Author: Mary Wade

I taught 5th grade at a PYP International Baccalaureate school in Utah for 4 years, and am currently on extended parental leave until my kids start school. In between the roller-coaster adventures of motherhood, I enjoy educational blogging so I can stay in the loop and keep learning! Snapshot favorites: Student voice & choice. Twix bars. Global classrooms. Calvin & Hobbes. Outlandish sewing projects. Teachers learning from teachers. Modeling daring to students.
Posted on

Inquiry into SDGs: Decent Work & Economic Growth

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

A good summary of the Decent Work & Economic Growth global goal is as follows:

“The SDGs promote sustained economic growth, higher levels of productivity and technological innovation. Encouraging entrepreneurship and job creation are key to this, as are effective measures to eradicate forced labour, slavery and human trafficking. With these targets in mind, the goal is to achieve full and productive employment, and decent work, for all women and men by 2030.”

United Nations Development Programme

Below are resources intended to help students think about how they might make personal connections to this goal. How does it impact their local areas? How might their choices help?

Resource #1: PeopleMovin: interactive online graph of migration flows across the world


Resource #2: Fair Hotels advertisement by Naissance

Resource #3: My Brother by Audrey Yeo

Resource #4: One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference by Katie Smith Milway & Eugenie Fernandes

Provocation Questions:

  • What is “decent work” like?
  • What are the benefits of a human having a job?
  • How is job availability changing?
  • What are the effects when a person is unable to work? For themselves? For their families? For their communities?
  • How is work connected to healthy economies, communities, and countries?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

7 More Videos That Provo Science Rocks

I seem to have an unquenchable thirst for curation. I’m always squirreling away bookmarked videos; reorganizing my photos in a way that family can really enjoy; searching out connections among picture books that I can compile into lists for future students.

Perhaps that’s the next challenge of living in an era of almost limitless information and content? To learn to sift, connect, and extract what matters most to us. And while this particular post is perhaps broader in concept than my inquiry provocation posts, I found myself drawn to sharing anyway.

So, nearly 3 years after my first “7 Videos that Will Prove Science Rocks” post, I’m sharing a few more that I find inspiring. What are ones that you love? Which ones might fill your students with awe and wonder?

#1: Gravity by Clemens Wirth

#2: Seasons – in a Small World by Beauty of Science

#3: Look Up! The Billion Bug Highway You Can’t See by NPR

https://vimeo.com/21493827

#4: Magnetic Fields in Slow Motion by Magnetic Games via The Kid Should See This

#5: To Understand is to Perceive Patterns by Jason Silva

#6: States of Matter by Peter Tomaszewicz

#7: Upside Down & Inside Out by OK Go (Other contenders are The One Moment & This Too Shall Pass)

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

5 Picture Books for Trusting Child’s Development #TeacherMom

Alternatively, I might have entitled this, “5 books that remind us of the importance of self-regulation, fostering independence in childhood, and approaching parenthood as a gardener more than a carpenter.”

Whether it’s allowing our children to pick up bread at the grocery store or limiting the endless amounts of structured time in favor of “BeTime,” we can take measures to trust our children to take the lead in their own development. What do you think of the 5 books I’ve hightlighted below? Which ones would you add to the list?

“They stopped thinking she was perfect and started worrying about what might be wrong with her. By the time she was seven years old, there wasn’t a single minute when Princess Cora wasn’t being trained.”

Princess Cora & the Crocodile by Laura Amy Schlitz & Brian Floca

“”We’re bats,” said Mother Bat. “We can see in darkness. Come with us.” Stellaluna was afraid, but she let go of the tree and dropped into the deep blue sky.”

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon

“The bird said, “Ask yourself where it is you want to go, and then follow the signs you already know.”

The North Star by Peter H. Reynolds

“Then you arrive home again, and you look at your window from the outside.”

Windows by Julia Denos

“Getting to get the baguette is Nanette’s biggest responsibility yet.”

Nanette’s Baguette by Mo Willems

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

Inquiry into SDGs: Affordable & Clean Energy

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

Affordable and Clean Energy is a goal intended not only to ensure access to electricity for all, but to seek for renewable, clean sources. Use these resources to help your students inquire into this goal, and how they might contribute!

Resource #1: Small World Energy by Niles Heckman (see also the thought-provoking sequel, World Energy Crisis)

Resource #2: Go Beyond Oil by Greenpeace via The Kid Should See This

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhX0mSipSk8

Resource #3: Energy Defined by Nova via The Kid Should See This

Resource #4: The Solar Do-Nothing Machine via The Kid Should See This

Resource #5: Don’t Worry, Drive On: Fossil Fuels & Fracking Lies by Alex Perry

Resource #6: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer, illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon

Provocation Questions:

  • What is energy?
  • How do humans harness energy for our benefit?
  • What is our responsibility to work toward cleaner energy?
  • What are the different perspectives on energy use that involves fossil fuels vs energy use that involves renewable sources?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

On Feeling Like We Can’t Nurture It All… #TeacherMom

On a given day, a parent might come across lists of ways they should be nurturing their children’s…

…creativity

…resilience

…confidence

…problem solving

…empathy

…assertiveness

…fine & gross motor skills

…communication skills

The list goes on. And meanwhile, we have days where just getting dinner on the table feels like someone should be giving us a medal.

