Have you ever wanted to take a trip to the cloud forest? Explore the Andes of Ecuador? Discover a new species? Well, you’re in luck.
With ¡Olinguito, de la A a la Z! / Olinguito from A to Z! travel to the unique world of the cloud forest and discover the bounty of plants, animals, and other organisms that live there as you help a zoologist look for the elusive olinguito, the first new mammal species identified in the Americas since 1978.
But the adventure doesn’t stop there. Anyone can learn to be an explorer in their own backyard with the FREE Olinguito Activity Kit and Teacher’s Guide. Learn more about the cloud forest and other ecosystems, including all of the important animals and the adaptations that help them survive in their environment with the many interdisciplinary ideas, projects, and engaging activities.
Content themes and subjects covered:
- ecosystems and habitats
- biodiversity
- animal classification and adaptation
- vertebrates and invertebrates
- competition and predation
- world geography
Here’s a preview of the types of engaging projects and activities you
can find in the Olinguito Activity Kit and Teacher’s Guide:
Observe an Ecosystem!
You will need:
- a notebook
- a pen or pencil
- a camera
- a thick, old paperback book
- Make note of the time of day you are making your observations. Is it morning, afternoon, or night?
- Record all the plants and organisms you see, including trees, shrubs, bushes, grasses, ferns, mosses, and lichens.
- Record all the animals you see in the area, including insects, arachnids, mollusks, reptiles, birds and mammals.
- Gather fresh leaves of different shapes from trees and shrubs and put each separately between two pages of the paperback book. You may also gather small, colorful flowers or flower petals and put them between pages of the book.
- Take photos of any animals you see.
- Once you are back inside, place the paperback book under a pile of heavy books for a week or two to let you pressed leaves and flowers dry.
Design a Cloud Forest Travel Brochure!
Have students research cloud forests in the Andes and create an informative and persuasive travel brochure. Include headings, subheadings, pictures, maps, and informative captions.
- Where are the cloud forests located?
- What plants and animals live there?
- Why are cloud forests valued or important?
- What is the climate like?
- What will people see there?
- What environmental and human threats do they face?
- Why should someone make the cloud forest his or her next vacation destination?
Create a Cloud Forest Alphabet or Glossary Book:
- card stock
- hole puncher
- string or twine
- art decorating supplies (crayons, colored pencils, markers. etc.)
Alphabet Book: include the featured letter, a picture or drawing of the featured plant or animal, and the name of the plant or animal.
Plant/Animal Glossary Book: include the name of the plant or animal, a picture or drawing of the featured plant or animal, and an informative description of the plant or animal: where does it live? what does it eat? how is it classified (plant or animal, vertebrate or invertebrate, etc.)?
For more fun and exciting activity ideas, including I-Spy Fun and learning to create you own pressed leaf print, check out and download the FREE Olinguito Activity Kit and Teacher’s Guide.
You can purchase a copy of ¡Olinguito, de la A a la Z! / Olinguito, from A to Z! : Descubriendo el bosque nublado / Unveiling the Cloud Forest on our website here.
Veronica has a degree from Mount Saint Mary College and joined LEE & LOW in the fall of 2014. She has a background in education and holds a New York State childhood education (1-6) and students with disabilities (1-6) certification. When she’s not wandering around New York City, you can find her hiking or hanging out with her dog Milo in her hometown in the Hudson Valley, NY.
I’ve heard writers question the value of providing teacherguides for their books. Those who have tackled writing one themselves havelikened it to writing those old books reports we were forced to produce back inthe day. Other writers hire professionals to write their guides for them,almost always having to pay for them out of their own pocket. Still others havebeen known to accept whatever the publisher is willing to provide, without anypower to change them. I’ve never contemplated the value for the writer to providea guide until recently when I’ve found myself searching or guides to help meprepare my lesson plans. Now I ‘d like to voice my opinion on these guides—yes,yes, yes!
After a few weeks of cursory internet searching, it’s clearto me that not all teacher guides are created equal. The one’s on thepublisher’s sites tend to be the worst, meaning less expansive, including onlya few questions on the specific book and none on the topic as a whole. Fromwhat I’ve seen so far, those who hire “professionals” to write for them are ofa mixed bag—some excellent, some sounding like they copy and pasted questionsfrom previous curriculum guides.
But, boy oh boy, some of these things are really well done.I’ve found some gems that are well written, well thought out, and even, I mighteven say, thought provoking. One particular favorite was a full18 pages longand had it’s own table of contents! It talked about how this particular bookcould be used successfully in ever subject matter from science to art, itprovided projects to do in an hour and those to pursue if you had time over afew weeks. I immediately noted down several books suggested to read toaccompany their book and headed to the library to check them out.
I don’t know if this kind of guide sells books but itdefinitely provides a potential reader/ teacher with a reason to choose to readit with their students. It can be quite a challenge to know which book tochoose to discuss a broad topic when you only have time to read one book. Thewell written guides offer ideas on the directions a teacher can go in and, whenso many of the options are intriguing, it makes it an easy decision to choosethat particular book.
