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STEM Tuesday — Pair Up! Comparing Nonfiction Titles — Writing Craft and Resources

By on September 18, 2018   /   Common Core & NGSS, Curriculum Tie-in, Nonfiction Titles, STEM Tuesday  

Going Deep

Today we are diving deep into two books that intrigue me. Books about a horrific medical epidemic. Books that both use narrative and expository plus characters to carry readers through the story. Books that plunge into history and science plus ethical and moral questions.

Fatal Fever: Tracking Down Typhoid Mary, by Gail Jarrow

Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

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Here’s a quick recap. In the early 1900s Mary Mallon carried typhoid but didn’t display any of the symptoms. She worked as a cook, was definitively linked to the infections of 49 people plus three deaths, was quarantined for decades, and became the brunt of a tabloid scandal. Both books look at the entangled story of her life, medical professionals who tracked her down, legal charges against her, and implications for constitutional rights.

 

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In two books on the same topic, published in the same year, written with similar audiences in mind, there is much to compare and contrast. What I find most intriguing is that both bring the science and history to light while posing enduring questions.

Dive In

Let’s look at how these books each handle one of those enduring questions. Get ready for some close reading!

After years of quarantine, Mary was finally released on parole. The terms of her release specified that she take precautions to not infect others, not work as a cook, and report regularly to the health department. But Mary broke those terms, resulting in another major outbreak and her own exile until death. The question these authors chase: Why did she risk it?

Turn to pages 133-135 of Terrible Typhoid Mary and Page 118-120 of Fatal Fever to read the texts. Here are some things to look for. I’ve included a few things I noticed and am eager to hear what you discover.

Whose story is told first?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “Mary had no lawyer to help her.”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “Mary never said why she broke the conditions . . .”

What words are chosen to set the tone?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “A Witch!”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “. . . she struggled . . .”

In what way are other characters’ reactions used? Do those reactions support or denigrate Mary’s choice?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “The sympathy that people once felt toward Mallon evaporated.”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “Her temerity galled Soper.”

What words or phrases convey doubt or leave interpretation open?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “Maybe she didn’t see the harm in it, . . .”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “Is it possible that Mary simply didn’t understand . . .”

Are you caught up in this conundrum? Of how Mary, who had been presented as a person who stepped in to care for children when needed, could do such a thing? I am.

Where do these passages leave you emotionally? Did the balance between narrative and expository impact your reaction? Does either passage affect you more? Why?

On Your Own

Now, pursue a similar close reading on your own. There are plenty of other parallel topics in these books. Try the discussion of gall bladder removal: Fatal Fever (page 93) and Terrible Typhoid Mary (pages 136-137).

How do these authors use sequencing, language, and other characters? How do their skillful use of nonfiction devices impact you as a reader?

—-

By Heather L. Montgomery

Heather L. Montgomery writes for kids who are WILD about animals. Her latest book, Bugs Don’t Hug: Six-Legged Parents and Their Kids, is a perfect picturebook for a close read.

www.HeatherLMontgomery.com

The O.O.L.F. Files

Resources for Writers

https://www.rhymezone.com/

This site might have been designed with rhyming in mind but it has many other uses. Need a thesaurus? Angling for alliterative words? Looking for lyrics? Rhymezone’s got you covered.

https://www.google.com/alerts

Needing to go deep on a topic? Set up a Google alert on your topic. Day after day it will deliver the freshest posts straight to your inbox.

http://www.bluebulbprojects.com/MeasureOfThings/default.php

When you need a measurement comparison, The Measure of Things is your best friend! How large is 110 cubic inches?

  • 9/10th the size of a human stomach
  • 1/3rd the size of a bowling ball
  • 1 1/10th the size of an ostrich egg!
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STEM Tuesday — Pair Up! Comparing Nonfiction Titles — In the Classroom

By on September 11, 2018   /   Cross-Curricular, Curriculum Tie-in, For Librarians, For Teachers, Nonfiction Titles, STEM Tuesday  

STEM TUESDAY from the mixed up files

Today is the 11th–a 1-1 pair-up. It’s an especially apt day for continuing with our Nonfiction Pair-up theme. One thing seems sure: You’ll double your impact if you pair nonfiction reading and writing with STEM lessons!

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgIdeas Worth Spreading

Fatal Fever and Terrible Typhoid Mary highlight the social, personal, and epidemiological stories around Mary Mallon, AKA Typhoid Mary. Exemplifying how science and society intersect and examining the difficulties of clashing social and individual interests, this pair offers high drama and nearly endless entry points for curriculum learning.

  • Does the government have the right to imprison someone to keep that person from infecting others?
  • Do students think Mary was “terrible?
    • Students can develop charts with reasons for answering yes and no–then take a stand with mock op-ed pieces.
    • Form student committees to answer “What to do about Mary?” Make sure they consider how any decisions impact Mary and the community.
    • Expand into current day concerns: “What to do when one of us gets sick?” Students might research the school’s policy regarding teachers and students with the flu or other infectious diseases. What options are available to keep everyone safe and able to work and learn?

