Body Actions is the kind of informational book with enough facts to be useful in a science unit and it’s still engaging enough to read for pleasure. Shelley Rotner’s fabulous photographs of kids are the basis for all the pictures,  and David A. White made the illustrations that go over the photos and show what’s happening inside each body. Facts like “you have 206 bones in your body, and more than 50 are in your hands” are shown with a photograph of a kid’s hands playing the piano and one hand has all the bones drawn inside it. Each body system – skeletal, cardiac, digestive, etc. – is represented in kid-friendly terms.

Share Body Actions with your students. After you amaze them with all the cool anatomy facts (you have about 650 muscles in your body!) let them test out their own personal models. In the book you’ll learn that “you take about 14 breaths a minute.” Get out the stopwatch and have your students test this for themselves. You can do these experiments as a whole class or create a center for students to try them in small groups or pairs. Students can time themselves for one minute and count each breath. Then, create challenges. How many breaths do you take after 20 jumping jacks? How many breaths do you take after sitting quietly for two minutes? Do your students blink about 15 times a minute? If your digestive tract is about six times longer than you are tall, measure yourself and multiply your answer to find out just how long that tract is.

If you have a digital camera and a printer, take photos of your students in action and let them draw in on the printed photo their digestive system, their lungs, their heart, etc. Or get the big rolls of paper out, let students trace each other’s bodies so they can make a life-size drawing of their amazing interiors.  Spend a little extra time outside if you can, and put those bodies in action!

For more information, please visit shelleyrotner. com.

I put off reading Readicide at first because of the subtitle “how schools are killing reading”. I know so many educators pouring every ounce of their energy into our students, and as someone with over 20 years of working with students, I took the title as yet another criticism of teachers. Gallagher, however, is a classroom teacher himself, and his indictment is not of those of us in the trenches so much as a call to reevaluate an educational system that focuses on test scores instead of lifelong learning.

For me, the big “yes!” points were:
1. Our kids need a variety of interesting fiction and nonfiction books, magazines, articles, etc. and time in school to read for enjoyment. We librarians are dedicated to getting great reading material in the hands of kids, so if you have a tough student who doesn’t seem interested in reading anything, call a librarian – we’ll hook you up.

2. Reading is more than just decoding the words on the page – prior knowledge is key to understanding. I consider myself to be good at reading, but put an installation manual for an appliance in front of me and I’m quickly stumped. I know what each word means (I think) and yet I don’t have the experience to get how it all goes together. Our kids need what Gallagher calls “a broad knowledge base” to succeed, and so we need to read aloud historical fiction, science, poetry, etc. and discuss of all kinds of topics. We can bring in lots of “real-world text” like magazines, speeches, essays, editorials, news stories (in paper or electronic form from reliable resources).

3. Just like movies have trailers to draw in audiences, a good booktalk can hook readers who’d otherwise pass up a great book. Simply having the books on my shelves won’t pull in every kid. It’s worth my time to “sell” books to individuals and classes.

The book is packed with facts and practical information but still is a quick read. I highly recommend picking it up this summer. It’s not a light-hearted beach read, but it will inspire you to find new ways to help all our kids love to read. Let me know what the big “yes!” points were for you!

Iggy Peck, Architect written by Andrea Beaty and illustrated by David Roberts will grab young readers on page 1:

“Young Iggy Peck is an architect
and has been since he was two,
when he built a great tower – in only an hour -
with nothing but diapers and glue.”

The story about a young boy who loves to build and saves the day with his architectural skills is told in fantastic rhyme. (Hello, Common Core Standard of Phonological Awareness!) But the beauty of this book is that after you’ve used it in reading lesson, it inspires all kinds of science, art, and math extensions.

When his class is stranded on a small island, Iggy teaches his classmates how to construct a suspension bridge from “boots, tree roots and strings, fruit roll-ups and things”. After sharing Iggy Peck, Architect, pull out Bridges by Seymour Simon to learn more about suspension bridges and how they work (and pat yourself on the back for Integrating Knowledge and Ideas, you Core Standard wizard.) You may choose to forgo tree roots and boots, but challenge your students to plan and construct a suspension bridge, perhaps between two tables, with materials like string, paper, straws, etc. Students can use graph paper like David Roberts did when they draw up their plans, measuring actual distances and then scaling the distances down on paper before they build. Your students will be measuring, counting, drawing, predicting, and revising as they work. Keep architecture books like Bridges! Amazing Structures to Design, Build, and Test by Carol A. Johmann  and Elizabeth J. Rieth, or the wonderful David Macaulay books on hand for those inspired by Iggy Peck. As Miss Lila Greer, the teacher in Iggy Peck, Architect realizes:

“There are worse things to do when you’re in grade two
than to spend your time building a dream.”

For more information about the author, go to andreabeaty.com.

For more information about the illustrator, go to davidrobertsillustration.com.

If you’ve ever wanted to see your own writing on a bookshelf, if you have students who want to be writers, if you love kids’ books and always wondered about the process, please check out my new page by clicking the tab at the top of the website. And don’t forget to let me know which Groundhog you’d like to see, or not to see!