A Month of Celebrations
By Patricia Broderick and Allen Raymond

February brings Black History Month, Heart Month, Dental Health Month, and on and on; more than enough celebrations to keep your classroom humming. Whether you want just to introduce the celebration topics or you plan to build curriculum around them, there's a lot of material available to help.

Science help
For tested, exciting forensic activities, look no further. Jossey-Bass has provided Science Sleuths – 60 Forensic Activities to Develop Critical Thinking and Inquiry Skills, Grades 4-8. Forensics is such a hot topic now with many television features highlighting the science lab as the place to solve mysteries. Forensic activities help foster interest in science in general, and that's a good thing. In addition, interpersonal skills are emphasized by the very nature of the activities.

The activities follow a format of teacher briefing, activity preparation, activity procedure and summary and discussion. The approach starts from the very simple – training one's eyes to observe clothing – and grows to the sophisticated – testing hypothesis against facts.

The really nice part of this is that you can reproduce the background information and the activity sheets, which include great questions and activities requiring not only good research skills, but also creative thinking for completion. Grades 4-8, $29.95 plus s/h.
Jossey-Bass
www.josseybass.com

From NSTA Press
Standards-based success stories in science have been gathered into one volume, Exemplary Science in Grades PreK-4. There are 14 chapters, or models, recounting specific projects from around the country. All necessary information is given, right down to assessments of some of the projects. Topics covered range from "Adapting Science Curricula in the Kindergarten Classroom," to "Thinking Outside the Box: No Child Left Inside!"
The publisher has even included an integrated inquiry in an after-school setting. 191 pages, $19.95. If you're an NSTA member, the price is just $15.96. Add s/h in both cases.
National Science Teachers Assn.
www.nsta.org

Frog Heaven – Ecology of a Vernal Pool
We learned so much from this children's book! We really didn't know what a vernal pool was before Doug Wechsler, the author, took us on a visit to one.

We were taken through a year of vernal pool life ("frog heaven") and it was a fascinating journey.

The text is accessible for many levels of readers because of the spectacularly detailed photographs. Kids will spend a great deal of time poring over them. You'll want this one for your classroom library as well as for the media center. Just $17.95 at your local bookstore.
Boyds Mills Press
www.boydsmillspress.com

For February
There's a super series depicting six African American leaders in poster format, just right for celebrating Black History Month or for celebrating Black History all year. The men and women included in the series are Sarah Goode, Norbert Rillieux, Elijah McCoy, May Edward Chinn, Evelyn Granville and Benjamin Banneker. Their contributions cover the fields of math, science, engineering, invention, education and medicine. The fact that some of these individuals are lesser-known role models can help ignite possibilities for students. A booklet accompanies the package.

The posters were developed in collaboration with the Benjamin Banneker Association, Inc., a national nonprofit organization dedicated to mathematics education advocacy and leadership for African American students. A portion of the sales will benefit the Association.
Key Curriculum Press
www.keypress.com

Curriculum Associates
A new graded reading series from Curriculum Associates, "Building Levels of Comprehension – Multiple Choice and Short – Response Reading Questions" brings, step-by-step, a process for analyzing questions and strategies for answering them at four levels of comprehension. "Find It" (locate answers stated directly in a selection; answers are at concrete, literal level), "Connect It" (find and organize pieces of information; answers are at literal, analytical level), "Add To It" (combine clues and prior knowledge; answers are at inferential level) and "Go Beyond It" (think beyond information in the passage and apply prior knowledge; answers are at critical-creative level).

There is a Teacher Guide and Student Books. Each student book contains four lessons, one for each level of comprehension, three cumulative reviews and five final reviews.

Each 12-page lesson focuses on one level of comprehension and provides modeled instruction and guided instruction. There is a passage – about three-quarters of a page – and then the student is introduced to "Understand the Question" (think-aloud process), and "Figure Out the Answer" (a guided step-by-step process that enables the student to figure out the answer by way of a level of comprehension.) The questions in both Modeled Instruction and Guided Instruction are not in multiple-choice format or in short-response format. However, at the end of Guided Instruction, students are shown what that question would look like in both formats.

At the end of each lesson, a one-page summation feature allows students to think about, write, and verbally share (speaking/listening) what they have learned about the level of comprehension. A cumulative review follows each lesson beginning with the "Connect It" section.

There are also five final reviews with 12 comprehension questions in each review covering all four levels of comprehension or thinking. The levels of comprehension for the questions are not labeled in the student book, but are identified in the answer key in the teacher guide. In each final review students read a passage and then answer six multiple-choice questions and six short-response questions that elicit the four levels of comprehension.
The Teacher Guide contains all you need to make this program successful for the children and for you as a professional. There are suggestions for using the material effectively in the classroom, a suggested schedule for completing the program, a research summary supporting the series and an answer key.

It looks like a month of intensive use of this series (about 45 minutes a day) will do the trick for most kids. You can't beat that.

Curriculum Associates is known for its clean, simple strategies that seem to have built-in success for teachers and students. This series is no different. Visit the Curriculum Associates website for pricing and for more information.
Curriculum Associates
www.curriculumassociates.com

February, 2007, Vol.37, No.5