Torture Your Students with My Novel

October 7, 2022 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I’m pleased to announce the release of The Dragon Slayer’s Son Novel Study Unit today!

I’m even more pleased to report that the students who tested the Dragon Slayer’s Son Novel Study experience loved it.

So if you’re looking for a new novel for your novel studies, it’s a snap to pick up this novel study guide and run with it–the work’s already done for you!

The 57-page guide includes:

vocabulary lists
vocabulary activities
discussion questions
reading response activities
printable worksheets
digital worksheets
before- and after-the-book activities

Vocabulary and activities are organised into six sections. Activities are indexed with reading strategies, story elements, and difficulty level so you can pick and choose based on your students’ needs. You also get a digital version included which provides all student materials in fillable Google Slides.

So ditch the tired, dated novels you’ve been teaching, and pick up The Dragon Slayer’s Son. Set in modern day New Zealand, with dragons to spice up the adventure, there’s plenty to unpack. Themes include wildlife conservation, friendship, values, and leadership.

You can check out a free sample or buy the full unit at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store, or simply contact me to order your copy.

Books for gifted kids

April 16, 2021 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

As an educator teaching extension literacy and maths, and as parent of two gifted children, I have thought a lot about gifted education. As an author, I naturally write for kids like my own—my middle grade books have a fairly wide vocabulary and are long for middle grade, while still being subject appropriate for the 8-13 year-olds they’re aimed at.

I’m on a social media group for parents of gifted children, and the question of books comes up regularly. What books do you get for the voracious 9-year-old reader who is bored by ‘kids’ books, has read all the Harry Potter and Rick Riordan books, but is not yet ready for the subject matter of young adult books?

So here’s a list of books my kids loved when they were in that 6-12 year-old range, and others I’ve read or seen recommended since then (my kids are now 17 and 19, so I don’t have their take on the more recent titles).

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. This series of three books, with at least two companion books not directly in the series, is tailor-made for gifted kids. The books’ protagonists are all explicitly gifted children. All of them have different strengths, and all have weaknesses. They are all extraordinary in some way, but they need each other to accomplish their goals. Not only are the characters relatable to gifted kids, but the books are hefty, with riddles and puzzles throughout—they’ll keep even gifted children busy for a long time.

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. Technically, this book is young adult, and there’s a little bit of romance (just crushes, really, nothing major), but at its heart, it’s a rollicking good adventure story about a girl who wants to fly and escape her world. And there’s a sentient space ship with a great personality. It’s a good book to introduce those upper middle grade readers to Brandon Sanderson, who has written lots of fabulous books for older readers.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. I bought this book on the strength of the title alone, and was not disappointed. For kids with a quirky sense of humour, this is perfect. A girl whose magical abilities are limited to influencing dough must save herself and her city from someone trying to stamp out magicians and take over the city. Lots of creativity and laugh-out-loud moments.

The Warriors series by Erin Hunter. My children devoured these books when they were quite young. The main characters are cats, and there are all sorts of groups and alliances among them—sort of like a feline Game of Thrones (without the adult themes). Each book is short, but there are dozens of them in multiple series.

Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland. This massive series (14 books, I think) is popular among my 8-12 year-old students, though I’ve never read any of the books. In the series, dragons are the main characters, and there’s lots of drama. Tui T. Sutherland is one of the authors who writes under the pen name Erin Hunter, so I imagine there are similarities between the Warriors series and Wings of Fire.

A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge. This is a strange sort of book about a society in which facial expressions are taught and strictly controlled, so that no one’s face expresses what they are thinking. The main character was never taught facial expressions, so her natural expressions shock people, and she wears a mask to cover them. She uncovers nefarious doings in the city, and works to free the people from a ruling class that treats them as slaves. Lots of twists and turns in the story to keep gifted minds guessing what’s going to happen next.

Great authors with books too numerous to list are Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Mahy (whose books range from picture books to young adult), and Tessa Duder (with both fiction and non-fiction books to her name).

And don’t dismiss the older ‘classics’—Alice in Wonderland, Heidi, the works of Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Enid Blyton—many of these books are timeless, and because of their age, they introduce lots of interesting words and have a different perspective on life that gifted children can find fascinating.

