STEM and Workforce Literacy Materials (Available via Amazon Prime)
Maritime Marvels has 90 readings discussing famous ships and the professionals building these ships today.
There are lesson plans below to help educators integrate this into daily routines. These standards-aligned materials ensure that your students explore STEM careers and successes while building reading and writing skills.
The book has informational texts about 50 famous ships and 40 careers that support building the next famous ships.
Students will:
- answer text-dependent questions
- write their resume
- take notes on main idea & supporting details
- write a persuasive argument
- compare and contrast two texts
- summarize career paths with a mock job fair
- explore authors purpose
- create a timeline of America’s most famous ships
You can purchase copies on Amazon or buy comb-bound versions directly from edMe Learning.
This 234-page book includes 90 literacy readings, answer key, and writing rubric. These readings allow students to explore career paths and our naval history. Writing projects explore the writing process from outlining to editing while exploring compare-and-contrast paragraphs, persuasive writing, and summarizing informational texts.
Two weeks of classroom lesson plans below
Start a Workforce Club to inspire students after school
10 Free Lesson Plans
Lesson 1: Main Idea & Outlining
Read and explore a nonfiction text. Understanding the main idea is critical. Taking notes about the main idea and key supporting details can help students understand the text and write summary paragraphs more easily. (PDF download)
- Identify main idea of a nonfiction text.
- Support a nonfiction main idea using key details and text evidence.
Lesson 2: Comparing Readings with Venn Diagrams
Using two texts, read and explore two nonfiction texts about related topics.
Compare and contrast details in two texts using a Venn Diagram. Students could use two job-focused readings or two ship-focused readings. (PDF download)
- Read and explore two nonfiction texts about related topics.
- Compare and contrast details in two texts using a Venn Diagram.
Lesson 3: Reading & Writing Cause and Effects
Many informational texts use cause-and-effect relationships. These texts discuss historical cause and effects that are diagnosed with a notetaking strategy and the graphic organizer shown below. (PDF download)
- Read a nonfiction text about a historical ship.
- Identify cause-effect relationships in nonfiction.
- Synthesize connections between details in a text.
Lesson 4: Persuasive Writing (Convince people to agree with you!)
Students will gain information from informational texts, then use these facts to support a claim. The graphic organizer helps students organize their information and create persuasive sentences. Then, students tie together the pieces into a persuasive writing. (PDF download)
- Read and explore a nonfiction text.
- Create a personal claim based on opinion.
- Structure a persuasive argument with supporting details.
Lesson 5: Writing to Explain Problem and Solution
Many informational texts explain problems and solutions. These ship narratives often use these structures. This lesson shows how to annotate problems and solutions
- Read and explore a nonfiction text.
- Identify problem and solution connections based on a nonfiction text.
- Connect a nonfiction text to real-world experiences.
Lesson 6: Summarize Texts by Creating a Classroom Job Fair
After reading about a few careers, students are ready to host their own classroom job fair. Students share information with each other to address: What is the job title? What do people do in this job? What skills or training help people in this job? (PDF download)
- Read and explore a nonfiction text.
- Summarize the key points of a nonfiction text.
Lesson 7: Building a Naval Timeline through Famous Ships
If you and your class LOVE ships, share your excitement with a timeline showing off key details of these famous ships. Our American naval history parallels many of the themes in our shared history: technology causing big leaps forward, trying to defend our shores, and supporting our allies across the world. (PDF download)
- Read and explore a collection of nonfiction texts.
- Make connections between multiple texts.
- Create a timeline to show change over time.
Lesson 8: Exploring Author’s Purpose
Understanding why an author writes a text is a critical skill today. Students explore why someone would write these texts and explore the different reasons for writing texts. This lesson includes excellent extensions asking students to rewrite Maritime Mania texts in an engaging way. (PDF download)
- Read and explore a nonfiction text.
- Identify the author’s purpose based on key details.
Lesson 9: Summarizing the Text by Creating a Yearbook Page
We remember each other with yearbooks, let’s remember these ships by documenting their successes using a yearbook page. This creative lesson plan allows students to truly explore their creative abilities as they document the informational texts in Maritime Mania. (PDF download)
- Read and explore a set of nonfiction texts.
