Book of the Month (January 2015)

Each month we will recommend a book related to learning STEM topics through exploration, and we will host an online book discussion around the middle of the month -- we hope you can join us remotely with a glass of wine and a snack to discuss the book we have been reading. Please follow the provided links to order the book, as that allows us to generate a little extra revenue to support the programs of InsightSTEM at no extra cost to you!

Book for January 2015: Talking Their Way into Science
Karen Gallas (1995) Teachers College Press: New York, NY

Buy the Book -- Register for Discussion

This book is an excellent guide to classroom dialogs about scientific thought. While based on an early elementary classroom setting the messages in the book are relevant to science instructors at all levels (including parents working with their families, and educators in out-of-school settings). Anyone who wants to talk with people about science and explore their thinking will gain a lot from this book.

This has been one of my personal favorites for over a decade, and the messages have remained relevant over that whole time. Karen Gallas explains beautifully the "Science Talks" that regularly occur in her classrooms, including how to deal with questions that are just too hard. (I know well from my own experience that Kindergarten kids can ask seemingly innocent questions that are still on the unknown boundaries of science.)

One of the most enjoyable parts of the book are the actual classroom narratives that are threaded through the text revealing both the complex level of thinking that even these very young students are capable of -- and how extract that thinking through dialog, and then create learning moments fitting to their developing understandings.

Order Here:
Talking Their Way into Science: Hearing Children's Questions and Theories, Responding With Curricula (Language and Literacy Series (Teachers College ... in Contemporary Educational Thought)

Book-Club Discussion:
Register for the online discussion, to be held at 4pm PST/5pm MST/6pm CST/7pm EST on January 13, 2015