Join 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 in a webinar highlighting the strength of picture books as a tool to promote science conversations and capabilities.

From The Hungry Caterpillar to the Battle of the Mountains classroom teachers regularly include picture books in their programmes. Use this known teaching approach to springboard into science, a curriculum area research shows us needs greater focus in primary schools.

In this session 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. We 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.

Register here

Joining the webinar

Follow these simple steps to join our webinar:

  1. Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android by clicking on the link https://waikato.zoom.us/j/359736528 and following the instructions. You can also access Zoom on your phone, just follow the prompts.
  2. Find the chat box located in the toolbar at the bottom of your screen. You may need to access this by clicking on ‘More’.
  3. Using the chat box, introduce yourself, where you teach and, if you are in a group, how many people are there.
  4. Set up your screen for optimal viewing. If you’re using a mobile device, you may wish to view in landscape. We recommend selecting a thumbnail view of the presenters – this way you can easily see what is being shared on the screen.

Then you can:

  1. watch, listen and respond via chat to the presentation and discussion
  2. ask questions using the chat box at any time
  3. continue your learning on Slack – our online discussion forum and join #primaryscience channel.

The Science Learning Hub team will be there to support you and answer questions.

PLD certification

We currently offer recognition of teachers’ involvement in our online PLD.

To qualify for a professional learning and development certificate, teachers must:

  • register for and watch the live webinar or let us know they have viewed the recorded version once it is published on the website
  • register in Slack and participate in our discussions about teaching science using picture books or in the Slack learning reflections channel.

If you need any help accessing our Slack forum, please see our help info or email us.

Related content

Have a look at the resources under our Literacy through science topic or explore our article showcasing PLD for primary teachers.

Check out our entire range of Connected articles here – we’ve curated them by topic and concepts.

Looking for an engaging science book to add to your next teaching plan/topic? We have created a curation of ones we like on our Pinterest board here.

Useful links

Have a look at these picture book collections linking to a variety of curriculum areas:

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