Teachers, Parents, and Librarians
Welcome! Here you’ll find a host of resources – teacher’s guides, on-line learning, group games, and more — that will help you use my books in your classroom, library or at home. If you’re a parent or a librarian, don’t hesitate to explore the “teacher’s guides.” They can be a treasure trove for anyone looking to design learning opportunities for K-12 students. For hands-on activities, see the Fun Stuff.
If you’re interested in a presentation, school visit, Skype visit or in-school residency, please contact me here.
Teacher Guides
Curious About Connections Companion Guide
Designed for parents and educators of young children, this resource aims to spark inspiration and influence the way they perceive the world. This resource uses simple and easy-to-remember questions that guide children to NOTICE, WONDER and CONNECT. Curious About Connections conversations help children build the muscle to see not only objects— a bee, soil, a soccer player—but to imagine how the interconnections and interactions among those objects can create something entirely new. These conversations lay the foundation for early systems thinking.
MONUMENT MAKER ACTIVITY GUIDE — For Teachers, Librarians, Museum Educators and Caring Adults
This resource is intended to inspire classroom teachers, parents, caregivers, and museum educators to use Monument Maker: Daniel Chester French and the Lincoln Memorial (written by Linda Booth Sweeney, illustrated by Shawn Fields, Tilbury House, 2019) with their students, children, and visitors. Developed by the Concord Museum Education Department, this guide includes activities for close-looking, writing, art-making, community connections, and engineering. The culminating project brings together all these important aspects of monument-making that were central to Daniel Chester French’s process of creating the compelling works of art highlighted in Monument Maker.
Grade Level: 2nd – 5th and can be adapted for younger or older audiences.
When The Wind Blows: A Teacher’s Guide
This classroom guide, designed for K-3 students, offers activities to help teachers integrate When the Wind Blows into English language arts (ELA), mathematics, science, and social studies curricula. All activities were created in conjunction with relevant content standards in ELA, math, science, social studies, art, and drama. And systems thinking and Biomimcry as well!
Connected Wisdom: A Teacher’s Guide
The Connected Wisdom Teacher’s Guide is designed to guide educators through lesson plans that will explain living systems principles for their students. The guide was created with students aged10-18 in mind, but the lessons can be adapted for younger students.
The Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures Playkit
The Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures Playkit and its companion curriculum guide help students think deliberately about living systems in a farm setting, encouraging them to see the people, land and wildlife in and around farms, not as a set of interesting but disconnected parts, but as components of vibrant, living systems. Through the discussions, interactive system mapping activities, and games, students explore the hidden interconnections and dynamics within a sustainable chicken farm. Concepts such as feedback loops, time horizon, stocks/flows and waste=food are illustrated through a study of the relationships between elements of a farm pasture: chickens, cows, soil, plants, manure, etc.