Posts Tagged STEM Tuesday

STEM Tuesday — Pests that Bug Us — In the Classroom

By on January 16, 2024   /   Pests and Bugs, STEM Tuesday  

 

 

Leeches, bedbugs, and plagues! These books focus on some of the plants, pests, and parasites that share our home and, in some cases, our body. The possibilities are endless for bug-filled classroom discussions and activities!

 

Plagues and Pandemics (History Smashers) by Kate Messner

A mix of conversational text and graphic panels takes readers on a world-wide tour of the best-known plagues and pandemics from ancient times to our current era. Highlights include the black death, smallpox, cholera, polio, Ebola, SARS, and Covid 19. The final chapter explores how to prevent the next pandemic.

 

 

Classroom Activity

Assign each student (or a small group of students) a pandemic or plague-causing microbe to research. Ask them to investigate their microbe using library resources or the Internet. Using the information they have learned, have the students created a “Most Wanted” poster for their assigned microbe. Have them include photos and/or drawings, scientific name, common name, symptoms, how it spreads, how to stop it, and more.

 

 

Itch!: Everything You Didn’t Want to Know About What Makes You Scratch by Anita Sanchez

To understand why things itch, we need to understand how skin reacts to stings and bites. This book includes the usual buggy suspects as well as plants with spines, needles, and poisons. Readers will learn how to identify poison ivy, how fleas leap, and how bedbugs talk to each other and they will find non-toxic alternatives for treatment.

 

Classroom Activity

When you have an itch, there are a variety of suspects that could be to blame. Is it a mosquito bite or a brush with poison ivy or something else? Let’s find out! Assign each student an itch-causing suspect, from bugs to plants to poisons. Have students research their itchy suspects using the Internet and/or library. Using the information they learn, students should create a set of clues to the identify of the itchy suspect. Have students read the clues to the class and see if the class can identify the itch-causing culprit.

 

What’s Eating You? Parasites – The Inside Story by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Neal Layton

You are a habitat to (potentially) more than 430 kinds of parasites! Text, accompanied by graphic panels, explores the lives of ticks, fleas, and other parasites that live on your body surface, the tapeworms, hookworms, and roundworms that live inside you, and some of the defenses your body uses against them.

Classroom Activity

How much do you know about parasites? Have students use this book and other resources to learn about parasites. How do people become infected with parasites? Where can parasites live in the human body? What body parts can parasites infect? What are the signs and symptoms of parasites? How can you reduce the risk of getting parasites? Have students use what they have learned to create a public service announcement about staying safe from parasites.

 

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Carla Mooney loves to explore the world around us and discover the details about how it works. An award-winning author of numerous nonfiction science books for kids and teens, she hopes to spark a healthy curiosity and love of science in today’s young people. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, three kids, and dog. Find her at http://www.carlamooney.com, on Facebook @carlamooneyauthor, or on X @carlawrites.

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STEM Tuesday — Pests that Bug Us — Book List

By on January 9, 2024   /   Pests and Bugs, STEM Tuesday  

Leeches, bedbugs, and plagues! These books focus on some of the plants, pests, and parasites that share our home and, in some cases, our body.

Bugged: How Insects Changed History by Sarah Albee, illustrated by Robert Leighton

This book is filled with “death, disease, and disgusting details…” There are bugs that swarm, bugs that devour crops, and bugs that transmit plagues. There are also stories about insects that have built entire industries (think: silkworms, honeybees). The author even provides a “TMI” warning for some sidebars, so squeamish readers can avoid the grossest (and coolest) stuff.

Itch!: Everything You Didn’t Want to Know About What Makes You Scratch by Anita Sanchez

To understand why things itch, we need to understand how skin reacts to stings and bites. This book includes the usual buggy suspects as well as plants with spines, needles, and poisons. Readers will learn how to identify poison ivy, how fleas leap, and how bedbugs talk to each other and they’ll find non-toxic alternatives for treatment.

Infestation! : Roaches, Bedbugs, Ants and Other Insect Invaders by Sharon L. Reith

Ants! Cockroaches! Bedbugs! To get to know these pesky invaders you’ll have to become an insect detective. This book shows how to follow the clues and fight back without reaching for the poison first. Text boxes include Invader Facts and cool extras.