Looking for infectious enthusiasm? Try these science learning ideas.

  • DragonFly TV’s five-minute GloGerm video offers information, an experiment, and visuals including a powder that glows under UV light and spreads throughout a kids’ bowling party.
    • Show the video to accompany their reading.
    • As an alternative, if you have the resources to purchase GloGerm and a UV light, use the video as an inspiration for a lesson plan. Demonstrate the spread of disease. Then challenge students to design their own experiments.
  • In this lesson using water, baking soda and a simple acid/base indicator, one student unwittingly becomes the source of an “infectious disease”, which then spreads to classmates.  The indicator ultimately reveals “infected” students. As an extension, track down the source student–your classroom’s counterpart to Mary Mallon in 1906, someone who unknowingly spreads disease.
    • What does the student feel like?
    • How would the class feel if all of the infected students now had to stay quarantined despite feeling well, or could no longer do whatever job they would like?
  • Students become disease detectives with an engaging interactive from PBS’s NOVA resource, which allows them to “interview” subjects, collect and review data, and explore possible sources of the new Dizzy Disease. Students might also compare and contrast their methods to those used by the typhoid tracker who found Mary Mallon, George Soper.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgSupport Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgAnd Now, Some Rotten Ideas

Students can become decomposers as they break down Rotten and Death Eaters, into their essential content and structure. For example, Elementary Nest’s lesson provides suggestions on conducting a compare/contrast of the facts in paired nonfiction titles.

 

Of course, this topic screams for a scavenger hunt! Send students searching for nonfiction text features. Check out these scavenger hunts  and, presto! You’ll gather your own list of features in no time. Follow up with a look at how these features help or detract from the reading experience.

  • How do various features help engage and explain information to readers?
  • Are there places in either book where the reader’s experience would have been enhanced by the addition or omission of a given feature?

After students digest the books in these lessons, they can recycle the morsels of information and insight into new, lively texts, composing short pieces based on the facts that they collected and incorporating the nonfiction text features to help readers engage with or grasp content.

Hands-on science experiences can add to the detail of student writing.  Start with this worm bin building activity and related resources from National Agriculture in the Classroom.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgThis Trash Talk’s OK

Heighten student awareness of different styles and purposes of informational text with this trio. This Book Stinks is full of small bits of text and splashy graphics. Contrast it with Tracking Trash and Plastic Ahoy!, which combine storytelling, exposition, and characters into a cohesive whole. Challenge students to take passages from each book and turn them into the style and format of the other.

For science experiences, tie these books in with the decomposition books above (pair the pairs!). Or:

 

There’s so much you could do with this month’s theme, maybe you, too, should pair up; find a teaching partner to develop some of these ideas into great experiences for your students, or create your own.

  • What other book pairings can you suggest?
  • Which activities work for you?

Drop a comment to let us know!

 

****** BREAKING NEWS!!****

STEM TUESDAY from the mixed up filesSTEM Tuesday is now a monthly PODCAST! Tune into Jed Dougherty’s Reading With Your Kids Podcast on iTunes to listen to your favorite STEM Tuesday posts! The first airing is right here:  STEM Tuesday Podcast #1 

Be sure to join us the second Tuesday of every month for a podcast update!

 

Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano pairs writing nonfiction STEM books for kids with STEM educational consulting work.  Running on Sunshine: How Does Solar Energy Work? celebrates the innovative spirit and challenges behind engineering solar technologies, and received a starred review from Kirkus.

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STEM Tuesday– Checking Your Health — Writing Craft and Resources

By on August 21, 2018   /   Common Core & NGSS, Cross-Curricular, Health, STEM Tuesday  

Heath is an absolutely fascinating subject. Health-related media surrounds our daily life. The reasons are fairly simple as health affects everyone and is something everyone can relate to. Children’s literature is no exception. Health-related topics make great kid lit!

Microbes are my jam. Bacteria, viruses, parasites, microbiomes are things that attract my attention every time. I caught the fever in college. As strictly a cell biology student, I wandered down the hall one semester to take an elective from the microbiology section. I liked it and took another. Then another. Pretty soon my cell biology emphasis was a thing of the past and I switched lanes into the world of microbiology. Viruses especially grabbed me. The simplicity of their construction. The intricate ways they infect and replicate inside of the host cell. It was the perfect marriage of cell biology and infectious agent. Fast forward thirty years to my day job as a research microbiologist. The group I work with studies the interaction of pathogens with the host cell. Our primary focus is how bacteria intricately switch on and off the host inflammatory defensive response to their survival advantage. It’s a fascinating story to observe how pathogens go about affecting health. 

Microbes make great STEM health topics. Look back at our book list for this month. Microbe heavy! Today we are going to take a look at how health fits into the craft of STEM literature and some resources to learn or stay informed about health topics.

