Smithsonian Readers
Build literacy skills while challenging students to develop innovative solutions to real-world problems!
Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this dynamic series engages students with high-interest readers that highlight all aspects of STEAM: science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics. Through hands-on STEAM activities, students will learn how the engineering design process is used to solve real-world problems.
Overview
Challenge students to explore, collaborate, and solve problems through hands-on, minds-on learning.
- Strengthen literacy skills and content-area knowledge with high-interest readers and easy-to-implement lessons
- Learn to apply the engineering design process to solve real-world problems
- Promote the 4 Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity
- Make career connections with career advice from Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields
- Develop digital literacy skills with Interactiv-eBooks
- Support English language learners and model fluency with professional audio recordings
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Digital Resources
- Help teachers weave technology into their literacy instruction with a variety of digital resources.
- Reproducible student activity sheets to support hands-on learning. Interactiv-eBooks Interactiv-eBooks present material in unique and exciting ways to increase student interest.
- Engage students, build 21st century skills, and extend the reading experience with the digital writing and comprehension activities.
- Professional audio recordings Professional audio recordings of books model fluency and reading with expression to support all readers, especially English language learners.
Full-color Management Guide
- Integrate STEAM education into literacy instruction with support from the full-color Management Guide.
- Aligns to state and national college and career readiness standards, including NGSS for reading, writing, and STEAM lessons. Features lesson plan components, balanced assessments, differentiation strategies, and standards correlations to reach all students' needs.
- Balanced assessment opportunities that require students to demonstrate analytical thinking, comprehend informational texts, and write evidence-based responses.
- STEAM Education and the Makers Movement highlights the engineering design process and connections to the 5E Model and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
- Lessons include objectives, timelines, materials lists, introductory activities, before-, during-, and after- reading activities, reflection questions and activities, engineering design process checklists, and teamwork rubrics for accessible teacher implementation.
Nonfiction Books
- Each leveled reader features a high-interest topic based on Smithsonian content.
- The dynamic images and text features enhance the reading experience and build visual literacy.
- 15 titles, 6 copies each, 32 pages per book in digital and print formats.
- Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution.
- Connect to STEAM careers with advice from Smithsonian professionals.
- Learn how people use the engineering process to solve real-world problems.
- Each reader highlights all the components of STEAM and helps students draw real-world connections.
Culminating activity
- Help students apply what they have learned and provide them with an opportunity for teamwork and collaboration with the Culminating Activity. Challenges students to identify a problem and apply what they have learned about the engineering design process to find solutions.
Student Engagement
- Develop solutions for modern-day problems.
- Supports social and emotional learning through cooperative and collaborative activities in the Friendly Feedback Mini Lesson, which introduces students to effective, constructive feedback to encourage a more productive classroom.
- Culminating activity challenges students to identify a problem, apply what they have learned about the engineering design process to find solutions, and evaluate the process and outcome.
- Balanced assessment opportunities require students to demonstrate analytical thinking, comprehend informational texts, and write evidence-based responses.
Discover more
Smithsonian STEAM Readers Sample Pages
Want to see all the great resources that are included with this product?
This sample includes the following:
- lessons
- activity pages
- teacher's guide pages
- and more!
Building an Inquiry-Based Learning Environment
Teaching and learning using the inquiry-based instructional framework is beneficial for students in multiple content areas and increases student engagement.
In this professional development, learners will:
- Be instructed on how to construct an environment to promote inquiry-based teaching and learning across multiple content areas.
- Learn strategies that allow students to deeply analyze instructional sources as well as using documents that support inquiry practices.
- Practice strategies that develop students’ thinking processes to analyze and inquire about information in and out of the classroom.
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Strategies for Teaching Science
Facilitate students’ exploration of science and STEAM concepts with sound strategies for engaging, exploring, evaluating, elaborating, and explaining science concepts with real-world connections.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Engage students in the scientific process and inspire curiosity and perseverance while developing crucial critical thinking and problem-solving skills
- Captivate students’ minds with thought-provoking, open-ended discussions and projects.
- Cultivate content-area literacy by using related texts and writing prompts to help them explain their thinking
- Organize lessons and projects that provide interesting, content-based, grade-appropriate science activities that bring science to life for students
Training Options
Workshop
Best Practices Webinar
Building Knowledge and Vocabulary: Reading Complex Text Across the Content Areas
Students need to access rich, challenging text to develop knowledge, build vocabulary, and improve comprehension across the content areas.
As students tackle difficult text, a wide breadth of effective strategies are needed to uncover meaning and build students’ skillset.
In this workshop, educators will:
- Discover nuances within text that make it difficult
- Uncover student-centered ways to support knowledge and vocabulary development
- Encounter and practice strategies to empower students to conquer challenging text
Training Options
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
Get the Picture: Visual Literacy in Content-Area Instruction
Literacy learning is no longer limited to reading, writing, listening, and speaking; we must include visual communication and expand our definition of what it means to be literate.
This professional development workshop will provide teachers with new and engaging strategies to help students learn how to analyze and create through visual communication.
Based on practical research, this workshop offers concrete tools and techniques and a wide range of suggested visual texts to effectively use in the classroom from primary sources, to digital media and the visual-heavy world of 21st century learning.
Attendees will:
- Examine ways to incorporate visual texts into instruction, including what visual literacy lessons look like in the primary grades
- Practice instructional strategies and develop sample lessons for teaching students to read visual texts for understanding
- Practice and discover instructional strategies for guiding students to visually illustrate understanding, specifically targeting support for improving reading and writing
Training Options
Keynote Presentations and Webinars
Workshop
On-Site Coaching
Best Practices Webinar
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