Mentor Text Linky-Science!!

I *love* teaching science, and tomorrow is Earth Day (and coincidentally, my birthday!).  I'm busy planning our Earth Day Birthday celebrations, complete with some art, reading, writing, and science activities.  So in keeping with my science theme of the day, I'm linking up!  You should, too!

I'm linking up with the Collaboration Cuties today to share a science text and resource that we love in 4th grade!  I'm convinced that the textbook is just one resource for our science learning, so I've gone on may quests to find other books and sources of information to present to our 4th graders.  They need to know that information can come from all kinds of places and no one resource is ever "good enough".


Last year I found these great science "graphic novel" texts for ages 8-11.  Every single book in the series that I found aligned perfectly with my curriculum standards for science and had great use of content vocabulary.  It is so fun to be able to hand these books out to students knowing that it will cover everything we go over in our science class.  Last year I had a little $$ to spend on our classroom, so I went ahead and bought a dozen copies of the Sound book, plus a copy of a few others that match our curriculum.  I like this particular book because it is more complex than general sound (sound = vibrations) and gets into the parts of the ear, how sound is measured, and how sound travels.  The illustrations are great for showing students what we're talking about (as far as graphic novels go, they probably aren't the greatest illustrations ever, but they certainly serve their purpose well in the classroom).  We use a bunch of different graphic organizers to help gather ALL of the information found in this text.

  

I've never talked to any other teachers who have used these books, so I'm curious if anyone else has heard of them.  If so, do you like the other books in the series?  There is so much wonderful information crammed in them, that it's not a book you can do in one day.  Next year I may use it during guided reading... oh the possibilities!

Happy Sunday!