Unearthing 6th grade Earth Science

Gone are the days of middle school Earth Science consisting of soda bottle tornadoes and baking soda volcanoes. Environmental shifts are affecting the earth, perhaps more rapidly than before. Students are responsible for learning how the Earth has been shaped and what continues to shape it, connecting causes and effects throughout. Synthesizing and applying this information as learners deconstruct advanced vocabulary is tough. Some picture books that can help erode this mountain of concepts are Grand Canyon and The Street Beneath My Feet.

The Street Beneath My Feet to teach

S6E5. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to show how Earth’s surface is formed.

a. Ask questions to compare and contrast the Earth’s crust, mantle, inner and outer core, including temperature, density, thickness, and composition.

What Makes This Book Special? This fold out book is amazing. The author and illustrator used fold out pages to simulate the layers of the Earth from the street to the core. I apply Sipe's (2010) assertion that picture books help students develop new ways to see our world. Although, in his article, he is speaking to social change; this picture book allows students to see the world beyond what is right in front of them. The levels of illustrations help students connect the street to the middle of the earth, begging them to see the interconnectedness between the world above and below the street. Sipe (2010) also tells us that Picture Book authors and illustrators act deliberately to create "drama" with each page turn. From page to page readers are thwarted further and further toward the center of the Earth, creating anticipation for each forthcoming page. The relationship between the words and pictures in this book create a synergistic effect. This is created through pages that relay important information, but the "sum of its parts" holds a greater importance (Sipe, 2012). I am consistently drawn to books that have playful fonts or movement in the text. This book is no different. Phinney and Colabucci (2010) discuss how font can sometimes contradict the text. As an adult, I feel this way about the child-friendly font of this informational text, but that its purpose is to make the content more accessible. Further, its expressive typography (Phinney and Colabucci, 2010), plays with the positioning of text to allow students to dissect the illustrations while listening to the information.

Grand Canyon to teach...

S6E5. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to show how Earth’s surface is formed.

c. Construct an explanation of how to classify rocks by their formation and how rocks change through geologic processes in the rock cycle.

d. Ask questions to identify types of weathering, agents of erosion and transportation, and environments of deposition.

e. Develop a model to demonstrate how natural processes (weathering, erosion, and deposition) and human activity change rocks and the surface of the Earth.

What Makes This Book Special? My favorite part of this book is the fold out on the last page of the text that depicts the Grand Canyon over a four page spread. This illustration along with the other illustrations are beautifully drawn and gauche painted illustrations which give it an opaque and rich look (Matulka, 2008). After viewing the four page spread of the Grand Canyon, readers are welcomed to learn more about the Grand Canyon by reading the back matter. Back matter, like many other peritext features provide instructional opportunities (Martinez et. al., 2016). The back matter in this book is an obvious one, but this book also has borders around some of the illustrations which also offer instructional opportunities. I like this book for instruction because of the illustrations which are created with organic shapes and earth tone colors to convey the setting (Matulka, 2008) and the abundance of instructional opportunities in the peritext features (borders).