Picture Book Science Lessons: Over and Under the Snow

Hi!  It's Ari from The Science Penguin.

I've been working on a new blog series, Picture Book Science Lessons. Each post contains a favorite picture book for teaching science concepts and activity ideas to accompany the book.  This post contains affiliate links.

Topic: animals in winter, animal adaptations

Literacy Connections: figurative language, descriptive writing

Focus: First of all, the illustrations in this book are beautiful.  I love how the story shows a boy's observations of life above ground in the winter as well as life under the snow.  Students learn how living in the subnivean zone helps animals survive through winter.

Title: Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner

Discussion Questions

After reading the text aloud to students, have a group discussion or mini-discussions in small groups.

• What characteristics do the animals seen above the snow have in common?
• What must shrews, voles, and deer mice do to prepare for winter?

Research

Group students in teams of 2-3.  Assign each group one of the animals from the story to answer the essential question: How does each animal survive winter?  Present new information to the class.   Information about many of the mammals can be found on Hinterlands Who's Who.

Observations Chart

On the first or second read-aloud of the story, students write the information about each animal discussed in the text.

Click the pic to download the chart.

Download the Printable

You can download the free Over and Under the Snow printable here.  Have fun!

More Books

Looking for more picture book with science connections?  Check out my Picture Book Science Lessons blog series. 

Literature Journals

Aloha everyone it's Corinna from Surfin' Through Second!  Just a quick post today to share with you how I use literature journals to enhance reading skills in my classroom.

I stock up on composition books and use them quite a bit during our literacy time.

Essentially it's a place to keep everything together and students can go back and review lessons and skills learned. Here are a few examples of how we use them.

There are so many different ways you can use literature journals in your classroom.

-Recording Literature Circle Activities
-Recording Text Evidence
-Answering Text or Teacher Questions
-Enrichment Activities

I also have students cut and paste interactive activities from our reading series or items I have created or purchased.

Do you use literature or interactive journals in your classroom? Feel free to share how you use them!

Content Integration and Close Reads

Hey y'all! I hope everyone has gotten off to a fab new school year. I have been in school for about 2 months already. But I can't complain because tomorrow starts my first fall break ever! A whole week off after 7 weeks of school. I really hope our calendar for next year keeps this break because kids and adults definitely needed it!

Today I wanted to do a throw back post to one of my own more popular posts about integrating Close Reads and Social Studies. I know there isn't enough time in the day to really set aside time to teach all subjects the way they should be taught, so I decided to pull my literacy standards into my Social Studies time....or my Social Studies standards into my literacy time.....either way works! I hope you are able to snag a few tips from my post that you can read by clicking {here}. Now that I am only teaching middle grades social studies, I find myself pulling in literacy standards left and right. It not only helps reinforce important reading and writing skills, but it also helps out my fellow literacy teachers.

And because it's getting to be my favorite time of year, I just have to say, "Happy Fall, Y'all!"

Heather- 2 Brainy Apples

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