Join the Resistance

My “inner blogger,” which I discovered six years ago when Linda Salzman started this blog, is now in full flower at the Huffington Post.  Since September I’ve tried to post twice a week.  My initial mission was to add my two cents to the national discussion on education.  But a second mission has emerged—to shed light for the general public on our genre, children’s nonfiction literature.  To that end I’ve requested that my colleagues send me their most recent books.  I read them and write posts that show a book’s timeliness to current events or where it fits into the curriculum.  I am not a book reviewer as all of my posts are unabashed cheers for the brilliance of these authors.  As an author, myself, there is a conflict of interest for me to act as a critic.  But I have no problem endorsing the creativity and insights of my fellow authors. 

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards has created an opening for public awareness of our genre.  It has helped to create a readership for this blog.  When I first read the CCS standards, I saw them as an opportunity for teachers and educators to bring their own passions and creativity to classrooms through, among other things, the use of our books.  Children need to know there are many voices out there so they can develop voices of their own.  But this opening for diversity has been hi-jacked by standardized testing and the demand that teachers constantly document how they are meeting the CCSS—yet another chore that competes with instructional time.  One of the more absurd examples of the implementation of the CCSS is the lesson on close reading of the Gettysburg Address by focusing on text only, with no background knowledge of the Civil War.  

Diane Ravitch is leading a movement against the CCSS.  I’ve been a faithful subscriber to her amazing blog (she posts 5,6,7 times a day!) and she and her followers are gaining traction.  Meanwhile, NY State, for example has a huge contract with Pearson for their textbooks and their texts.   Granted, they and McGraw Hill and other textbook publishers are buying rights to our books to excerpt in their publications (and/or in the tests themselves) along with lesson plans making nice, convenient packages for harried teachers and furthering the notion that their books are the only books kids need to read to pass the tests, although their ethics in this are currently being questioned (in the example I've linked above).

My intent through my Huff Post blog is to join Diane's fight against the huge corporations that have dominated classroom reading for many years, the standardized teaching and testing and their ties to teacher evaluation.  Instead of emphasizing the horrors of turning teachers in to robots, all teaching the same page at the same time, I want to show the exciting alternatives that our genre offers. So I invite the readership of this blog to join me.  This means you need to use social media to spread the word. So "follow," "tweet," "share," and "like." It's the way business is being done these days.  So many people out there are still unaware of our existence.  This is one positive way we can all  help save public education.

I’m showing you the covers of the books I've given a shout-out to, so far.  The titles below the images are links to my posts.  Please join the "resistance" and spread the word. 

Thinking and Reading about Football 

A Volcanic Eruption Can Lead to an Eruption of Learning

Woman Pilots of WWII: Soaring Above the Glass Ceiling

A New Story for Black History Month

An Early Lawsuit in Pursuit of Liberty

True American Grit

A Post-Halloween Teachable Moment

Gender Identity Is Not What's on the Outside

Celebrating 10 Years.....

...of Road Trips on Mars

George Washington's Dilemma

Art Can Save Education and Lives

The Unnoticed Passing of an American Hero

The Second Smartest Animals on the Planet

Arousing a Sense of Wonder

In the post that went live last Thursday (Here Come the HUMPBACKS!), I featured April’s three recent picture books.  I gave a shout-out to all of us who write for this blog and on the iNK website.  Keep those (virtual) cards and letters coming!!!

Common Core Care Package: 5 Ways to Sneak Nonfiction into Your School-day Schedule*

1. Booktalks

If you’re a teacher-librarian, you probably already do booktalks on a regular basis, but they also work well in a classroom setting. Think of a booktalk as a 2-3minute commercial that introduces students to a book. If you teach grade 3 or higher, try modeling a booktalk a few times, and then invite your students to choose a favorite book and do booktalks of their own.

 Booktalking is a great technique for introducing your students to the classroom book collection. If you alternate between fiction and nonfiction titles, students will be exposed to a wide range of literature. By including nonfiction titles, you let students know that you value nonfiction and find it interesting to read.

2. Read-alouds

By adding nonfiction picture books to your classroom read-alouds, you provide engaging opportunities to explore content. Choose books with a varying voices so students can explore the many ways to write nonfiction and come to realize that an author's writing style often reflects content. Here are a few recommendations:

Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre

Army Ant Parade by April Pulley Sayre

The Boy Who Loved Math by Deborah Heiligman

Under the Snow by Melissa Stewart

Those Rebels, Tom and John by Barbara Kerley

 

Lightship by Brian Floca

When Marian Sang by Pam Munoz Ryan

Redwoods by Jason Chin

Here Is Antarctica by Madeleine Dunphy

An Egg Is Quiet by Dianna Aston Hutts

Move! by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

Neo Leo by Gene Barretta

Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave by Laban Carrick Hill

Frog in a Bog by John Himmelman

Hello, Bumblebee Bat by Darrin Lunde

Mosquito Bite by Alexandra Siy & Dennis Kunkle

3. Use Nonfiction as Mentor Texts

When you teach writing, use high-quality trade titles (such as the ones listed above) as authentic models for structuring text, crafting beginnings and endings, choosing precise words, selecting voice, and more. Some students may understand the power of vibrant verbs, sensory details, similes, metaphors, alliteration, hyperbole, imagery, and other language devices better by interacting with examples in both fiction and nonfiction texts.

4. Pair Fiction and Nonfiction Titles on Related Topics
Reading fiction and nonfiction titles together enriches student experience by allowing them to make real-world connections to the ideas or themes of a fiction work. It also provides students who prefer nonfiction with a concrete way to approach the story. For more information about this teaching strategy and sample book pairings, see this article.

