This book is packed with projects, activities, and experiments that allow students in grades 1 to 4, to relate to and get excited about the concepts of rock formation, mineral and rock types, the earth’s structure, fossils, and forces of friction and gravity. It contains lots of neat teaching tricks, such as explaining the pressure on the Earth’s core by laying on the floor and having someone rest over you to feel their force as the earth does and using a hardboiled egg to represent layers of the earth. – (TV)
Nomad Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-934670- 61-3 (pb), 92pp., US $12.95 from www.
ipgbook.com
Becoming
Scientists Inquiry-based learning in sci- ence class can be a challenging endeavour even for experienced teachers. Becom-
ing Scientists: Inquiry-Based Teaching in Diverse Classrooms, Grades 3-5 is a helpful resource to get started. In this
book, authors Rusty Bresser and Sharon Fargason emphasize the importance of open inquiry in fostering scientific understanding and critical thinking skills. The authors delve into how to facilitate student-centred inquiry in the classroom. Of particular interest is the focus on Fargason’s own class- room, where students ask questions, design experiments to find answers, and analyse their results to come to a deeper and more powerful understanding of scientific concepts. While these students are in grades three to five, many of the strategies are still relevant with older students. – (EB)
Stenhouse Publishers, 2013, ISBN 978-1- 57110-978-1 (pb), 180 pp., US $20.00, from
www.stenhouse.com
The Triple Focus The title of this book, Triple Focus, may evoke the phrase ‘triple bottom line’. However, in this densely packed, quick read, the topic is social emotional learning (SEL) and the value in whole child education. The three focuses of the method are inner, outer, and other. Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge de- scribe core abilities taught in top SEL
programs, and fol- low this with chap- ters on Focusing on Ourselves, Tuning into Other People, Understanding the Larger World: Systems Think- ing and Systems Intelligence. In their final chapter
focused on joining SEL with systems education, the authors note that when either topic is taught well, “there is a natural emphasis on experience-based lessons, and on project-based learning, action learning, and cooperative learn- ing.” As described, this program has students engaging what is important to their lives and asks them to take control of their own learning. The Triple Focus will provide case studies and ideas of use to any educator working to apply social emotional learning systemically in their educational setting in order to better prepare children for their future. – (PM)
More Than Sound, 2014, ISBN 978-1- 934441-78-7, (pb), 78 pp., US $14.95, from
www.morethansound.net
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