Using picture books to support the curriculum

We here at National Library are pretty excited by the idea of using picture books to promote learning in areas other than literacy and enjoyment

Some of you who attended the New Zealand Reading Association Conference in New Plymouth in late September may have had the opportunity to catch the presentation by our very own National Library's Cecily Fisher entititled "Not Just a Pretty Face: how picture books can add real value to unexpected areas of the school curriculum". Cecily has the grand title of Learning Area Selector, Visual and Early Literacy - which means "She Who Buys the Picture Books for National Library". Some teachers and school librarians around the Canterbury area have also been fortunate enough to catch the talk at network meetings.

The whole idea of the talk was to outline the use that teachers can make of picture books to support all sorts of different topics in the curriculum from Health, to Technology to Change Loss and Grief.

And now there is a great resource online where you can get free resources using picture books in science. You have to register to be able to download the resources but it is all free. And it is all done by New Zealand teachers and using some New Zealand picture books. The science areas include volcanoes, bubbles and forces.

Science Postcards includes activities to discover science through literature. At the moment they have resources using only a few books, but I believe more are on their way.