Ecosystems and Evolution

A Picture Can Speak A Thousand Words!

Ecosystems and evolution, while still life-science, can be made more relevant. However, they need pictures. Picture books provide an engaging opportunity for students to evaluate the visuals associated with these processes. Books that I liked for this is Scaly, Spotted, Feathered, Frilled and Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas.

Scaly, Spotted, Feathered, Frilled to teach

S7L5. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information from multiple sources to explain the theory of evolution of living organisms through inherited characteristics. c. Analyze and interpret data for patterns in the fossil record that document the existence, diversity, and extinction of organisms and their relationships to modern organisms.

What Makes this Book Special? Matulka (2008) describes well composed picture books as having an array of pictures that create variety, harmony and contrast. This text includes harmonious, well-balanced, eye-catching pictures like the one shown in this post; but also pictures more representative of informational text such as diagrams. The picture in this post also exemplifies how the illustrator in the text creates movement in the pictures. Maltulka (2008) states that illustrators use scale, multiple focal points and shapes to create movement. These techniques are seen throughout the text.

Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas to teach

What Makes this Book Special? This text offers a variety of teaching opportunities--ecosystems, flow of energy, photosynthesis...each double page spread is loaded with information within short sentence structure. This information is highlighted with expressive typography, where the size, weight and position of the text (Phinney and Colabucci, 2010) is manipulated from page to page. The illustrator uses a blue, yellow and green color palette to signify the setting (water) and symbolize light (yellow) and energy (green). Through this, the illustrator uses color to convey meaning to the reader (Matulka, 2008).