And finally, I’ll put in a little plug for my Dragon Slayer series—set in a modern day New Zealand where Dragons are real and aren’t the enemy everyone thinks they are. The series follows the adventures of four children who ultimately form the Dragon Defence League to protect dragons and help people learn to live with them. There’s lots of adventure, some environmental themes, and plenty of colourful dragons.

Insects in the Classroom

January 13, 2017 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I’m pleased to announce the release of Insects in the Classroom!

This collection of insect information and activities is the only one of its kind written specifically for the New Zealand classroom. Special features include:

Background information about insects and their relatives
Instructions on how to care for live insects in the classroom
A dozen buggy classroom activities
Student-friendly identification guides designed for the New Zealand school yard
Insect-themed colouring sheets and worksheets

The book is released in conjunction with a new outreach programme for schools–Bugs and Books–that uses science as the inspiration for writing.

Throwback Thursday: At the Centre of the Universe

April 28, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

“This bit needs to be yellow. It’s part of the United States.”

“No it’s not. It can’t be! There is the United States. This bit, way over here can’t be part of it.”

I was working with a group of students in Membrillo, Panama. We were painting a map of the world on the wall of the school, and we were arguing about Alaska.

We argued about more than one country placement, including Panama.

It wasn’t really a surprise that these children, most of whom had never gone further from home than they could walk in a few hours, didn’t know where on the planet they lived.

But talking to them, I realised they didn’t even know where in Panama they lived. Many of them had parents working in Panama City, and most of them would one day work there themselves, but they had no idea where the city was in relation to their own village.

So when we finished the world map, I spent a week enlarging a map of Panama to transfer to the other blank wall at the school. Before these kids were going to make sense of Panama’s place in the world, they needed to be able to see their place in Panama. We outlined the provinces, and labelled the cities and towns. When we finished, Membrillo was the largest name on the map—the centre of the universe, with their nation and their world arrayed around them.

Step on a Hedgehog

April 6, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

My daughter came to me frustrated yesterday evening.

“What is fear?”

Knowing she had just been out in the dark, I asked her if she was frustrated because she was afraid of the dark.

“No, I’ve gotten over my fear of the dark. Now I’m afraid of hedgehogs.”

“Ah. You’re afraid of stepping on them in the dark.”

She nodded.

“Well, you learned that from your father, who worries about stepping on hedgehogs in the dark. But I’ve actually stepped on hedgehogs in the dark.” I shrugged. “It’s not so bad—for me or for the hedgie. You tend to feel it before you put all your weight on it, and you pull back before you hurt it.”

She looked relieved.

It got me thinking about the nature of fear, how easily it is taught, and how difficult it can be to overcome.

Teaching children about insects, I see fear all the time. The fear that another living thing might harm us (and sometimes the fear that we might harm another living thing). Much of my teaching is aimed at overcoming those fears.

And in saying ‘overcoming,’ I don’t mean eliminating those fears—that’s the work of decades, not of an hour.

I know that, because I experience those fears, myself—they are deeply rooted in our culture, and I was taught them just like everyone else was. But I have confidence in spite of the fear. Part of that comes from knowing that the worst that can happen is really not all that bad (for most things). I have been bitten, clawed, and stung by songbirds, parrots, raptors, rabbits, rodents, snakes and all manner of insects and spiders, and have survived it all. More importantly, I’ve learned that if I understand the animal and move with confidence and care, I am unlikely to be hurt (or to hurt the animal).

So I don’t try to make children unafraid of insects; instead, I teach them how to move with confidence and care, even if they don’t feel the confidence yet. I teach them how to hold an insect safely. If I think they’re ready for it, I give them an insect that is likely to bite them—a tiny nip they might actually feel, if they’re paying attention. They might cry out, “Oh! It bit me!” They might fling the insect off their hand. But chances are good, they’ll pick it up again, because the worst has happened, and it wasn’t so bad. The act of taking the risk once makes it easier to do it again. Confidence grows. The fear may still be there, but it is diminished by understanding and experience.

