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More Great Non-fiction: Connections Between Literacy and Art

June 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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Given our connection to Literacyhead, it’s no surprise that we are partial to books that either use visual art to teach content or are simply about art. This has been a pleasantly surprising theme running through the Lerner books with which we are working. We describe three highlights, below, all of which are written by Bob Raczka for older, elementary students.

Here’s Looking At Me: How Artists See Themselves pairs a one-page, fifth-grade-ish reading level, biographical text with a self-portrait of a visual artist. Each two-page spread includes narrative text describing how the artist felt about him/herself on the left and a full page print of a self-portrait as a counterpoint on the right. There is natural interaction between the printed text and the image as text, which supports close reading as well as the integration of the two media. This book also lends itself to conversations about point-of-view (reading standard 6).

As a pure informational text with a serious dose of creativity infused, Name That Style: All About Isms in Art takes students through history to look at the different styles of art. Each two-page spread includes a full-page image of a piece of art in that style and a full page of text written in a consistent question/answer format. For each artistic style, the text addresses the following questions, which address pointillism in this example but vary to fit each style:

  • What is Pointillism?
  • When and where was pointillism popular?
  • Who are some of the most famous Pointillist painters?
  • What are some of Pointillism’s most important characteristics?
  • Why is this (referring to picture on opposite page) a good example of Pointillism?

This book lends itself well to comparing and contrasting artist styles and, because it offers a survey of artistic styles, it could be helpful for identifying topics for further research. We think this is a great book for teaching CCSS writing standard 7, “research to understand,” as well as reading standards related to multi-media “texts,” citing evidence, and making connections between texts.

 

This MAGNIFICENTLY COMPLEX and CLEVER book presents imagined conversations between the author, Bob Raczka, and the subject of a Vermeer paining. The conversations are connected to each other, written in a reader’s theatre/script format, and include all kinds of historical references. One could read and reread this text in any instructional format (read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, etc.) and find something new in it every time. Again, multi-media, close reading, and text connection reading standards apply. The book also lends itself to great discussions about citing evidence, as the author’s imagined conversations are based on historical evidence and evidence in the artwork. The artwork in the book invites students to read the printed text closely and the printed text invites students to “read” the artwork closely. This book requires work to read but the figuring out of it is pure joy. Loveliness!

Bob Raczka also has a number of picture books about visual art that are well-suited for K-2 audiences (and could also hold some interest/appeal for upper elementary). Action Figures: Paintings of Fun, Daring, and Adventure simple lists action figures, such as “prizefighters,” “cattle drivers,” and “jet plane ejectors” and shows a painting of such a subject. Speaking of Art: Colorful Quotes by Famous Painters includes a quote and a related piece of art from about 20 famous visual artists. At the back of the book, there is a photograph of each artist a brief biographical sketch. Artful Reading presents a collection of artwork with subjects who are reading. The rhyming text simply lists all the places or ways one might read, such as “Read while you wait for your train to come in” and “Read by a window.” The Art of Freedom: how Artists See America shows a one-page illustration for the patterned sentence on each page that begins, “America is … . ” For example, “America is hard work.” is illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton’s painting, Cradling Wheat (1938). The vocabulary in this book is sophisticated with words like sacrifice, freedom, and marvels. In contrast to the simple format, this book has truly complex ideas in it, and could support discussion all the way into high school classrooms. Finally, No One Saw: Ordinary Things Through the Eyes of an Artist takes a simple text pattern and pairs it with a piece of art in exploration of the ways artists see everyday things. Again, there is much to talk about with this book, which reads, “No one saw apples like Paul Cezanne” and “No one saw soup like Andy Warhol.” No One Saw is particularly great for teaching point-of-view, which is implicitly addressed throughout the text and explicitly addressed on the last page, which reads “Artists express their own point of view. And nobody sees the world like you.”

In sum, integrating art into your reading and writing instruction makes the work both more engaging and more complex. These titles are among the best we’ve ever seen for exploring art visually and through words. If you took the first three texts together and made connections between them and then to the others on the list, the instructional possibilities seem virtually endless.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Academic Vocabulary, Alignment, background knowledge, Classroom libraries, Close Reads, Common Core State Standards, complex text, Comprehension Strategies, Creativity, Informational Text, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, publishers, Reading, Reading in the Content Areas, Research, Shared Reading, Small Group Reading Instruction, Speaking and Listening, Staircase of Complexity, Text Based Questions, Text Complexity, text selection, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Great Non-fiction for Teaching the Common Core

June 18, 2013 By 3 Comments
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As we mentioned last week, we are working with Lerner Publisher to help them reorganize their catalog. We are also aligning their books to the Common Core State Standards. When we received ALL the Lerner books (about 1200 titles) we were quite excited by the quality. We were originally concerned that we would be trying to align mediocre texts, which would make teaching with them mis-aligned to begin with! But Lerner has given us absolute permission to cull any titles that we don’t think should make the cut, and we have used this trump card some. That said, the vast majority of books are excellent, and most are non-fiction.

