Start With Something Worth Learning About
Updated: Oct 11
Want to get kids hooked on learning? Give them something seriously interesting to learn about.
Duh, right? And yet, think about how much curriculum is designed. So often, it starts with a list of standards, broken down into individual skills and concepts, followed by an attempt to make the lessons engaging.
What if we flipped that around? What if we started with something fascinating, something that naturally raises questions and connects to all sorts of other things worth understanding?
This is exactly where my mind goes when I read nonfiction. My educator brain kicks in, and I start thinking about all the ways I could use what I’m reading to teach kids about science, history, geography, and so on. One idea leads to another, and before long, I can see an entire unit of study taking shape. I’m always on the lookout for young readers editions of great nonfiction books, and there are some fantastic ones out there.
Take An Immense World, for example. It starts with animal senses but quickly opens doors into biology, evolution, light, sound, physics, animal behavior, scientific experimentation, and even bigger questions about perception and how different organisms experience the world. The Disappearing Spoon starts with the periodic table but leads into history, medicine, war, economics, ethics, scientific discovery, and the very human stories behind what we know.
Look at how many different disciplines come into play when you’re trying to understand how the world works. In the real world, these subjects don’t exist in isolation, so why do we so often teach them that way? For one, it’s a lot less interesting. But more importantly, when we teach concepts in isolation, kids miss the bigger picture. Our brains are constantly looking for patterns and making connections. It’s how we make sense of the world. Teaching subjects in isolation separates ideas that our brains naturally try to connect.
That is what makes books like these such powerful starting points for learning. Instead of teaching concepts in isolation, students encounter them as part of a bigger story. They can see how ideas connect, why they matter, and where they lead.
Standards still have an important role. They give us a useful guide for what students should be exposed to and help us identify areas of learning we might have overlooked. But they don’t need to define the boundaries of what students can explore. Too often, education gets bogged down in individual facts and skills and loses sight of the bigger picture those pieces belong to.
I love to work the other way around: start with rich content, follow the learning opportunities it creates, and recognize all the ways the standards can come to life within those investigations.
When learning feels relevant, the why is clear. Kids have a reason to read closely, ask questions, dig deeper, and figure things out. And the deeper they go, the more connections they discover. Science connects to history. History connects to geography and economics. New discoveries raise ethical questions. One answer creates five new questions.
And those connections matter. The more students can connect new ideas to what they already know, the better they understand and remember what they’re learning.
The result is learning that’s interdisciplinary because the world is interdisciplinary. That’s not an add-on to the learning. That’s the learning.
Books I’m Building Units Around
I’m developing units of study around nonfiction books that have young readers editions.
And here’s something I’ve noticed: every once in a while, I actually prefer the young readers edition! More often, though, it simplifies or leaves out some of the fascinating details that make the adult version so compelling.
That’s why I’d encourage teachers to read the adult editions, too. Not because students need to learn everything in them, but because having that deeper background knowledge makes such a difference. It helps us recognize opportunities to make connections, answer unexpected questions, and take discussions further when students’ curiosity leads us somewhere we hadn’t planned.
Here are some books I think have great potential for student learning and am currently using to develop units of study.
AN IMMENSE WORLD by Ed Yong
Potential areas of study: Animal senses, biology, evolution, light, sound, physics, perception, and scientific inquiry.
THE DISAPPEARING SPOON by Sam Kean
Potential areas of study: Chemistry, the periodic table, atomic structure, physics, scientific discoveries, history, medicine, technology, economics, and ethics.
HOW WE GOT TO NOW by Steven Johnson
Potential areas of study: Scientific discoveries, inventions, engineering, physics, chemistry, technology, history, economics, innovation, and the unintended consequences of technological change
SAPIENS by Yuval Noah Harari
Unstoppable Us is not a direct, condensed adaptation of Sapiens, but it explores many of the same big questions about human history.
Potential areas of study: Human evolution, anthropology, archaeology, early civilizations, migration, geography, agriculture, economics, belief systems, social structures, and human cooperation.
WASTE WARS: THE WILD AFTERLIFE OF YOUR TRASH by Alexander Clapp
Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of your Trash There isn’t a young readers edition of this one, but I think adapting the content from the adult book could make for a fascinating interdisciplinary unit of study.
Potential areas of study: Environmental science, geography, global trade, economics, waste management, pollution, sustainability, and ethics.
I’m aiming to develop one unit of study each month. If there’s a particular book you’d love to see a unit built around, I’d love to hear from you. Your suggestions could help shape what I work on next.
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