Many elementary teachers struggle to fit science into their busy daily instructional schedule. Read-alouds offer the potential to integrate science into the literacy block and offer to integrate language and literacy into science instruction. Unfortunately, many science-specific texts in an attempt to appeal to ‘all’ learners represent science content devoid of interesting storylines or authentic representations of communities (Kelly, 2018). Justice-oriented science learning should portray humans as ‘a part of’ rather than ‘apart from’ the natural world (Learning in Places, 2024). Texts have the potential to represent windows and mirrors of students’ lived experiences. What is more, they can “draw on students’ linguistic and cultural resources is essential to helping [students] navigate life in a diverse world, in addition to supporting them in meeting demands of academic content areas as they advance through school” (WIDA English Language Development Framework, 2020, page 18).

As teachers plan which texts to use and how to use them, they need tools to support their work. This set of resources help teachers select and analyze read-aloud texts that align with their science learning goals, center robust language and literacy practices, and leverage students’ assets. Furthermore, the resources help teachers identify strengths and opportunities for criticality as they plan how to use science texts in their classrooms from justice, equity, and inclusion perspectives.

Illustration Exploring Example: Kindergarteners were studying what happened to a puddle on their playfield after a rainstorm. To respond to their questions, the teacher pulled a stack of books from the library about weather with rich illustrations so students could read the pictures along with some words. Before reading one book as class to focus a discussion and set up the next investigation, the teacher had students explore illustrations in groups: ‘Remember how we all want to figure out what’s happening to our puddle? We had some ideas and I bet these authors and illustrators do, too.  Look for clues in the books with your group: How does the illustrator show where water comes from and where it goes? When you find arrows or symbols that show you, tag it with a small sticky note!  Remember to take turns holding the books and looking together.’ Students then tagged pages to share and talk about as a whole class. During sharing, the teacher added to a “Ways to Model” anchor chart collecting moves illustrators used to show movement, size, amount, and direction such as arrows, lines, labels, symbols in these weather books.  Students then tried out these modeling moves in their work or invented new ways to show their ideas on paper.

Curious about book titles of modeling features students found?  See this PDF for titles of books and opportunities to discuss images with some teacher notes.

Patricia, Carolyn, and Caitlin share a professional learning session plan here for K-5 teachers to engage them in expanding their lenses of selecting texts and planning for student interactions with texts: 

• Read Alouds in Science – Prof Learning Facilitator Guide.  See also their different classroom plans for using the same book in different contexts:
• Water Protectors – Lesson Plan Comparison
• Podcast style video (29 mins with chapters)

Read-Alouds in Math

• Article: Mathematizing Read Alouds by Allison Hintz and Antony Smith, 2013, in The Reading Teacher (PDF)
• Book: Mathematizing Children’s Literature: Sparking Connections, Joy, and Wonder through Read-Alouds and Discussion by Allison Hintz and Antony T. Smith, 2022

Read-Alouds in Science

• Video, 6 mins: Building Scientific Ideas with Read-Alouds in Science
• Blog post: Picture Book Biographies by Science + Engineering Practice
• Books: NSTA Picture Perfect series
• Literary Science 1: K-5 Mentor Texts
• NSTA Webinar: Teacher Tip Tuesday – Elevating Science Learning Through Read Alouds (January 25, 2022) 

Language

• WIDA 2020 – ELD Standards Framework 

Doing and Talking Math & Science Discourse Moves Tools (English / Spanish)