Tornadoes! Book

This is an informational text that educates readers on tornadoes from many different perspectives, including how they form, how they're measured, the damage they cause, and even how to be safe during a tornado. Tornadoes! is a WOW book for me because of how informative it is while still being entertaining and appropriate for children. Even as an adult, I learned something about tornadoes by reading this book! The illustrations are eye-catching and utilize arrows and diagrams when necessary to depict the processes being described by the author. I would read this book in a 5th or 6th grade classroom, to supplement our science lessons on weather and natural disasters.

The first sentence in the book describes that "the word TORNADO comes from the Spanish word tronada, meaning 'thunderstorm'" (3). I thought it was interesting that Gibbons decided to start the book by making a connection between cultures, and it gave me the idea of doing a cognate activity in class. If my class happened to be learning Spanish at the time, we would focus on Spanish to English cognates; if not, we could discuss cognates between various languages. For example, "train" in English translates to "train" in French, "tren" in Spanish, "trem" in Portuguese, "treno" in Italian, and "tren" in Romanian. Discussing the similarities among Latin languages would also allow for a conversation about root words and using them to decode unfamiliar words, either in English or another language. For example, knowledge about "vending machines" could help students guess that "vender" in Spanish means "to sell". Similarly, students could use that knowledge to determine the meaning of the English word "vendor".

I like that this book includes diagrams, such as arrows to depict downdrafts and updrafts and how they spin together. For a class that is working on drawing diagrams to explain their scientific findings and observations, we could do a diagram drawing activity based on the pictures in this book. In groups, students could be instructed to draw diagrams that depict other weather patterns that they are studying in science class. Another option is to have them draw a map and use arrows to depict how they move through the school throughout the day, from the bus to class to specials to lunch, etc.

The book goes into detail about the EF scale, providing descriptions of tornadoes from EF-0 to EF-5, including wind speeds and damage caused by the tornado. For example, "Ef- 2 tornadoes may have wind speeds between 111 mph and 136 mph...they can tear the whole roof off a frame house, demolish mobile homes, and snap or uproot large trees" (14). After the read aloud, I could go back to that section of the book and, with the students' help, construct an anchor chart. The anchor chart could be a table with 3 columns: EF scale, Description, and Damage. By filling in the table as a class, we could synthesize the information found in the book, and organize it in a way that supports comprehension. An extension could be to put students in groups, and assign each group a different strength tornado. Using the anchor chart and the book, the groups would draw a picture that depicts the tornado they are assigned and the damage it would cause.