 

Craft

Health fits into just about any type of nonfiction. Using Melissa Stewart’s fantastic nonfiction book family tree, try to think of health-related middle grade or middle reader books you can put into each category. If you really want to burst my TBR budget, add your list of books in the comment section below.

  • Traditional
  • Browseable
  • Active
  • Expository
  • Narrative

When writing health nonfiction for middle grade, the key is in the details and how to best use them.

  • Is the topic better suited as a straight up informative text?
  • Do the details and the facts lend themselves to a narrative structure? What’s their story?
  • Is the topic loaded with activities which help illustrate and teach the information?
  • Is the topic wide-ranging enough to allow for many separate facts to be included?

Allow the facts to help dictate what the best way to tell a health-related STEM nonfiction story.  But where can one find the facts and details about a topic which interests them? That’s where the research comes in, right? Where do you start research? By finding solid resources.

Resources

Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)

Back in those college days, my virology and pathogenic microbiology professor had a standing assignment due every Friday. We had to turn in a summary of at least two articles in the latest MMWR bulletin from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). We’d race over to the library to check the shelf to see if the latest version of the pamphlet arrived yet. What’s MMWR, you say? The Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report. With online access now in the digital age, it’s a weekly update from the CDC on what’s making Americans sick or causing death.

World Health Organization

World Health Organization (WHO) has a great website to find information, resources and exceptional commentary on world health. It’s always good to keep a healthy eye on what’s going on around the world. In a global economy, where one can travel great distances in short amounts of time, health issues halfway around the world can still be threats.

National Institutes of Health 

The NIH is a slice of science and health nerd heaven. The grants, the news, the health reports, the grant funding, the databases for researchers, etc. It’s nearly impossible to write in one STEM Tuesday blog post about all the information on the NIH website. I use PubMed and GenBank at least twice a week at my job. (Confession. I sometimes get sucked down the PubMed rabbit hole while searching for research papers; like the time my labmates and I spent half a day talking about a medical pathology journal paper titled, Death by Greyhound.)

Newsletters

There are all kinds of newsletters one can search for to provide information on health and health issues.

Johns Hopkins Health & Wellness Newsletter

The Biotechniques daily news updates are one of my favorites daily email newsletters. The email updates cover interesting molecular science in a variety of disciplines from around the world. Plus, their Biotechniques journal is free!

Death Toll Comparison Breakdown

I ran across this Death Toll Comparison Breakdown post from Tim Urban’s Wait But Why blog that is possibly the most informative graphic ever about health and comparative death tolls of various historical events. 

Nothing to fear but fear itself…

Heath can also be used to invoke fear and create a culture of fear. Think about conversations going on right now in our society:

  • Exercise and weight loss
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Vaccines
  • Cancer
  • Emerging pathogens – Ebola, Zika, Bird Flu

The more science we know behind our health problems and issues, the better we can analyze, identify, and reduce the fear factor associated with the health issues. Information fights fear. Observe, verify, and then pass information on. Once we get past the fear, we can focus on solutions to those health issues. 

Check your health!

Health is one of those common concerns for humanity. It affects so much of our lives. It’s a good idea to learn as much as possible about the way our bodies work and how they interact with our nature and environments. STEM nonfiction can be a powerful tool in developing this understanding. Health concerns can be scary. Knowledge can overcome this fear which can lead to overcoming the health concern. Knowledge is power within the health realm. 

Improve your health and go check out some STEM health titles. Or write some health-related nonfiction books on whatever fascinates you. There’s something out there for every taste—even for that someone who is interested in studying how we taste!

Mike Hays, Microbiologist III

 

The O.O.L.F Files

The Out Of Left Field files this month focus on the….

I’m hacking the O.O.L.F. File this month for a little self-promo. But it’s self-promo with a purpose. Me and 38 science friends have joined Dan Koboldt in an information-packed book from Writer’s Digest Books called, PUTTING THE SCIENCE IN FICTION. The release date is set for October 16, 2018.

It’s an awesome resource for writers and educators with experts explaining the nuts and bolts of science topics, including health. There’s also an introduction written by Chuck Wendig. (Yeah, that Chuck Wendig!)

Here’s a look at the section titles in PUTTING THE SCIENCE IN FICTION:

  • Research Labs, Hospitals, And Really Bad Ways To Die
  • Genome Engineering: It Never Ends Well
  • The Brain Is Wider Than The Sky
  • From Zero To Sixty (Legs, That Is)
  • Things To Know For When Skynet Takes Over
  • Earth And Other Planets. Yes, Pluto Counts!
  • Sometimes, It Really Is Rocket Science
  • Star Wars And The Far Future

My two contributions to the anthology are “The Science of Jurassic Park” and “Zombie Microbiology 101”.

You can also check out Dan’s Science In SciFi, Fact in Fantasy blog series for even more awesome science content from real-life experts. The blog is a great place to learn something new or to learn science for your writing.

 

 

 

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