Creating Interest

The book I chose to do a book trailer for was The Rock Factory: A Story about the Rock Cycle by Jacqui and illustrated by Matthew Lilly. I chose this book because not only does it go through the different stages of the rock cycle for students, it includes illustrations which are bright and colorful. The illustrations on some pages have word blurbs to identify what is happening in the picture and explain the process for students.
Creating a trailer for a book is something I had previously never considered. I have had to write up book reviews, summaries, or other short writing pieces about a book I read previously, but none were done for the purpose the book trailer was. Creating the trailer was fairly simple using Animoto and I think could be effective in a classroom. Students generally seem interested when presented with technology or videos which would mean that by showing them a book trailer in such a way they would be engaged and more curious about a book than if the teacher simply told them about it standing at the front of the class. Further, because using animoto was as simple as it was, this activity could be a project for students to do in class as part of a book report, or even at the end of the year as a way to engage their classmates to read what they decided was their favorite book of the year.

Researching to Learn

When teaching science, it is important to consider the other content areas can or need to be included. It is often important to properly and effectively include reading into science, as explained in "Infusing Reading into Science Learning" by Zmach, Sanders, Drake Patrick, Dedeoglu, Charbonnet, Henkel, Fang, Leonard Lamme, Pringle (2006). By incorporating literature properly within a science curriculum, a student's scientific skills as well as their reading skills could greatly benefit. In the example opening the article, the literature read by the class on different types of waves lead to discussion and questions from the students. The discussion created not only lends itself to questions being formed by students, but can act as a for of informal assessment in that the teacher is able to gather information about what the class does and does not understand about what was read in their scientific literature. Additionally, the questions posed during discussion or because of the literature read creates an environment for inquiry, which encourages student curiosity and investment in their own learning. Additionally, by infusing scientific literature, students learn more scientific language by seeing it in use. In my own classroom, I would be sure to include this kind of scientific reading within my units. There are always ways to link science and reading, and in doing so I know my students would become more engaged in what we are learning about.