Curriculum Tie-in

STEM Tuesday — Pair Up! Comparing Nonfiction Titles — Writing Craft and Resources

By on September 18, 2018   /   Common Core & NGSS, Curriculum Tie-in, Nonfiction Titles, STEM Tuesday  

Going Deep

Today we are diving deep into two books that intrigue me. Books about a horrific medical epidemic. Books that both use narrative and expository plus characters to carry readers through the story. Books that plunge into history and science plus ethical and moral questions.

Fatal Fever: Tracking Down Typhoid Mary, by Gail Jarrow

Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America, by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

Here’s a quick recap. In the early 1900s Mary Mallon carried typhoid but didn’t display any of the symptoms. She worked as a cook, was definitively linked to the infections of 49 people plus three deaths, was quarantined for decades, and became the brunt of a tabloid scandal. Both books look at the entangled story of her life, medical professionals who tracked her down, legal charges against her, and implications for constitutional rights.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org

In two books on the same topic, published in the same year, written with similar audiences in mind, there is much to compare and contrast. What I find most intriguing is that both bring the science and history to light while posing enduring questions.

Dive In

Let’s look at how these books each handle one of those enduring questions. Get ready for some close reading!

After years of quarantine, Mary was finally released on parole. The terms of her release specified that she take precautions to not infect others, not work as a cook, and report regularly to the health department. But Mary broke those terms, resulting in another major outbreak and her own exile until death. The question these authors chase: Why did she risk it?

Turn to pages 133-135 of Terrible Typhoid Mary and Page 118-120 of Fatal Fever to read the texts. Here are some things to look for. I’ve included a few things I noticed and am eager to hear what you discover.

Whose story is told first?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “Mary had no lawyer to help her.”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “Mary never said why she broke the conditions . . .”

What words are chosen to set the tone?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “A Witch!”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “. . . she struggled . . .”

In what way are other characters’ reactions used? Do those reactions support or denigrate Mary’s choice?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “The sympathy that people once felt toward Mallon evaporated.”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “Her temerity galled Soper.”

What words or phrases convey doubt or leave interpretation open?

  • Fatal Fever:
    • “Maybe she didn’t see the harm in it, . . .”
  • Terrible Typhoid Mary
    • “Is it possible that Mary simply didn’t understand . . .”

Are you caught up in this conundrum? Of how Mary, who had been presented as a person who stepped in to care for children when needed, could do such a thing? I am.

Where do these passages leave you emotionally? Did the balance between narrative and expository impact your reaction? Does either passage affect you more? Why?

On Your Own

Now, pursue a similar close reading on your own. There are plenty of other parallel topics in these books. Try the discussion of gall bladder removal: Fatal Fever (page 93) and Terrible Typhoid Mary (pages 136-137).

How do these authors use sequencing, language, and other characters? How do their skillful use of nonfiction devices impact you as a reader?

—-

By Heather L. Montgomery

Heather L. Montgomery writes for kids who are WILD about animals. Her latest book, Bugs Don’t Hug: Six-Legged Parents and Their Kids, is a perfect picturebook for a close read.

www.HeatherLMontgomery.com

The O.O.L.F. Files

Resources for Writers

https://www.rhymezone.com/

This site might have been designed with rhyming in mind but it has many other uses. Need a thesaurus? Angling for alliterative words? Looking for lyrics? Rhymezone’s got you covered.

https://www.google.com/alerts

Needing to go deep on a topic? Set up a Google alert on your topic. Day after day it will deliver the freshest posts straight to your inbox.

http://www.bluebulbprojects.com/MeasureOfThings/default.php

When you need a measurement comparison, The Measure of Things is your best friend! How large is 110 cubic inches?

  • 9/10th the size of a human stomach
  • 1/3rd the size of a bowling ball
  • 1 1/10th the size of an ostrich egg!
Back to Top

STEM Tuesday — Pair Up! Comparing Nonfiction Titles — In the Classroom

By on September 11, 2018   /   Cross-Curricular, Curriculum Tie-in, For Librarians, For Teachers, Nonfiction Titles, STEM Tuesday  

STEM TUESDAY from the mixed up files

Today is the 11th–a 1-1 pair-up. It’s an especially apt day for continuing with our Nonfiction Pair-up theme. One thing seems sure: You’ll double your impact if you pair nonfiction reading and writing with STEM lessons!