5. Give Students Opportunities to Skim and Scan Nonfiction Texts
When students have free time, encourage them to look through nonfiction titles and complete activities that involve identifying text structures, text features, key ideas, or specific language devices. You can find some sample ideas here and here and here.

 

*Strategies based, in part, on suggestions in Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer’s Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits by Donalyn Miller with Susan Kelley (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014).

Common Core Care Package: 10 Ways Authors Can Help Educators

Common Core is in the news almost daily. A lot of people don’t like the new standards, or at least the standardized testing that comes along with them. But the fact is that CCSS has been adopted by most of America, so teachers have to address the new standards regardless of the political frenzy swirling all around them.

So the best thing we can do as authors of both fiction and nonfiction is help them. Throughout October, INK bloggers wrote posts about the new standards and many of us suggested ideas for using our books and/or books we admire to support the standards.

Today, I thought I’d share some general strategies for authors who would like to guide educators in using their books to meet the Common Core standards. I'm not sure any author would have time to do them all, but pick one or two and dig in. It will make a difference.

1. Write discussion questions that help students identify a book’s main idea and key details.

Jane Yolen and Heidi Stemple

 

 

2. Develop a teacher’s guide with activities that help students build vocabulary; understand connections and relationships between key ideas, events, or individuals in a book; and examine a book’s structure.

David La Rochelle

3. Offer writers’ workshops that focus on such topics as structure, voice, and word choice.

Barbara O'Connor

4. Write blog posts that describe your intentions as you wrote a specific book.



Jeannine Atkins

 

5. Write blog posts, create videos, or develop school visit programs that deconstruct specific aspects of your writing and/or illustrating process.

Lita Judge

6. If you write picture books or photo-illustrated books, write blog posts, create videos, or develop school visits or classroom materials that highlight the connection between pictures and words in your books.

Steve Jenkins

7. Speak at local and national conferences for teachers and librarians about specific aspects of writing craft.

 

8. Develop worksheets and visual aids that educators can use to teach specific aspects of writing craft.

 

9. Create lists of fiction and nonfiction titles that have a connection to your book, so students can compare the texts.

 

10. Provide links to related media on your website, so students can compare them to your book.

Loree Griffin Burns

Do you have other ideas about how authors can help educators address the goals of Common Core? I’d love to hear them. If we all work together, we can give teachers the tools they need to thrive in the age of Common Core.

 

What’s In It for Me? A Book for Whatever Interests You

Over the past two weeks I have attended two very different education conferences.  One was AASL—The American Association of School Librarians; the other was NYSCATE—New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education.  If I had just attended the first one, I would have thought we authors were doing really well. Many people recognized me from my nametag—a heady experience.  (Although not everyone recognized my name, a sufficient number did, so I felt like I’ve made some progress over these years.)  At the second conference, I was anonymous although my session:  “Authors Collaborating with Teachers and Students” was particularly well attended.  Obviously, librarians know about and value authors.  Technology teachers have a lot to learn.

This conclusion was not news to me.  Four or five years ago, I did my very first videoconference (Skype-type visit) with a school in Pennsylvania.  I had been hired by the tech teacher who was looking for something of educational value for her classroom-teacher colleagues.  Although my presentation wasn’t about any particular book  (it’s called “Science Surprises”) I did mention that some of the tricks we were doing were in my book We Dare You!  The tech teacher’s evaluation of my presentation was not a rave. She said something like, “I didn’t hire you to do a book commercial.”  When I explained that writing books was what I did, she countered that she wanted me to present material that wasn’t in my books.  I mentally sputtered a protest:  “But my best stuff is in my books..”   My take-away is that you have to set up the proper expectations for a program, especially for people who don’t get what authors are about.  And there are a lot of them out there.

According to the Jenkins Group, a book publishing services firm, only 30% of Americans read books.  Less than 15% read books on any regular basis.  One third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.  Forty-two percent of college grads never read another book after college.  Eighty percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year and 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.  Fifty-seven percent of new books are not read to completion and half of those are not read past page 18.  I would be curious to know how much teachers read.  If a child asks a question on a subject that the teacher doesn’t know the answer to, does the teacher suggest that the child look up the answer on Google or get a book on the subject?  When it comes to teaching content, does the teacher rely on a textbook or explore the availability of other books for children on the same subject?  We authors and readers of this blog live in a bubble.  Books are so ingrained in our lives we can’t imagine living without them.  But if we are going to produce a generation of college and career ready students, as per the CCSS, we are going to have to sell our non-book-reading colleagues on the value of books. Here are a few suggestions:

Technology teachers and their students might want to read:

Technology by Clive Gifford

Physical education teachers and their students might want to read:

Fourth Down and Inches by Carla Killough McClafferty

Social workers and students who have anger issues might want to read: 

Peace by Wendy Anderson Halperin

A music teacher might want every member of the school orchestra to read

The Young Musician’s Survival Guide by Amy Nathan

An art teacher might want students to read: 

Action Jackson by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan.

Orthopedists and school nurses might want to include my book, Your Body Battles a Broken Bone in their waiting rooms. 

For every situation, discipline, or topic, there may exist a wonderful children’s book that will not only shed new light on the subject but also foster an interest in learning more.  It’s time we left our own echo-chamber and became a part of the national education conversation.  Books not only answer questions but open up possibilities for every individual.  It’s time they were rediscovered.