The more I think about it, the more these guides might bethe first place to start for one’s own writing. Visualizing how your book mightbe used by a teacher, what themes could be picked out and what activities couldgrow out of the ideas the book focuses on. Writing with these ideas in mind,perhaps the final product will have that magic marketing appeal that allpublishers are looking for. This couldwork if we don’t spend a lot of time fussing over the guide as a procrastinationtool to writing the manuscript. On second thought, I’d better stick withreading them rather than writing them for now.
This is my fourth, but probably not the last, post focusing on
free resources from children's publishers. If you're just arriving, you'll want to check out the older posts to see parts
one,
two, and
three. If you know of a publisher I've missed,
drop me a line!
Salariya is the UK publisher of the immensely popular Scholastic "You Wouldn't Want..." series which I discussed in a
previous blog. They've put four of their more
popular titles online for direct viewing, with a little bit of interactivity and related links to boot. Check out the
online versions of
You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator,
You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy,
You Wouldn't Want to be a Polar Explorer, and
You Wouldn't Want to Sail on a 19th Century Whaling Ship. Some of the links which appear at the end of each book are equally worth exploring.
I don't know how I mentioned Candlewick in my previous post without noting their very cool
Ology World site. While this is topic of a post on this site, I'll leave it to you if you wish to sneak a peek. Your boys especially will like the interactive approach to nonfiction.
I also mentioned the Walker US site and the Walker Australia site, only to find out that there's an equally impressive
Walker UK site. The
Kids Den presents the user with th
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By:
Keith Schoch ,
on 1/9/2010
Blog:
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Under what rock have I been living? That's a question I asked recently over at my
How to Teach a Novel blog. A couple readers emailed and suggested I repost here, since the reason for that rhetorical question would be of interest to teachers here as well.
I simply wondered how it took so long for me to discover
Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. She's an author, and I do recognize
a couple of her titles. But somehow I missed that she has also created this
awesome site (absolutely
no hyperbole intended) containing
original teaching guides for
picture books (over eighty of these!),
YA books, and
poetry. All for free! All Tracie asks in return, if you like what you see, is that you buy a copy of one of her recent books. Pretty good deal: free resources
and one of her critically acclaimed titles for your library.
Personally I found teaching guides for many books I'm hoping to include in future blog posts including
Abe's Honest Words,
Daniel Boone's Great Escape,
River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, and
Mama Went to Jail for the Vote.
So in a rare move, I'll shut up now. I'll let
Tracie's web site speak for itself (and you can check out
her blog as well). Thanks, Tracie, for your terrific resources!
In a
previous post I shared about a dozen links to children's publishers who provided extensive resources for teachers (teaching guides, reading group guides, printable activities, and audio and video links).
Susan Stephenson, aka
The Book Chook, blogs regularly about books and literacy. Susan replied:
Loved your post! It brought me some new publisher sites, and reminded me of great ones I'd forgotten.
However... I couldn't help but notice, your list did tend to concentrate on the northern hemisphere! Check out these Australian publishers and see what you think. Most are much smaller than their US counterparts, so you won't find bells and whistles like flash games etc, but you will find solid support.
So I perused Susan's suggestions, and sure enough, she's right! Lots of gems here.
Black Dog Books was recommended highly by Susan because their teachers notes are "perfect to add value for both classes and homeschoolers, or just for parents who want to immerse their kids in all sorts of literacy activities." While each title features a splash page with a link to the teaching pdf, you can view
all teachers notes on a single page as well. Some really fascinating titles!
New Frontier is another excellent publisher, mostly of picture books and children's titles, some educational. They have great support in their
teacher notes, which include discrete learning objectives for each title.
can find in the Olinguito Activity Kit and Teacher’s Guide:
Veronica has a degree from Mount Saint Mary College and joined LEE & LOW in the fall of 2014. She has a background in education and holds a New York State childhood education (1-6) and students with disabilities (1-6) certification. When she’s not wandering around New York City, you can find her hiking or hanging out with her dog Milo in her hometown in the Hudson Valley, NY.
I agree! Commercial study guides run the gamut from pointless to brilliant. In addition, there are many online links on which teachers post their own guides after exploring and using a particular book. Those are the ones I tend to find the most helpful.
Ask teachers who've contacted you (for questions, Skype visits, etc.) to share their own suggestions and related titles with permission to post them on your website/blog for other teachers.
I wrote a teacher's guide for my upper middle grade novel, STAINED GLASS SUMMER. I'm a former seventh grade teacher, and so I had the skills to be able to write a guide. It was eye-opening! I learned a lot about my book which really surprised me. I worked on STAINED GLASS SUMMER for a ten year period and thought I knew everything about the story. But writing the guide, pushed me to think how it could be taught and I found themes I didn't realize were in the story. Here is a copy of mine:
http://www.mindyhardwick.com/books/stained-glass-summer/