Posts Tagged cross-curricular

STEM Tuesday — Fungi — Author Interview with Sue Heavenrich & Alisha Gabriel

By on July 26, 2022   /   Fungi, STEM Tuesday  

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

Today, Andi Diehn interviews Sue Heavenrich and Alisha Gabriel, authors of Funki Fungi: 30 Activities for Exploring Molds, Mushrooms, Lichens, and More! Sue is a writer and educator who also hosts a book review blog at Archimedes Notebook. Alisha is an elementary music teacher and writer of fiction and nonfiction elementary through middle grade. They teamed up to bring the wonder and magic of fungi to kids through lots of hands-on STEM projects!

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AD: What inspired you to write about fungi?

Alisha: I’ve always found mushrooms and fungi fascinating! There are so many shapes and colors, and new varieties being discovered each year. Every time I turn around there’s something more to learn about fungi.  Funky Fungi book cover

Sue: My interest was piqued when I interviewed mycologist Kathie Hodge about an insect-infecting fungus for an article in a local newspaper. She took me on a fungus-looking walk, and showed me her workspace at her lab. That article never got published, but it made me think about fungi in a different way. A couple years later I met Alisha at a Highlights Foundation workshop on nonfiction writing. While out on a nature walk, we stopped to look at some interesting fungi and got to talking about potential book ideas. I ended up shelving my idea, so when Alisha asked if I wanted to collaborate on a book I said “sure.”

 

AD: There’s such a huge variety of fungi out there! How did you decide what information to include in your book and what had to be left out?

Alisha Gabriel examines fungi

Alisha finds some funky fungi!

Alisha: When the editor liked our pitch and asked to see a proposal, Sue and I jumped into the research feet first. First, we determined how to break up the chapters by topic. There are certain types of fungi that had to be included in each chapter and simply couldn’t be left out of the book! After that, it became much more difficult to narrow down.

 

AD: What do hands-on projects add to the reader’s experience of your book?

Alisha: This book is part of the Young Naturalists series from Chicago Review Press and all of the titles include 30 activities. The activities are important to help readers extend their learning, and to gain even more enjoyment, as they discover more about fungi!

Sue Heavenrich examines fungi

Sue gets hands-on with fungi!

Sue: As a science teacher and, later, homeschooling parent, I know that many kids learn best by doing. That’s what this book addresses. By design, it incorporates activities throughout the chapters as an integral part of exploring the topic. I mean, how can you read about mushrooms and not want to cut one open to see inside?

 

AD: Some of the projects focus on an art or language activity – why is the A in STEAM so important?

Alisha: Everyone learns in different ways. In education, there’s a huge push for STEM topics, but the artistic aspect of learning isn’t always valued as highly. Sketching a mushroom, or even creating their own, will help readers focus on the minute details. And writing a poem about a mushroom can help a young reader utilize vocabulary and scientific terms, while accurately describing it and its surroundings.

Sue: Art and language are part of science. Scientists in the field often make sketches in their field journals alongside their notes – whether it’s fossils or insects. I feel that drawing a mushroom or other fungus helps develop observation skills. So does writing haiku and poetry. I think there’s a lot in science that inspires art, and art that inspires science.

 

AD: You mention a lot of different people who work with fungi or have made discoveries about fungi. Why did you include these brief biographies in your book?

Sue: Science is a human endeavor. When I was a kid, I loved reading the stories about people who discovered things: Fleming and penicillin, Jenner and the smallpox vaccine. We want to show readers that people are still discovering things about fungi – and maybe some of those readers will see that they could be scientists, too.

 

AD: There are fungi that do beneficial work and fungi that do detrimental work. Why is it crucial to our understanding of fungi to learn about all aspects of the fungal world, not just the ones that help humans?

Alisha: It’s true that some fungi attack our crops or cause human diseases, but other kinds of fungi are used to counteract them. All types of fungi play a role in the environment, even those that are yet to be discovered.  It’s important to show readers the great diversity of fungi because we never know how or when new discoveries will be made. Alisha Gabriel photographs fungi

 

AD: If you could choose a state fungus, what would it be?

Alisha: In an interesting twist, I live in Texas, which is the most recent state to adopt a state fungus! It’s Chorioactis geaster, often called the Texas Star Mushroom, because it’s only found in some parts of Texas and Japan. At first this mushroom resembles a small cigar, but when the spores mature, they burst forth with a popping sound and the sides crack open into a star shape.

