Explore as a

Share our content

Science through picture books

From 'The Hungry Caterpillar' to the 'Battle of the Mountains', teachers regularly include picture books in their programmes. This may be a helpful approach to springboard into science, an area research shows us needs greater focus in schools.

Photo credit: Pedro Vera from Flickr

Nicola Daly, Associate Professor in Education, expert in children’s literature and developer of the picture book collections – picturebooks.co.nz and pacificpicturebooks.co.nz, and Greta Dromgool from the Science Learning Hub will host this webinar highlighting the strength of picture books as a tool to promote science conversations and capabilities.

Nicola and Greta will be looking at the book, Ngā Rongoā a Koro – Koro's Medicine written by Melanie Drewery, illustrated by Sabrina Malcolm and translated by Kararaina Uatuku. They will demonstrate how you can support children to connect with the ideas about and from science and the depth of learning that can be explored in this book. Some of the ideas include acknowledging mātauranga as a valid knowledge system, rongoā Māori, plant identification and more.

And picture books aren’t just for little ones. They provide a great way to access older student’s prior knowledge and to assess their understanding of science concepts, making this session valuable for teachers in ECE, primary and lower secondary school.

Come ready to share the name of your favourite picture book.