Bizarro Bloodsuckers by Ron Knapp

Mosquitoes, lice, leeches … just thinking about these little bloodsuckers gives some folks the shivers. But these tiny vampires aren’t trying to be disgusting – like any other creature, they just want to live. Each chapter focuses on one kind of organism, including a couple that don’t bother people at all.

What’s Eating You? Parasites – The Inside Story by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Neal Layton

You are a habitat to (potentially) more than 430 kinds of parasites! Text, accompanied by graphic panels, explores the lives of ticks, fleas, and other parasites that live on your body surface, the tapeworms, hookworms, and roundworms that live inside you, and some of the defenses your body uses against them.

Plagues and Pandemics (History Smashers) by Kate Messner

A mix of conversational text and graphic panels takes readers on a world-wide tour of the best-known plagues and pandemics from ancient times to our current era. Highlights include the black death, smallpox, cholera, polio, Ebola, SARS, and Covid 19. The final chapter explores how to prevent the next pandemic.

Micro Mania: A Really Close-Up Look at Bacteria, Bedbugs & The Zillions of Other Gross Little Creatures That Live In, On & All Around You! by Jordan D. Brown

The mantra of this book is: you’re never alone. It introduces the microbes that live on your arms and legs, and some of the pests that live with us. Chapters have light-hearted titles, such as “You and Trillions of Your Close Personal Friends” and topics include foot fungus, farts, and the five-second rule.

Inside the World of Microbes by Howard Phillips

After exploring the basics of genetics and a brief survey of microbiology and scientists from 1665 to 1970, the book explores the beneficial, detrimental, fascinating, and extreme characteristics of bacteria, archaea, protists, and viruses. Full of stunning photos, many microscopic, and diagrams, as well as further reading and a list of U.S. and Canadian organizations.

The Case of the Flesh-Eating Bacteria by Michelle Faulk, PhD

Using an investigator’s voice and side cameos of crime detective Annie Biotica, this engaging book establishes the symptoms (“crime”), the microbes involved (suspect), and the tests and treatments for flesh-eating bacteria, pinkeye, ringworm, chicken pox, and measles. It includes microscopic photos, diagrams, and three additional cases for the reader to solve.

Little Monsters: The Creatures That Live on Us and in Us by Albert Marrin

Detailed photographs of these “creatures” and their effect on our bodies, accompany a conversational discussion of mosquitoes, mites, fleas, lice, worms, and the parasites or hyperparasites (parasites of parasites) that inhabit them. And highlights many scientists whose dogged tenacity and experimentation enabled the discovery (and in some case treatment) of these parasites. A final chapter offers ways to avoid parasites.

Sick! The Twists and Turns Behind Animal Germs by Heather L. Montgomery, illustrated by Lindsey Leigh

Humorous comic illustrations pair with a light-hearted, engaging narrative to take a deep dive into bacteria, fungi, and viruses and the scientists who’ve discovered amazing things about them. In learning how chimpanzees battle worms and stomach distress, frogs and ants fight against fungi, and a gator’s blood cell’s kill bacteria, they are finding possible applications and startling examples of symbiosis. Throughout, a bespectacled brain in a baseball cap, the “word nerd,” offers definitions and explanations and tons of “fun facts” and “not so fun facts” sidebars add to the fun.

And don’t forget American Murderer: The Parasite that Haunted the South by Gail Jarrow, a scary tale about hookworms that we featured back in October.

This month’s STEM Tuesday book list was prepared by:

Sue Heavenrich, author

Sue Heavenrich, who writes about science for children and their families on topics ranging from space to backyard ecology. Bees, flies, squirrel behavior—things she observes in her neighborhood and around her home—inspire her writing. Visit her at www.sueheavenrich.com.

Maria Marshall, a children’s author, blogger, and poet who is passionate about making nature and reading fun for children. When not writing, critiquing, or reading, she watches birds, travels the world, bakes, and hikes. Visit her at www.mariacmarshall.com.

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STEM Tuesday Special New Year’s Edition 2024

By on January 2, 2024   /   Articles, STEM Tuesday  

So this is the new year?

“People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”  – Albert Einstein

So this is the new year?

Huh? I thought it would be more shiny. Maybe even have a few sparkles here and there.

It just looks like any other recent day. It’s eerily similar to any other recent year.

Truth be told, though, that’s not a bad thing at all. 

Time and dates are human constructs. They are our method of drawing lines in the universal sand to give our lives a sense of order. We need our constructs of time so we can work together, show up on time, hit our STEM Tuesday deadlines, etc.