Sharing these titles with you is not part of our Lerner contract in any way. We are just immersed in the books and really want to share them with you. Over the next week, possibly two, we will share titles from Lerner and offer suggestions for using them in the classroom to meet the demands of the Common Core.

Non-fiction Reissues

Lerner has a lot of biography from a series called “On My Own History.” Most were printed around 2000. While some of the covers look a little dated, the text is mostly solid. Most of the books deal with little-known but very interesting historical events, and generally avoid stereotyping that is prominent in non-fiction for children. Presumably in the interest of updating this collection, the books were remade  into two different series, “History’s Kid Heroes” and “History Speaks.” The former is in graphic novel form. The latter is in picture book form with reader’s theater scripts in the back.

While it is common for publishers to take an earlier version of a text out of circulation when a new version comes out, Lerner’s first version is still available. The change in format means that, while the books on common topics have much of the same vocabulary, even verbatim portions, they are not exactly alike and are not on the same reading level.

For example, The Girl Who Struck out Babe Ruth (2000) is written on level N, while the companion graphic novel, The Baseball Adventure of Jackie Mitchell, is on Level O (Click here to see an example of the interior images/text.). Similarly, The Daring Escape of Ellen Craft is written on Level L, while Ellen Craft’s Escape from Slavery (picture book and reader’s theatre script), is written on Level O.

There are many paired titles such as these, which lend themselves to sharing with students across instructional contexts. You might read aloud Ellen Craft’s Escape from Slavery, use The Daring Escape of Ellen Craft to read deeper in shared reading, and then use the reader’s theatre script in guided and/or independent reading and for subsequent fluency practice.

In case you are wondering, Ellen Craft dressed up as a white man and posed as her husband’s owner to travel to freedom!

Filed Under: background knowledge, Classroom libraries, College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Complete Literacy, Guided Reading, Implementation, Informational Text, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Planning for Instruction, publishers, Reading, Shared Reading, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday Thought: Who’s Doing the Work

May 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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This week, we have been reflecting on building background knowledge and how to support students without shouldering the weight of the work (and the learning). On Tuesday, we raised the question, Who’s doing the work? As we look back on old posts, we realize that certain questions surface as themes for us and this idea of shifting the burden of the workload to students is most definitely one of them. Today we return you to a post that we wrote this past November and aptly titled Who is Doing the Work?  Here we share four important questions that will help you help students do more of the work and more of the learning!

Filed Under: background knowledge, College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Comprehension Strategies, Gradual Release of Responsibility, Growth Mindset, Implementation, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Planning for Instruction, Reading, Thursday Thought Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Building Background Knowledge: Harnessing the Power of the Internet

May 15, 2013 By 1 Comment
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In yesterday’s post, Building Background Knowledge: Who’s Doing the Work?, we shared a story of fifth grade students working with Cyrus Cassells’s “Soul Make a Path Through Shining,” a sophisticated poem about the Civil Rights Movement. Containing words like “minotaur,” “hydra-headed,” and “maelstrom” the difficult vocabulary presented itself as the most obvious obstacle to understanding the poem prompting the fifth graders to collectively share their knowledge of the hard words and look up others words they did not know. What we did not share yesterday, however, was that while this contributed to clearing up some confusion, most students did not emerge with a crystal clear understanding of the poem.  They still felt like there were gaps in their understanding which meant that yet again, they were faced with a decision: Do I say “oh well” and call it good enough? Or do I continue to work to figure it out?

In fifth grade, informational reading standard seven requires that students “draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.” We have affectionately dubbed this  “The Multi Media Standard”  and are particularly drawn to the words “locate an answer to a question or to solve a problem efficiently.”

Yesterday we shared that the students thought of dictionary.com as a potential resource for solving the problem of lack of word knowledge. Surely, typing in a word and having the definition pop up is efficient. However, while lack of word knowledge was the only problem these children could identify, it was not the only problem these students faced. The other part of the problem was understanding the bigger context of the poem which required knowing about Elizabeth Eckford and her first day of school at Little Rock Central High School on September 4, 1957. But when Kim asked students what they might google in order to find additional information to help them construct greater meaning about this text, the students perseverated on words. In their minds, the best solution to figuring out this puzzle was making sure they knew every word in the poem.