Sue: I personally like the Stinky Squid fungus – it looks like an orange squid or chicken claws reaching up through the soil. Its stinky smell attracts flies that will spread the spores. But there is actually a bill in the New York State legislature to name Peck’s milk-cap (Lactarius peckii) as our state mushroom. It’s a pretty orange gilled mushroom and not stinky in the least. And it is named for Charles Horton Peck, New York State botanist from 1867 to 1915, who described and named more than 2,700 species of fungi in North America.

Want more fun with fungi? Check out Funky Fungus Friday photo posts at Sue’s Facebook page!

And Alisha’s #FungiFriday posts on Twitter!

 

Sue Heavenrich writes about science for children and their families, from space to backyard ecology. Bees, flies, squirrel behavior—things she observes in her backyard and around her neighborhood—inspire her writing.

Alisha Gabriel is an elementary music teacher and adjunct professor who has written several fiction and nonfiction books for children, from preschool to middle graders.

Today’s host, And Diehn, is an editor and marketer at Nomad Press and has published 11 nonfiction books.

 

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The (Almost) No-Rules Storytelling Project for Middle Graders: “Tell Me a Story”

By on July 22, 2022   /   Articles, For Teachers  

For those of you starting to compile ideas for the new school year, here’s a storytelling project that promotes creativity, engages interest, and can be readily differentiated.

Early fall is a great time for a storytelling activity for middle graders in your ELA classes, library or author workshop, or homeschool sessions. Learners might be eager to employ creativity after summer break, and seeing evidence of student work through storytelling early on can guide your personalized instruction moving forward. Students’ topics might connect with middle grade titles you plan to introduce. And as these early-in-the-year projects might be a little more loosely structured than formal writing assignments later, it’s a nice way to ease into the workload of a new year.

So for an (almost) no-rules storytelling project, consider saying to your Language Arts, homeschool, or library students, “Just tell me a story…”  Then stand back for the flood of questions! “Real, or made up?” “Does it have to have me in it?” And of course, “How long does it have to be?”  For an open-ended storytelling project like this, almost anything goes—fiction or creative non-fiction; almost any genre; set in current times, recent or long-ago past, or the future. Really, once the most basic of guidelines (appropriateness, length or time involved, etc.) are established, set storytellers free to compose and create.

What’s more, an open-ended storytelling project has great flexibility for differentiation. Some, most, or all of a story might be told visually, told aloud, told through song or drama, told with or through a partner or group… and even if the student utilizes minimal or no written words, you can still assess their story sense with categories that might feed your rubric creation:

  • their ability to perceive and comprehend conflict and characters/key figures;
  • their ability to convey setting and passage of time; and
  • their ability to communicate messages, lessons, and themes to others.

Here are some ideas to get your assignment wheels turning in preparation for an (Almost) No-Rules Storytelling project:

1. Try timed brainstorming by categories for idea generation (books read, places visited, fun family times, cool facts, weird tales), then narrow down to potential story topics.

2. Once a writer has an idea, they can think about all the ways in which the story might be told:

  • Graphic/comics-style story – Show some great graphic novel or memoir examples to get storytellers’ wheels going (When Stars Are Scattered, New Kid, El Deafo).
  • Map story – The writer draws a map that includes all the locations important to their story, then briefly summarizes the story’s events in brief phrases or images associated with those micro-settings.
  • PTD story – Story events are summarized or sketched on a traditional Plot Triangle Diagram (or create a plot diagram that is not so traditional!).
  • Drama performance – Write the story in “sides” like Shakespeare used: Each performer holds a list of their lines, each with a bit of the previous line to serve as the cue. A great exercise in listening, reacting, and communication!
  • Musically – Tell the story set to original music or to a known song reset to the student’s story in lyric form; add movement (dance, statues, interpretive movement, etc.) if the storyteller would like.
  • Art series – Tell the story in a series of sketches, paintings, drawings.
  • Photography – Show examples of photo essays or photojournalism; storytellers use a camera and a series of images they photograph to tell a story. (Or, offer class members a series of abstract, unrelated images taken with your camera and challenge each learner to tell a story based on the images.)
  • Oral storytelling – Storytellers use whatever notes they want to suit their comfort level as they tell the story aloud.
  • Group storytelling – Group members add on lines or plot spontaneously to keep a story going; or, group members can generate a story in pieces while working independently, then compile the events in a way that tells a cohesive story.

3. Encourage students to think outside the box, and to feel free to experiment with form, structure, and style. Combine two or more methods of storytelling or invent an original way to tell the story.

4. Ready some resources for inspiration:

Secrets of Storytelling by MUF’s own contributor Natalie Rompella offers ready-made activity sheets, writer tips, and fun story prompts.

Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine – Chapter One is online here and includes starters and advice.

Story cubes are fun for everyone and might especially benefit visual learners and English language learners in the idea generation process.

