Teacher's Guide Sampler: Empowering Girls in STEAM

Rising Voices Themes and Anchor Texts

Rising Voices texts are organized by five themes that relate to STEAM-related concepts and that will resonate with children’s own lives and interests. The themes provide a lens for reading that guides readers to appreciate the essential skills and the mindset that support many STEAM endeavors and will affirm children’s own abilities and potential to succeed as they explore a variety of texts. In addition, you and your children will be able to use these themes to make connections between Rising Voices books, real-world examples, content- area learning, and other texts. Use Rising Voices books to help build discussion of these five essential themes within and across texts. Connect to Texts and Expand Thinking Anchor texts for each of the themes are intended to be shared through an interactive, teacher- led read-aloud experience. Teaching Cards for each anchor text provide discussion questions and activities that bring the theme to the forefront, promoting conversation and deep thinking. Building on anchor text instruction and discussion, you and your children can read on in the collection, continuing to make connections and deepen their exploration of each theme.

Anchor Texts Theme

Connect to Texts

Expand Thinking

Creative Problem- Solving How does creativity help people understand a problem and figure out a solution?

• What problem do the people in the book want to solve? • How do the people in the book show creativity? • How do the people in the book ask others for help or use special tools? • What makes these people good problem-solvers?

• How do you show creativity? • How can creative problem- solvers invent new ways of doing things that will help themselves and others? • What might the author want you to understand about how problems are solved? • Which of the people you read about is the most creative problem-solver? Support your answer with reasons. • Choose one of the problems you read about. Create your own solution to the problem. • What questions do I have about the world around me? • What can I do to find the answers to my questions? • How does having curiosity lead to new knowledge? • Investigate a “What if” question, such as “What if my pet could talk?” or “What if I had a superpower?” How will you show curiosity to explore the questions?

Grade K

Grade 1

Grade 2

Curiosity How do the people you read about show their curiosity by asking questions and searching for answers?

• Why do the people in the book want to know more about something? • What kinds of questions do they ask? • How do they search for answers?

Grade K

Grade 1

Grade 2

16 • Rising Voices Library

6 Rising Voices | Books Empowering Girls in STEAM

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