I had an author visit this morning with Miss Lisa’s (aka Mrs. Swearingen’s) second-grade class at Asotin Elementary School. I’d been looking forward to this visit—not only because I love author visits, but because this one was extra special.
- First, I was in second grade when I initially realized I was interested in writing and illustrating for children.
- Second, we had a full hour for the visit, which provided an opportunity to engage in an activity with The Sheep Magnet and the scientific method.
- And third, Miss Lisa’s class beta read The Sheep Magnet last November, before the book was published. The feedback they shared helped me know if tricky parts of the story made sense and if there were any tweaks I should make.
The visit had three parts—
- Sharing the story (short intro, interactive story time, Q&A)
- Sharing about Easter eggs in the story
- Interacting with the scientific method
I’m gonna fast forward past the first two parts—not because they’re boring or not fun, but because the I want to focus on the scientific method portion in this post 😊 (If you really wanna hear about the others, there are—or will be—videos for them, and/or we can schedule a video or in person visit 😊).
While illustrating The Sheep Magnet, I made a poster of the scientific method to put in Pete’s workshop. I shared a copy of that with the students, along with a worksheet I created that walks you through the steps of the scientific method. (If you click on either of the images below, you can download the PDFs.)
We worked together to fill out a worksheet for Pete’s attempt to get rid of sheep using reverse magnetism. After that, students teamed up to fill out worksheets for some of Pete’s other attempts to get rid of sheep, then shared the results.
It was cool to see how the students worked through the problems together, how they divvied up the tasks and took turns sharing their results when we were done. In one group, two students wanted to be the scribe, so they played rock, paper, scissors to determine which one would write 😊 And when the groups shared their results after, each person in the group took a turn telling part of their answer.
Although I “prepared” for an hour, we had an hour and fifteen minutes to work with. And we ended up taking up the whole of it 😊 The kids were amazingly attentive and engaged during that long span, and they asked great questions and shared great answers (they also had super creative ideas for ways THEY would try to get rid of sheep 😊).
And now I’m gonna backtrack to the beginning of class. When I walked in, the students were just finishing a math lesson. They were talking about the Commutative Property of Addition. It was fun to see how energetic and engaged they were, and how different kids raised their hands to add the part of the answer they could remember. They inspired me to make a little worksheet, which I shared in the video. I’m posting a copy of that worksheet below, which includes a second page with blanks for students to fill in their own numbers. (Feel free to click on it and download it.)
If you’re looking to inspire STEAM-related creativity this summer, The Sheep Magnet is full of connections that can help make connections 😊 You can order it from your favorite bookstore or online retailer, or get a direct discount by ordering softcover copies here, or hardcover copies here. If you order a copy from any of these venues and let me know, I’ll send an autographed bookplate to add to the book.
Happy creative problem-solving,
Bernice