- Summarize the key points of nonfiction texts.
Lesson 10: Create your Resume!
Students start by completing a graphic organizer to document a career described as an informational text. Then, students can extend this learning to complete a similar graphic organizer to get their details together for their own resume. (PDF download)
You can download all 10 free lesson plans in this PDF. These lessons build annotating strategies that help students take the most useful notes. The lessons focus on building knowledge from informational texts while practicing strategies that are useful for state assessments and future careers.
Start A Club
You can inspire students with a Book Club-like club focused on career exploration. Maintain motivation and interest by creating a regular cadence, give an initial taste of the readings, and encourage active participation. These books are organized so that the lower readability texts are in the beginning and higher readability texts are at the end. Allow students to choose readings that inspire them, but are on a common theme.
Before each meeting, have students sign-up for readings. Give students 5-10 readings to choose from and ask them to read 1-2 passages between each meeting. Start each meeting by having students review the answers to the text-dependent questions (or answer them together if pre-work is simply not achievable). Ideally, this happens in small groups so students can share their work on the same readings. After 15 minutes of text review, ask students to share a question or opinion with the group. Initially, students may struggle to start these conversations but reinforce that their opinions matter and this club is structured so they can fully explore the topics in the readings. Students could culminate this conversation by creating artistic artifacts that show their point of view about the topic or how it applies to their future.
Get started now! Teachers begin by choosing a time that works well for both students and staff, such as once a week after dismissal. They should select an engaging theme like “Sampling Future Careers”, “How We Can Build the Future”, or “Planning Our Future Goals”. Each book from edMe Learning is arranged from easiest to hardest readings. Organize small groups of four to six students to encourage active participation. A “tasting” of readings can help students preview and rank book choices, making grouping smoother and more student-driven. Teachers should also provide clear guidance on how to take notes, prepare for discussion, and speak respectfully in conversations. Most importantly, the teacher’s role should be to guide and support without dominating, focusing on building a love of reading rather than organizing every minute of discussion.
Resources to Purchase
Maritime Marvels
This book includes: 90 total nonfiction texts (50 on famous ships, 40 on careers) Almost 1,000 text-dependent questions 9 engaging writing activities 10 free lesson plans for educators available online You will read lots about the U.S. Navy. Different countries have different navies. A navy protects a country with ships. The United States Navy is […]
Need to save funds? Buy one copy and make your own copies.
Need to preserve your time? Buy a classroom set.
How to Build Important Things
How to Build Important Things has 50 informational texts with text-dependent questions about one of the most important topics today!
How to Build Important Things connects the classroom to the working world. This collection of nonfiction texts invites students of all ages to explore career paths while strengthening their literacy skills. Engaging readings pair with standards-based question sets to teach readers about welding, aircraft carriers, the history of the United States Navy, and many topics in between.
Learners from elementary to high school can benefit from these strategic texts. High school classes could use these readings with students who need more practice and supports. Elementary and middle school students can use them to explore career-based texts with on-grade level comprehension practice. Readings can be used to support a whole class of students, or they can be used in a one-on-one setting. You can use them to build individual skills, increase motivation, or assess learning progress. Regardless of your educational setting, this book can scaffold real-world learning to capture your students’ attention.
Each text is less than one full page in length, accompanied by 4-10 brief but strategic questions to gauge comprehension after reading. Question sets are aligned to the key reading comprehension standards for informational, or nonfiction, texts. The first half of the book features texts with lower readabilities and questions that focus on vocabulary and meaning-making. Afterwards, the readabilities slightly increase, and questions require more inferences.
Chapters in this book do not need to be read chronologically. Students can read from different areas of the book based on the goal of their reading experience or the texts they are most interested in exploring. Additionally, readings are designed to work flexibly with many lesson plans. Students can use them to collaborate on projects, discussions, and further research. Five complete lesson plans at the beginning of this book outline examples of how these texts can come to life in a classroom setting.
How to Build Important Things includes dozens of readings that explore how big things, like submarines and buildings, are constructed across the United States. These readings look at specific design processes, tools, techniques, and jobsites.
You can purchase copies on Amazon or buy comb-bound versions directly from edMe Learning.