At the Hoover Dam / Engineers Build Dams

Fiction and nonfiction pairs provide opportunities for students to analyze and compare different perspectives. This pairing supports thinking across texts by illustrating how different authors treat a similar topic. Excitingly, this pairing contrasts craft and structure of fiction with craft and structure of informational texts. In the fictional narrative, At the Hoover Dam, science, engineering, and technology are explored in Ed's trip to an industrial wonder of the world. His grandfather helped build the dam, and shares details about how and why the dam was built. This fiction book is paired with the book, Engineers Build Dams, for connecting across texts and comprehension through connection strategies. In this nonfiction descriptive book, science, technology, engineering, math, and even art all come into play when engineers build dams. Inspire readers with this theme set about how the dam was conceived and completed.