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgIdeas Worth Spreading

Fatal Fever and Terrible Typhoid Mary highlight the social, personal, and epidemiological stories around Mary Mallon, AKA Typhoid Mary. Exemplifying how science and society intersect and examining the difficulties of clashing social and individual interests, this pair offers high drama and nearly endless entry points for curriculum learning.

  • Does the government have the right to imprison someone to keep that person from infecting others?
  • Do students think Mary was “terrible?
    • Students can develop charts with reasons for answering yes and no–then take a stand with mock op-ed pieces.
    • Form student committees to answer “What to do about Mary?” Make sure they consider how any decisions impact Mary and the community.
    • Expand into current day concerns: “What to do when one of us gets sick?” Students might research the school’s policy regarding teachers and students with the flu or other infectious diseases. What options are available to keep everyone safe and able to work and learn?

Looking for infectious enthusiasm? Try these science learning ideas.

  • DragonFly TV’s five-minute GloGerm video offers information, an experiment, and visuals including a powder that glows under UV light and spreads throughout a kids’ bowling party.
    • Show the video to accompany their reading.
    • As an alternative, if you have the resources to purchase GloGerm and a UV light, use the video as an inspiration for a lesson plan. Demonstrate the spread of disease. Then challenge students to design their own experiments.
  • In this lesson using water, baking soda and a simple acid/base indicator, one student unwittingly becomes the source of an “infectious disease”, which then spreads to classmates.  The indicator ultimately reveals “infected” students. As an extension, track down the source student–your classroom’s counterpart to Mary Mallon in 1906, someone who unknowingly spreads disease.
    • What does the student feel like?
    • How would the class feel if all of the infected students now had to stay quarantined despite feeling well, or could no longer do whatever job they would like?
  • Students become disease detectives with an engaging interactive from PBS’s NOVA resource, which allows them to “interview” subjects, collect and review data, and explore possible sources of the new Dizzy Disease. Students might also compare and contrast their methods to those used by the typhoid tracker who found Mary Mallon, George Soper.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgSupport Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgAnd Now, Some Rotten Ideas

Students can become decomposers as they break down Rotten and Death Eaters, into their essential content and structure. For example, Elementary Nest’s lesson provides suggestions on conducting a compare/contrast of the facts in paired nonfiction titles.

 

Of course, this topic screams for a scavenger hunt! Send students searching for nonfiction text features. Check out these scavenger hunts  and, presto! You’ll gather your own list of features in no time. Follow up with a look at how these features help or detract from the reading experience.

  • How do various features help engage and explain information to readers?
  • Are there places in either book where the reader’s experience would have been enhanced by the addition or omission of a given feature?

After students digest the books in these lessons, they can recycle the morsels of information and insight into new, lively texts, composing short pieces based on the facts that they collected and incorporating the nonfiction text features to help readers engage with or grasp content.

Hands-on science experiences can add to the detail of student writing.  Start with this worm bin building activity and related resources from National Agriculture in the Classroom.

 

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.orgThis Trash Talk’s OK

Heighten student awareness of different styles and purposes of informational text with this trio. This Book Stinks is full of small bits of text and splashy graphics. Contrast it with Tracking Trash and Plastic Ahoy!, which combine storytelling, exposition, and characters into a cohesive whole. Challenge students to take passages from each book and turn them into the style and format of the other.

For science experiences, tie these books in with the decomposition books above (pair the pairs!). Or:

 

There’s so much you could do with this month’s theme, maybe you, too, should pair up; find a teaching partner to develop some of these ideas into great experiences for your students, or create your own.

  • What other book pairings can you suggest?
  • Which activities work for you?

Drop a comment to let us know!

 

****** BREAKING NEWS!!****

STEM TUESDAY from the mixed up filesSTEM Tuesday is now a monthly PODCAST! Tune into Jed Dougherty’s Reading With Your Kids Podcast on iTunes to listen to your favorite STEM Tuesday posts! The first airing is right here:  STEM Tuesday Podcast #1 

Be sure to join us the second Tuesday of every month for a podcast update!