But, as Einstein so famously touted, time is an illusion. 

However, we’ve demarcated this time illusion of ours to give us a new year, a new month, a new week, a new day, a new hour, and so on. These are times to reflect, reload, and plan where we are and where we want to be.

Time is the present moment.

We have this time. We have this moment. 

Now, what are we going to do with it?

It’s a question that strikes the core of being human. Its answers are as varied as individual humans are varied. There are almost infinite opportunities available to us.

What will we do with the moments we are given in 2024 and beyond? 

One Day or Day One?

I heard this snippet a few months back regarding procrastination and goals. I can’t exactly remember the source and it’s driving me bonkers. Nevertheless, it has become my new philosophy for trying new things or starting new projects. It has also become a central theme of my school and library presentations to young creators.

For decades, I lived in a “One Day” world. I wanted to be a writer but I didn’t do the one thing necessary to be one. I didn’t write. Then came my “Day One” when I started a thing. I wrote a word. I wrote another one. I wrote a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter until I wrote an entire story! It was an amazing feeling!

If you find yourself saying, “One day I want to do _____”, then start this new year by saying, “I’m going to start _____ on this day.” and then do it.

The STEM Tuesday New Year’s post theme for 2024 is:

One Day or Day One?

One Day vs Day One. Try it and see how it works!

Create. Inspire. Improve. Share.

The Day One philosophy expanded into four steps for getting to the brass tacks and making stuff.

  1. Create – It all starts with an idea, a word, or a mark on a piece of paper. Just do it and see what happens. Make the thing only you can make. Make the thing only your brain can construct. Make the thing and throw it away or take another stab to remake the thing. There is no perfect. The important thing is to get your ideas down. Download the words or images from your brain onto paper and they become real.
  2. Inspire – Investigate and discover what makes you excited. What are the stories or the information that ignites a desire to tell others? If you’re struggling for inspiration, pay attention to where your mind goes when it wanders. It might be trying to tell you something.
  3. Improve – One gets better at doing a thing by doing the thing over and over intentionally. Intentional practice works! As with the creation, once the words or images are downloaded from your brain, they exist. If something exists, it can be improved. Do the work and then do it again.
  4. Share – This step can be the most difficult. It tends to be the most uncomfortable for a creator. Putting creative work out into the world indeed opens one up to criticism and judgment but you can learn so much from showing your work. What works? What doesn’t? What feedback is offered to improve the work? There’s also the inherent reward of developing connections with like-minded creators through the sharing of work. We’re all riding this creativity train together so we might as well make the ride a joy and a celebration. Writing and illustrating help us understand our place in our space. This understanding of our place is enhanced through sharing. 

Technology = Tools 

Although there were amazing STEM advances this past year, like inching closer to a return to the moon or the first FDA-approved gene-editing therapy for sickle-cell anemia, an end-of-year wrapup on one of the news channels called 2023 the “Year of AI”. There has been much talk and even more justifiable concern from the creative community about the use and abuse of artificial intelligence. 

Technology doesn’t create. Creators create. As loyal STEM Tuesday readers, we realize the fact technology is a tool. We know one can use tools positively or negatively. The choice of how we use AI is in our creative hands. If a technology is directly used to create something, that’s stealing. AI is powerful but we must remember AI does what it does by training itself on human creations, often without attribution or compensation. It learns how to write or create by mashing up all the inputs in its database.

Bottom line, 2024 will see an explosion of AI implemented with both good and bad intentions. It’s up to us to decide how we’ll use it and how others use our work.

Happy New Year from the STEM Tuesday Team! Enjoy every “Day One” of your creative journey throughout your entire “stubbornly persistent illusion” that is 2024. 

 

Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky) via Wikimedia Commons

 

Mike Hays has worked hard from a young age to be a well-rounded individual. A well-rounded, equal-opportunity sports enthusiast, that is. If they keep a score, he’ll either watch it, play it, or coach it. A molecular microbiologist by day, middle-grade author, sports coach, and general good citizen by night, he blogs about life/sports/training-related topics at:  www.coachhays.com and writer stuff at:  www.mikehaysbooks.com. Two of his science essays, The Science of Jurassic Park and Zombie Microbiology 101, are included in the Putting the Science in Fiction collection from Writer’s Digest Books. He can be found roaming around the X-sphere under the guise of @coachhays64 and on Instagram/Threads at @mikehays64.
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