Join us on Thursday, March 28, 2024, from 7:00 to 8:15 PM ET, for an edition of Book Beat Live! about the Outstanding Science Trade Book List and the Best STEM Book List which highlights books published in 2023.

Using children’s books in the science classroom is an opportunity to bring together many competencies and skills that students need from our companion subjects of ELA and Mathematics. These books also provide wonderful opportunities to engage students in science topics.

In this seminar, Christine Royce, author of the Teaching Through Trade Books column in Science and Children and co-author of Teaching Science Through Trade Books, and Carrie Launius who served as chairperson for this year’s Best STEM Book List, will feature several of the books on both lists and share the ways literature can be utilized within science/STEM lessons and help develop the practices of science and engineering.

Takeaways include:

• Extending the making connections strategy from reading and language arts into the science classroom by using literature.
• Examining different instructional strategies that incorporate varied information sources.
• Determining points at which information can be incorporated into a lesson or series of lessons to support students in sense-making.

About the Outstanding Science Trade Books and Best STEM Book Lists: The 2024 Best STEM Book List are titles that provoke readers to examine the “thinking stance” of characters—not simply to look at actions and results. Best STEM Books winners explore problems and possible solutions in the scientific world and, where applicable, in the lives of the protagonists. Instead of focusing on specific content, the Best STEM Books emphasize real-world issues that cross disciplinary boundaries. The Outstanding Science Trade Book List provides books that help provide information that can contribute to the different DCIs. Both lists are vetted lists through a joint program with the National Science Teaching Association and the Children’s Book Council.