 

Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano pairs writing nonfiction STEM books for kids with STEM educational consulting work.  Running on Sunshine: How Does Solar Energy Work? celebrates the innovative spirit and challenges behind engineering solar technologies, and received a starred review from Kirkus.

Back to Top

STEM Tuesday–Checking Your Health– Interview with Author Gail Jarrow

By on August 28, 2018   /   Common Core & NGSS, Curriculum Tie-in, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the fourth Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing Gail Jarrow about her Deadly Diseases Trilogy: Red Madness, Fatal Fever, and Bubonic Panic. Both Red Madness and Bubonic Panic are among this month’s featured health and medicine books. Gail is an author of nonfiction books for ages 8-18 about science and history (and the history of science). Her books have received many honors, including the YALSA Award Nomination for Excellence in Nonfiction, a Notable Social Studies Trade Book, Outstanding Science Trade Book, a NSTA Best STEM book, the Jefferson Cup Award, the Eureka! Gold Award, an Orbis Pictus Recommendation, as well as Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal Best Books and VOYA Honor Book distinctions.

                

Mary Kay Carson: How did these books come about?

Gail Jarrow: It all started with a chance discovery in the Cornell University library stacks.  While researching scurvy for a magazine article, I spotted a shelved book on pellagra written by a Cornell professor I had met. Even though the book wasn’t about my topic, I took it home to read because I knew her. I was fascinated by this forgotten nutritional deficiency disease that had once affected millions of Americans, and I sensed it would make an interesting story for young readers. But pellagra turned out to be one of those ideas you file away until you can figure out how to approach the subject. I didn’t figure it out for a dozen years. After online databases made it easier to access old medical journals and hundreds of newspapers from the early twentieth century, I saw a way to write Red Madness as a medical mystery using the experiences of doctors and pellagra victims. As part of my pellagra research, I used U.S. Public Health Service reports from the early 1900s.  I came across many entries about typhoid fever and plague, two other epidemic diseases that the Public Health Service was trying to control then. That was how Fatal Fever and Bubonic Panic were born from Red Madness, completing the Deadly Diseases trilogy. It goes to show that new ideas can be hiding anywhere and it pays to be receptive to them.

MKC: I have to ask, which of three deadly diseases—plague, typhoid, or pellagra—would you least like to suffer from? 

Gail: These diseases all have nasty symptoms. But without question, I would NOT want to contract plague. It is the deadliest of the three. We have effective antibiotics for plague today, but the survival rate is decent only if you’re diagnosed early on. If you have pneumonic plague, your chances diminish drastically. Antibiotics work against typhoid, though scientists are seeing more antibiotic resistance. Yet even before we had those drugs, the majority of typhoid victims recovered. Pellagra is easily treated with diet change or niacin supplements.

MKC: These books were quite a journey through primary sources. Do you have a favorite finding?

Gail: Of all the intriguing information I uncovered, my favorite had to do with typhoid fever. I discovered that the epidemiologist who tracked down Typhoid Mary had—four years earlier—helped end a typhoid outbreak in Ithaca, New York, where I live. He determined that the likely source of that outbreak was a creek not far  from my house. Finding connections to your own life makes history and science come alive. When I write for young readers, I look for ways to connect the book’s content to their lives. For example, in Fatal Fever, I included specific details about the physical effects of typhoid on college students in Ithaca, some of whom died during the 1903 epidemic. I found these case studies among infirmary records and other local archival material. Because the victims were teens, I hoped this would help my readers relate to a disease they probably knew nothing about.

MKC: Any further reading recommendations for fans of the Deadly Diseases Trilogy?

Gail: To add a few to the STEM Tuesday Checking Your Health list: Suzanne Jurmain’s Secret of the Yellow Death deals with medical sleuthing. John Fleischman’s Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story About Brain Science would grab young readers. I really enjoyed Poison by Sarah Albee and How They Croaked by Georgia Bragg, two books that use humor to explore medical topics.

Want to know more about Gail Jarrow and the Deadly Diseases Trilogy?

 

Win a FREE copy of BUBONIC PANIC: When Plague Invaded America!

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

Your host this week is Mary Kay Carson, author of Mission to Pluto and other nonfiction books for kids. @marykaycarson

 

Back to Top