How to Make a Read Aloud Science Booklet
1. Pick a Disciplinary Core Idea
| K-ESS3-A Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. | K-PS3-B Conservation of energy and energy transfer - Sunlight warms the Earth's surface |
2. Figure out what kinds of investigations or activities students could do to explore this idea. Search the web for lesson ideas. Include preschool play activities.
| a way kids could learn what things live in a place - young kids can pick leaves | a way kids could learn how the sun warms the earth - young kids can measure temperature with their hands |
4. Draft a driving question that a student investigation could answer.
| are there different leaves in different places | is it cooler in the shade / is it hotter in the sun |
5. Find or create a read aloud book that could lead to the driving question. Check out guided science readers for existing books. To create a book, start with the text. What are the simplest words that would help spark a discussion about the driving question?
| plants, leaves | sun, shadow, shade |
6. Create an idea for a story using the question and words
| a list of leaves from a real place that kids could pick leaves in, like a lawn | an animal that moves into the shade, like a cow that moves under a tree. |
7. Draft the text for the story. You will need an opening line to set the stage and a closing line to end the story. The other lines should use a repetitive structure or should advance a narrative in small simple steps. Keep words and sentences short!
| Lawns can have many plants. Plants can have leaves like lines. Plants can have leaves like ovals. Plants can have leaves like hearts. Plants can have leaves like waves. Plants can have leaves in threes. Plants can have leaves like teeth. What plants can you find in a lawn? |
The sun is up. Hello sun! |
8. Check the readability of your text. Decodable words are words that students can decode using the rules of phonics. What is actually decodable depends on how far along a teacher is with the alphabet. Sight words are the most commonly used words in the English language. Many don't follow phonics rules, but because they are so common, learning them by sight makes reading fluently easier. Lists of decodable and sight words are available on the web. Everything else is a vocabulary word. Use a readability test to see if the sentence structure is appropriate for the audience.
| 49 words; 19 unique words; 2 decodable words (can, a); 3 sight words (have, like in); 14 vocabulary words (lawns/lawn, many, plants, leaves, lines, ovals, hearts, waves, threes, teeth, what, you, find) Flesch reading ease - 100; Flesch-Kincaid grade level - 0 |
39 words; 19 unique words; 3 decodable words (sun, a, up); 5 sight words (the, go, to, down, is); 10 vocabulary words (hello, cows, higher, tree, casts, shadow, shade, lower, home, moon) |
9. For the art, you can use drawings or photos. The most important goal is to make sure the picture matches the words and advances the understanding of the idea. Not great art. You should story board the book with cartoons so you know where you are going with your illustrations. Convert your story board to illustrations by making drawings, finding free images on the web that you can trace or copy and paste, by taking photos, or by asking for help.
stage a photo of a lawn mower on a lawn to show different kinds of plants and the edge of a sidewalk |
draw a cartoon to figure out where the sun should be in the sky as the story progresses, and what it should look like |
This makes designing a book for a lesson look like a simple linear process. It is not. You will need to go back and forth between the specific question, the text, the art and the requirements for demonstration of understanding (DCI + SEP + CCC in 3 Dimensional Standards) as well as the actual lesson plan. See the lesson outlines for how a 6 part lesson comes together. Don't get discouraged. It gets easier!