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Content Conversations

Activities that support the STEM Picture Books designed to get students talking about the core concepts to help build conversational fluency.

UNCOVERING STUDENT IDEAS IN SCIENCE BOOK SERIES  - this set of 12 books each offers a wealth of ideas for using formative assessments, content conversations to really unpack student thinking in science.  All of the below ideas are examples from these resources. 

WOULD A MAGNET WORK ON THE MOON - this conversation asks students to explore the idea of magnetism and whether a new environment like the moon would alter the phenomena.  Great for really probing the understanding.  

CATCHING A COLD? - this conversation is based on the question of what situations can actually contribute to a person "catching a cold."  This really asks students to explore some rumors and false understandings about what things humans can do or not do that might contribute to catching an infection like a viral cold. 

CHINESE MOON - this conversation is based on the question of what phase of the moon people see around the earth every night, does it change based on their location?  This concept can help everyone really understand the sun, earth and moon system. 

ROTATE AND REVOLVE - when learning about the sun, earth and moon system as well as the origin of time words like day, month and year, these words are both important and often very confusing. This is a quick activity exploring their definitions.

ME AND MY SHADOW- this conversation asks students to think about how their shadow changes throughout the day and why that happens.  Connects well with the exploring the sun / earth / moon system from books like Somewhere in the World 

IS IT TECHNOLOGY? - this conversation asks students to consider twenty different pictures and make a decision whether it is a "technology" or not.  Leads to some great conversations as students justify their answer and expand their definitions of tech. 

ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESS SORT- this conversation asks students to put eight steps of the engineering design process in order, building great conversations about how the problem solving process really works. 

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?- this conversation asks students to think about how an engineer might go about solving a simple problem, presenting a simple dilemma that has two very possible solutions and asking them to choose which path they prefer. 

IS IT ENGINEERING?- this conversation presents ten different problems each in need of solutions, asking students to explore which of the problems will require engineering to solve and which might be other types of problems.  

ATOMS AND APPLES- this conversation asks students to think about how the width of an apple compares to the width of an atom, offering several comparisons and asking students to pick the most accurate.  Great conversations about scale factors.  

RENEWABLE OR NONRENEWABLE? - this conversation asks students to think about various earth resources and determine which are renewable and which are nonrenewable.  Great conversations exploring the nature of this concept. 

GIANT SEQUOIA - this conversation asks students to think about where all the matter that forms giant trees come from, and really pushes the thinking on the nature of chemical processes in plants. 

FOOD FOR PLANTS - this conversation asks students to think about what plants use for food, offering 12 different resoutces that make sense for consideration and asking students to really dig deep into how plant biochemistry works. 

WHAT IN THE WORLD -  a quick exercise looking at pictures of six things up close to try to  identify what it is. Can be a soft start activity (something available as students come into the room or adults come into a workshop) or a normal full group activity.

WALKING MODEL OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM - this activity explains how to create a 1 to 10 billion scale model of our solar system that students can walk to begin to learn the vastness of space.  Great addition to My First Book of Planets readaloud. 

NEXT TIME YOU SEE A . . . MENTOR TEXT STUDY BY EMILY MORGAN - this activity builds on the 9 Next Time You See A . . . picture books and has an activity where students create their own version around a topic they know a lot about or are very curious about. Great project based learning model for literacy and STEM. 

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