Teacher Training By Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski

On a recent Saturday in May seventy early childhood teachers attended a six hour hands on science teacher training workshop I conducted. The workshop was sponsored by the Brevard Early Learning Coalition. Teachers were introduced to approximately 80 children’s literature titles that can be incorporated into the early childhood classroom to teach literacy, science, math, art, social studies, cultural concepts, as well as gross-motor skills. It was a great group of teachers. Very eager to actively explore numerous concepts through hands-on investigations. It was a great group of teachers, very motivated and eager to expand upon their existing content knowledge as they conducted a wide-array of hands-on-minds-on explorations. Throughout the workshop teachers were encouraged to share their successful approaches to integrating science within their own classrooms. The following 116 photos give a brief glimpse of the many explorations the early childhood teachers conducted during the day-long workshop. Teachers explored the following concepts:

How to incorporate children’s literature into the science classroom;

Exploring shapes and patterns in nature and man-made objects;

Building structures with various materials;

Animal camouflage;

Living creatures; and

Botanical concepts.

A few of the children’s literature books used during the workshop follows. The books can be purchased through Amazon via this site.

I had the wonderful pleasure of presenting a teacher training workshop during The Florida Reading Association 48th Annual Conference “Reading Lights The Way” held September 9-12th, 2010 in Orlando, Florida. The teacher training workshop I presented for the conference was entitled “Exploring Science and Math Concepts Through Children’s Literature.” The teacher participants attending the teacher training session were introduced to approximately 70 children’s books that can be used to teach science and math concepts. Teacher participants took an active role in the learning process as they  engaged in hands-on-minds-on, inquiry-based investigations to explore numerous science and math concepts. A major component of the teacher training workshop was to introduce teachers to effective strategies to implement when teaching about patterns in nature.  Additionally, the importance of structure and function in biological and physical systems was reinforced. Teachers used eye loupes and microscopes to observe numerous specimens including: seeds, pine cones, leaves, tree rings, rocks, sand, plastic models of snowflakes, kaleidoscopes, seashells, fish scales, bird feathers, synthetic animal fur, live pill bugs and garden snails. Additionally, teachers observed the geometric shapes formed by the soap bubbles, as well as tessellations. The following science and math concepts were explored:

• Camouflage
• Shapes in nature
• Patterns in nature
• Linear measurement
• Geometry in nature
• Tessellations and more….

Once again, another successful teacher training workshop. I thank all of the teachers in attendance, and the Florida Reading Association in selecting me as a presenter.

There are many children’s literature books that are available to teach science and math concepts relative to reinforcing patterns in nature, and structure and function.  Additionally, there are excellent teacher/adult references available as well. The following is a sample of the books used during the teacher training workshop. Aditional children’s literature titles that were used during the teacher training workshop can be viewed on the book page of this site. All children’s literature and teacher references can be ordered from Amazon.com from dr.dianateachertraining.com at no extra charge.