Wild Discoveries, Wacky New Animals

You just never know if you are going to run into at a conference!

After our session was over it was lunch time and boy was I hungry. We did a quick pack up, abandoned it all in the room and headed to the lunch. We ended up sitting at a table with author Heather L. Montgomery. We started a conversation with her and she told us she was an author from Alabama and she began telling us about her book. Sarah immediately recognized it from last years book fair. It's called Wild Discoveries Wacky New Animals. How cool is that frog on the cover?

I went to Heather's website http://www.heatherlmontgomery.com/ and found a wealth of teacher resources to go with this book. On her website you can find

* A list of book pairs to go with Wild Discoveries

* A 40-page "Wild About Learning Unit"  (Word or .pdf files) that is aligned to the Common Core.

* Youtube video links to videos of some of the animals.

* "Which is the Wackiest?" survey and bar graph of results.

* Interview of Heather Montgomery talking about her this book.

All of this information is found on the homepage of her website...just scroll on down.

It turns out that the Scholastic Book Fair booth had the book on sale for $3.99 so I quickly snatched a copy. Looking it over I don't think it would be great for my young students. I would recommend it for grades 4 and up. I do see some things that I could adapt from the book. I particularly liked how the left side of each page gives the name of the animal in large bold print, the scientific name, the animals size, what it's role in nature is and where it was discovered. 

The animals role in nature as either a carnivore or herbivore are terms I can easily teach my students. It brings to mind Brod Bagert's "Food Cheer" poem which can be found in his book The Gooch Machine. My kids love learning that cheer!

Due to Fall Break plans I was unable to attend Heather's sessions on Saturday. I thought there were some really good sessions on Saturday so I was bummed to miss her presentation and others. I am passionate about science and I can only imagine her session would have been great to attend. I did visit her website and found her fees to visit a school aren't too costly so I am thinking about maybe having her visit.