While it is true that all of these require individual, concerted effort from time to time, the truth is that trying to tend to all this nurturing on an individual basis each day would be like drinking from a fire hose! When we try, we’ll quickly find ourselves under a crushing weight of what I’m going to call “nurture-overload.”

Instead, here are ways we might avoid that overload and feeling of hustle:

  • Follow the child’s lead. Allow their questions or daily tasks to drive the discussions and inform how you help them connect to various skills and traits.
  • Read together regularly. If it is a regular part of your time together, you can depend on a healthy exposure to many different concepts.
  • Trust your child’s independence. As we allow kids to have responsibilities as they grow (and not allow media hysteria to color what we view as age-appropriate), many of these skills will strengthen naturally. See if you can count how many skills and qualities might be cultivated in this Sesame Street example below (from one of my favorite websites, LetGrow.org)

We want our children to grow up to have all the skills and traits they’ll need to be caring, capable adults. If we step away from worry about getting it right and step toward more trust, we may find that these things come more naturally than we might anticipate!

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

Inquiry into SDGs: Life Below Water

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

The global goal of Life Below Water looks the way humans are treating our oceans, targeting issues such as marine pollution, over-exploited fish populations, and acidification of our oceans. And given the fact that 3 billion depend on the marine industry for their livelihoods, we need to find more sustainable use of these resources. Share these videos and books with your students to help them think about how these issues impact them!

Resource #1: Plastics Watch by BBC (see more clips here)

Resource #2: Henry – Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Resource #3: The Ocean Cleanup Technology, Explained via The Kid Should See This

Resource #4: Where Did the Oil Go? by NRDC via The Kid Should See This

Resource #5: Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne & Éric Puybaret; The Brilliant Deep by Kate Messner & Matthew Forsythe; Life in the Ocean: The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle by Claire A. Nivola

Provocation Questions:

  • What resources do the oceans provide that humans use?
  • What is the relationship like between our oceans and humans?
  • How might that relationship improve to help both our oceans and humans, and what is our responsibility to do so?
  • What obstacles stand in the way of improving the way we care for our oceans?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

Posted on

Best Inquiry Picture Books: Sustainable Development Goals Round-Up

This is the last installment in a 3-part series. View the other two:

Here is the last installment in a series of picture book round-ups from my inquiry posts! It’s a great feeling to know that so many of my favorite picture books are organized in one place. As with the other two posts, the links to the original inquiries (which include other resource like videos and photo series) are hyperlinked throughout; keep in mind that while I have included picture books for all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals, a few of those inquiries are not yet finished. I hope you can find some new reads to help spark thinking and wonder with your students.

Inquiry into SDG’s (introduction): If the World Were a Village by David J. Smith & Shelagh Armstrong

#1: No Poverty: Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting & Ronald Himler

#2: Zero Hunger: The Good Garden: How One Family Went From Hunger to Having Enough by Katie Smith Milway & Sylvie Daigneault

#3: Good Health & Well-Being: The Curious Garden by Peter Brown

#4: Quality Education: Dreamers by Yuyi Morales

#5: Gender Equality: Malala’s Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai & Kerascoet

#6: Clean Water & Sanitation: The Water Princess by Susan Verde & Peter H. Reynolds

#7: Affordable & Clean Energy: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba, Bryan Mealer, & Elizabeth Zunon

#8: Decent Work & Economic Growth: One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference by Katie Smith Milway & Eugenie Fernandes

#9: Industry, Innovation, & Infrastructure: If You Plant a Seed by Kadir Nelson; The Red Bicycle: An Extraordinary Story of One Ordinary Bicycle by Jude Isabella and Simone Shin

#10: Reduced inequalities: It’s Mine! by Leo Lionni

#11: Sustainable Cities & Communities: The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton; The Promise by Nicola Davies & Laura Carlin

#12: Responsible Production & Consumption: The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss

#13: Climate Action: What Can A Citizen Do? by Dave Eggers & Shawn Harris

#14: Life Below Water: Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne & Éric Puybaret; The Brilliant Deep by Kate Messner & Matthew Forsythe

#15: Life on Land: The Tree Lady by Joseph Hopkins & Jill McElmurry; A Boy & A Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz & CaTia Chien

#16: Peace, Justice, & Strong Institutions: The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet! By Carmen Agra Deedy & Eugene Yelchin

#17: Inquiry into Partnerships for the Goals: Be Kind By Pat Zietlow Miller & Jen Hill

featured image: Dara or