5. Finally, for inspiration, share some MG titles with learners in which characters’ storytelling is part of the plot:

Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin – Twelve-year-old Jason is autistic and often struggles with relationships in a neurotypical world. Thanks to a site where Jason posts original stories, he has the chance to make a friend in a fellow writer named Rebecca—if he can just work up the courage to meet her.

Isaiah Dunn Is My Hero by Kelly J. Baptist – To get by in tough times, young Isaiah looks to his late father’s stories about Isaiah’s inspirational superhero self.

Welcome Back, Maple Mehta-Cohen by Kate McGovern – Eleven-year-old Maple loves dictating stories into her recorder—but reading words on the page is difficult due to her dyslexia. When Maple must repeat fifth grade, she uses her storytelling skills to hide the truth from classmates.

Good luck to all educators as you ready your stellar assignments for fall, and thank you for the invaluable work you do for middle graders and all learners.

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STEM Tuesday — Fungi — Writing Tips & Resources

By on July 19, 2022   /   Fungi, STEM Tuesday  

You know what I love? A chance to get nerdy about science and writing! So this month’s list of fun-gal books provided lots of fun for this gal. In addition to surprising facts—Did you know fungal spores can sometimes seed rain?—I found at least ten different ways to categorize these books. How many can you come up with? For this post I’ll share just one so I don’t steal all the fun 🙂

Today we are going to have a blast, do something dynamite, experience the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Today we are going to analyze books based on the Common Core-English Language Arts.

 

 

 

 

 

Wait. Why aren’t you jumping with joy? How come I don’t hear any gleeful giggles?

Maybe—whether you are a kid gritting your teeth through class, a teacher grinding through lesson prep, or an adult writer grasping to “get” this industry—just maybe you need practice romping in the joy of discovery.

Let me show you how it’s done.

Dip into the ELA standards and you’ll see three types of writing described:

  • informative/explanatory texts,
  • opinion pieces,
  • narrative writing (true or imagined stories).

Joy, oh, joy right? Okay, maybe not. That info is sitting there is like a lousy lump. A bunch of blah, blah, blah. We all know that science books are informative. They are explanatory texts. Duh.

But what if I found something a little suspicious in our fungal stack? Would you zoom in closer with me? Would you be willing to search out some odd evidence?

If you were on a hunt for a piece of narrative writing, what would you look for? A character. Action. Some voicy voice? Pick up a copy of Rotten Pumpkin: A Rotten Tale in 15 Voices and you could say: check, check, check!

If we want to get academic, plop the book down beside the ELA Standards for writing, 4th grade. According to the Core, narrative should:

  • orient the reader by establishing a situation. The opening page of Rotten Pumpkin does this loud and clear: “Here I stand, bright with light, proud and round. Tonight is my glory night.”
  • introduce a narrator. Jack the smiling pumpkin draws readers in.
  • use sensory words to convey experiences. “My vomit dissolves pumpkin nutrients so I can lap them up. A delicious, nutritious smoothie!” Whoever said analyzing books had to be boring!?!

…

I could go on about how this could be lumped in with narrative books, but I’ll leave the rest to you. Go ahead, I’ll make it super easy and put the link to the standards right here and the link to an online preview of the book right here. Now, you go find more evidence.

And then there’s opinion writing, something you might not expect to get a whiff of on a serious, science blog post, but COME ON! Opinions spice things up! Consider why The Mushroom Fan Club, by Elise Gravel, is just such a hoot. Hint: It’s not because she’s all straight-laced and impartial. Nope.

She even admits to being obsessed. And just what, pray, is she trying to prove? The first spread: “It’s like a treasure hunt” and the last: “So, did you enjoy our TREASURE HUNT?” kind of give it away.

For practice, pair up Gravel’s text with the 4th grade standards to find examples of

  • “create an organized structure”
  • “provide reasons that are supported by facts”
  • “link opinion and reasons”

Lookie, lookie at what you’ve done. Found a little fun matching this mushroomy stack with the Common Core’s three categories of writing. I knew you could do it! Now, I wonder what you would find if you looked at Melissa Stewart’s 5 Kinds of Nonfiction instead…

 

 

 

 

 

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Heather L. Montgomery loves taking a closer look at fungi (and slugs and bugs and poop and anything else in nature). Then she writes (narrative or opinion or explanatory books about that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious stuff. Books like: Who Gives a Poop? Surprising Science from One End to the Other, Something Rotten: A Fresh Look at Roadkill, and What’s in Your Pocket? Collecting Nature’s Treasures. Learn more at www.HeatherLMontgomery.com.

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