provide the most current information. This is especially critical since new evidence and discoveries in science upend old ideas all the time. When I was growing up, I didn’t learn that dinosaurs had feathers and are related to birds. Imagine if an author used a textbook from my childhood as a source for information about dinosaurs! They’d get things all wrong. Current information is critical.

 

Fortunately, primary sources like science journals are published several times a year whereas a science textbook may only be updated every few years. For their part, scientists read journals in their field and attend conferences with fellow researchers allowing them to keep up-to-date too. That’s why interviews with scientists can be a wonderful primary source.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgAs one of this month’s books puts it: “For now, enjoy learning about what we do know — and by the time you’ve finished reading, scientists may have learned something new!”

— THE BRAIN: The Ultimate Thinking Machine (Science Comics) by Tory Woollcott and Alex Graudins

 

For more fun, grab some more of this month’s titles, flip to the bibliography, and see what types of sources you can find. Then discuss what you think using primary sources added to the book.

Kirsten W. Larson used to work with rocket scientists at NASA. Now she writes books for curious kids. She’s the author of WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: EMMA LILIAN TODD INVENTS AN AIRPLANE, illustrated by Tracy Subisak (Calkins Creek, 2020), CECILIA PAYNE: MAKING OF A STAR (SCIENTIST), illustrated by Katherine Roy (Chronicle, Fall 2021), along with 25 other nonfiction books for kids. Find her at kirsten-w-larson.com or on Twitter/Instagram @KirstenWLarson.

The O.O.L.F Files

 

 

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