As teachers, one of the daily dilemmas of our jobs is knowing when to let inquiry guide student learning and when to intervene with direct, explicit instruction. In this case, students needed  to be taught how to further mine text for keywords that would assist their Google search for information to help them more thoroughly understand what they were reading. They needed to pay attention to the title of the poem and learn more about the poet.  They needed the bit of introductory text that explained that Cassells wrote this poem after being inspired by the documentary Eyes on the Prize. And they needed a teacher to help them see their needs.

While many of our Common Core aligned lessons have students reading closely and carefully to cite evidence and make logical inferences, we can say that only a few have paid attention to standard number seven and the ways in which digital resources need to support students’ meaning making processes. As you consider ways to build background knowledge, we ask you to think about whether you, like us, have adequately addressed standard number seven and taught students to harness the power of the Internet. And as always, we ask you to share with us what you have done to support this effort!

Filed Under: background knowledge, Close Reads, College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Complete Literacy, Comprehension Strategies, Gradual Release of Responsibility, Growth Mindset, Implementation, Informational Text, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Planning for Instruction, Reading, Reading in the Content Areas, Staircase of Complexity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Building Background Knowledge: Who’s Doing the Work?

May 14, 2013 By 3 Comments
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In yesterday’s post, The Power of Memorable Learning Experiences, we discussed the importance of building background knowledge by searching for companion texts to read aloud and share with students.  As we continue to think about this idea, we have a question for you: How many times have you read something and thought to yourself, “I have no idea what that is about”?  

When this happens as a reader, you have two choices.  The first, more passive response (the one that students most often choose) is to say, “Oh well” and continue on satisfied with not knowing. The second, more active response is to say, “How will I figure this out?” and work to pull together whatever resources you need to make it make sense.  While passivity has always stood in the path of deep thinking and learning, from the Common Core era all the way into lifelong learning, passivity on the part of readers has dire consequences. Standard number ten requires that students “read and comprehend literary and informational texts independently and proficiently,” so if students do not work to figure things out,  they are not practicing reading closely and carefully. If they are not practicing reading closely and carefully, they are not thinking about the big picture and considering what they know about words and how text works.  They are not thinking about the author’s point of view of utilizing their research skills to find answers to the questions about which they wonder. In short, they are practicing none of what standards 1-9, college and career readiness, or lifelong learner-ship ask of them. They are becoming neither more independent nor more proficient. Attaining independence and proficiency seems to begin with  nurturing a desire to know and nurturing a desire to persist until the curiosity is quelled.

In a recent demonstration lesson, Kim worked with a group of fifth graders reading Cyrus Cassells’s “Soul Make a Path Through Shining,”  a very sophisticated poem about the Civil Rights movement containing words like “minotaur” and “hydra-headed” and “maelstrom.” The class unanimously agreed that the poem was hard but rather than quit and say, “Oh well,” Kim nudged them to consider what they could do to figure it out. Several students said that they could reread the poem but others chimed in that they felt that rereading would do them no good because the real problem was the words.  How would reading the same unfamiliar words over and over help you? they wondered. That’s when they decided that if the piece that was missing from this puzzle was word knowledge, they’d need to somehow solve that problem. They decided that the first thing they’d do would be to talk to each other to collectively share what they knew about the words they didn’t know and after that they’d go to dictionary.com.  

Pre-Common Core, Kim might have begun this lesson by saying, “When you read this poem, you are going to meet some tough words.  To help you understand, let’s talk about what the word minotaur means … .”  Instead, Kim let students discover their own problems and work to find viable solutions.  In this teaching scenario, she assumed the role of coach, the one who stands to the side and lets the kids run around the field kicking the ball. She interjected advice and intervened when necessary and, by allowing them the opportunity to “excavate” for problems (Fisher and Frey, Building Background Knowledge, p.34, 2009), she nurtured the curiosity and persistence needed for creating independent and proficient readers.