I hope my daughter does step on a hedgehog in the dark. She will stumble in her effort to not squash it. She’ll cry out in surprise, and then laugh as the offended hedgehog lumbers away. When she goes out in the dark next, she’ll walk with more confidence. And because the fear will probably still be there, she’ll feel incredibly brave in doing so.

Chameleons

March 30, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

When I picked it up on the beach, it was lichen-green. A fist-sized chunk of serpentine that looked all but translucent. It was almost alive.

I brought it back to the campground. As it dried, it lost some of its lustre. It lost its translucence, but remained green.

When we packed up to come home, I took the rock with me, nestled in a cup holder in the car. Leaving the humid, green West Coast, we drove up over the mountains, and back into dry, brown Canterbury.

When I picked the rock out of the car, it was frosty white, with a few sparkles of pyrite in the crevices. Dry and dead.

I think people are like that rock.

When we see them in their own “habitat”—in the place where they feel they belong—they are alive and vibrant. They show their depth and their colours. We see their full beauty.

But when we see a person in a place where they don’t feel like they belong—a place where they’re uncomfortable—they frost over. We see only their surface and little of their beauty. There may be hints—small sparkles in the crevices, if we look closely—but most of their beauty will be hidden.

I used to see this a lot, working at nature centres in the U.S. Teachers would regularly warn me about “problem” children. Kids who were nothing but troublemakers, according to the teachers.

I took special note of these children, because I learned quickly that they were likely to be my best students. Take them out of the classroom where they felt they didn’t belong, and put them in a place where they could shine, and they invariably did. They were often smart, funny, helpful, eager to engage with the subject, and bursting with questions—completely different from the sullen, disengaged, miscreants the teachers viewed them as.

I don’t think their transformation had anything to do with my teaching skills—it was simply that they were more comfortable outdoors, moving around, picking up sticks, throwing rocks. They were in their habitat, and could show their beauty. I wished the teachers could have seen their students’ transformations—most of the time, the teachers sat around drinking coffee while their students were out on the trails. I don’t think they believed me when I told them how marvellous their “problem” students were.

Take my word for it. This rock is beautiful.

Science education at its best

January 30, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Physarum cinereum

About eight months ago, my daughter did a school project on slime moulds. Along with internet research on slime moulds, she searched for live slime moulds in various habitats, and even tried keeping one as a pet. Unfortunately, the weather was particularly dry and warm, so slime moulds were scarce, and her pet died. We considered the project somewhat of a failure.

Except that she has been tuned in to slime moulds ever since, so when she noticed a funny grey substance covering blades of grass in the yard a few days ago, she was primed for it. She brought it inside to look at under the microscope, and correctly identified it as Physarum cinereum, a type of slime mould.

She posted a photo and her identification on Nature Watch NZ, and had her identification verified by several scientists.

Today, she found a similar slime mould, but this one was a mustard yellow colour. In form it was very like Physarum cinereum, but altogether the wrong colour.

She pulled out her iPad to search for it online. No luck…

But…

While she was searching, the sample under the microscope changed colour, from yellow to grey. Based on her knowledge of slime mould biology, she reckoned the grey colour must be spores. She has posted her new photo and identification to Nature Watch NZ, and is waiting to see what the experts think.

Could I ever have devised a better science lesson? Not in a million years. She made an observation, used her research skills and prior knowledge to make sense of what she saw, and got corroboration from an expert.

The resources available to kids (and bigger kids, too) these days are amazing—the opportunities to engage directly with the scientific community, find current information about things (no more 20 year-old World Book Encyclopaedias), and record their observations are so far beyond what I had as a child, it still feels a bit like magic to me.

But of course none of that is possible if we don’t nurture our children’s curiosity and teach them how to use the tools available to them. None of it is possible if we don’t give our kids time to watch the world go by, time to get bored and lie down in the grass. Tom Eisner (famous entomologist, for those who don’t know him) wrote in his book For Love of Insects, “How is it, I am often asked, that I make discoveries? I always feel a bit awkward about answering the question, because I do not have a particular method. The truth is that I spend a fair amount of time looking around.”

So go on. Get out there. Look around. Who knows what you might discover.