Filed Under: background knowledge, Close Reads, Collaboration, College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Complete Literacy, complex text, Gradual Release of Responsibility, Growth Mindset, Implementation, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Planning for Instruction, Reading, Staircase of Complexity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Power of Memorable Learning Experiences

May 13, 2013 By 2 Comments
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Oftentimes, as teachers, we face the dilemma of wanting students to read an article or story when we know they have little or no background knowledge about the topic. For example, maybe we’d like to share Patricia Polacco’s Pink and Say with students. We want them to marvel at the relationship between Pinkus and Sheldon, but without understanding the relationship between blacks and whites during the 1860s and a brief history of the Civil War, we know that our students won’t be able to fully understand the depth of its uniqueness. So what do we do? We fill in the gaps.  We begin talking about what life was like in the 1800s.  We describe slavery. We talk about the Civil War and then we read aloud or ask the students to read the text themselves, depending on their age and ability. When all is said and done, the burden of connecting this new background knowledge to the new text falls on us. We do all the work.

Furthermore, we must ask ourselves: Is this powerful enough for students to really understand? Just because we provide students this information, have we given them what they need to mine the text for its deepest meanings and ideas?

We suspect that more times than not, our attempts to fill in the gaps in this way are not memorable enough to act as the solid foundation students need to deepen their understanding of new concepts.  Building background knowledge needs to be an active process that requires students to “survey (know where to look), excavate (bring it to the surface), and analyze (examine it closely) (Fisher and Frey, Building Background Knowledge, p. 34, 2009). If our objective is to teach children what it means to set a goal and make plans to achieve it, we’ve got to create a learning experience that won’t be easily forgotten.

So, what constitutes a memorable learning experience? If you polled children about the parts of their school experience that they remember best, many would recount a favorite story that a teacher read aloud. Still to this day, Kim can remember sitting at the edge of her seat waiting with Ramona “for the present” while her second grade teacher read aloud Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest. Stories allow children opportunities to experience the unfamiliar while at the same time giving them a chance to wrestle with issues that remain universal in our lives.(Gallagher, p. 66, Readicide, 2009) Read aloud remains one of the most inviting and memorable experiences we know for building background knowledge so before you read aloud or ask students to read Pink and Say, don’t tax yourself with recounting a brief history of the Civil War.  Instead, consider channelling your efforts toward finding informational texts and other stories about slavery and the Civil War that serve as a companion to Pink and Say. Read aloud and help students BUILD the background knowledge they need to understand.

Fisher, Douglas, and Nancy Frey. Background Knowledge: The Missing Piece of the Comprehension Puzzle. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2009. Print.

Gallagher, Kelly, and Richard L. Allington. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do about It. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse, 2009. Print.

Filed Under: background knowledge, Close Reads, complex text, Comprehension Strategies, Gradual Release of Responsibility, Implementation, Informational Text, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, text selection, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Them’s Fightin’ Words

May 8, 2013 By 3 Comments

When one thinks of the divisions in education or of the reasons educators bicker over pedagogical issues, we are hard pressed to come up with a more contentious topic than that of phonics instruction. No Child Left Behind placed explicit phonics instruction front and center. In contrast, the authors of the Common Core State Standards have treated instruction in the code as something of a stepchild. There is relatively limited discussion of how to teach how the written code works, presumably because this topic is so divisive. Say what you will about the Common Core authors, but for better or for worse, they were out to get things done, not get into debates, including the traditional debates over phonics.

We presume that Foundational Skills, the portion of the Common Core which addresses teaching how words work, are not included in the anchor standards because there are only four of them and they are not consistent through the grades. For the most part, the Common Core’s Foundational Skills’ anchor-ish standards seem to make room for the factions divided over how to teach the code, giving either extreme room to do what they want. That is, if systematic, explicit phonics instruction in the extreme, perhaps even that which is scripted, is your cup of tea, then nothing in the Common Core will stop you from teaching phonics this way. You will have to pay careful attention to meaning work, including read aloud and interactions with texts of substance, which tends to be neglected in such instruction, whether you want to admit it or not. What the Common Core doesn’t do, which seems to be making people angry, is say that everyone MUST teach this way.

If on the other hand, you prefer to teach word work in ways that are embedded in interactions with text that you feel are more authentic, or if you feel that children can learn the code in ways that are more holistic, then the Common Core won’t get in your way, either. You will have to work hard to get children to attend to the print and you will have to be systematic in your own right, as attention to the code is typically lacking in classrooms that take such an approach to an extreme. What the Common Core doesn’t do is say that children MUST learn to read in “authentic” texts, and this is making some other people angry.

As with the Common Core, you may notice that we are taking both sides of this issue. We don’t think there should be a fight. In both instructional philosophies, those teachers on either extreme, as well as those along the continuum between either extreme, will have to pay close attention to the truth of the criticisms lodged against them, instead of simply choosing to be angry. If you think there are no holes in your instructional philosophy, if you think you have the ONE right way to teach children to read, if you are angry because people don’t know everything you know, then take a deep breath, shut up, and listen for a change. Children can learn to read in either classroom setting, just as children can fail to read in either classroom setting. The success of the children has more to do with the quality of the teachers than with the philosophy of instruction, and we are all lucky if we have honest critics who can help us see what we are inclined to overlook.

 

Filed Under: balance, College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Complete Literacy, Foundational Skills, Growth Mindset, Implementation, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Planning for Instruction, Reading Tagged With: , , , ,

April Favorites 2013

May 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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We know we are a week into May, but we are just now finding a minute to reflect on our April posts! One highlight of last month was our trip to San Antonio where we facilitated a pre-conference institute with a wonderful group of colleagues who made the day fun for all of us. In April, we wrote about questioning and test preparation and, as usual, we were a bit unorthodox. Our favorite post was the April Fool’s Day post. Your favorite posts are listed below, dear Readers!
This post lists the themes we saw running across this years national convention. Every year is seems that everyone is sort of saying the same thing and this year was no exception. If you didn’t make it to the convention, this list can bring you up to speed.

2. Fitting it all In: “Finding Time” for Close Readings
This post revisits definitions “close reading” and considers it in the context of a literacy block. We argue that you don’t have to “make time” for close reading, but can integrate it into existing structures, such as read aloud, shared reading, and independent reading.

3. Getting to know you: The Three Stages of Reading the Standards
In this post, we liken getting to know the Common Core Standards to getting to know a person. We discuss how at first our relationship is driven by our first impression and then as new understandings reveal themselves, our understanding changes.

With 63 tweets, our “Top Ten Themes of IRA Convention 2013″ was our most-tweeted post, with Fitting it All In running a close second.

Filed Under: Academic Vocabulary, Alignment, Assessment, background knowledge, balance, Close Reads, Collaboration, College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Complete Literacy, complex text, Comprehension Strategies, Creativity, Educational Reform, Friday Favorite, Gradual Release of Responsibility, Growth Mindset, Guest post, Guided Reading, Implementation, Informational Text, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Intervention, Leadership, Literacy Block, Literary Text, Main Idea, Musings, Planning for Instruction, Policy and Research, pre-reading strategies, publishers, Read Aloud, Reading, Reading in the Content Areas, Reflections, Research, Reviews, RTI, Shared Reading, Small Group Reading Instruction, Speaking and Listening, Staircase of Complexity, Standardized Testing, Test Prep, Text Based Questions, Text Complexity, text selection, Thursday Thought, Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Weekend Round Up May 3

May 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Monday

 Getting to Know You: The Three Stages of Reading the Standards

In this post, we liken getting to know the Common Core Standards to getting to know a person. We discuss how at first our relationship is driven by our first impression and then as new understandings reveal themselves, our understanding changes.
Tuesday

The ABCs of the Common Core (Part 1) 

In this post, we begin to share our own thoughts about what we think the Common Core standards mean for the next generation of teaching and learning literacy. A is for agency.

Wednesday

The ABCs of the Common Core (Part 2)

In this post, we share our second thought about what the Common Core really means for literacy instruction and learning–we must balance our instructional structures to nurture well-balanced reading processes.
Thursday

The ABCs of the Common Core  (Part 3) 

In this post, we share our third thought about what the Common Core standards really mean for the next generation of literacy teaching and learning–complexity. Because this is a complex document, we need to be prepared for several generations of ideas for implementation.

Filed Under: College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Complete Literacy, Growth Mindset, Implementation, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Literacy Block, Musings, Reading, Speaking and Listening, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The ABCs of the Common Core (Part 3)

May 2, 2013 By 1 Comment
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About a year ago, Jan lamented how her house was filled with boxes and bread bags that were haphazardly ripped open in her children’s hurried attempts to get at what was inside. She shared her exasperation at her teenaged son who tore into a box of tea with no regard for others who might like a fresh cup of tea in the future.  She told us how she taped the box back together and explained to him that before you open a box with your hands, you open it first with your mind. And in this post, Jan likened boxes of tea and bags of bread to the Common Core–before we tear in and go to work implementing, we must open them first with our minds.


This story brings us around to our third and final (for now!) thought about what the Common Core standards really mean for the next generation of literacy instruction:


C is for complexity.


The Common Core standards are filled with subtleties and nuances that if read only cursorily, are likely overlooked. There is as much written between the lines of the CCSS document as there is within the lines. This means that hurried attempts to implement the standards will often skip key ideas and details.


Our first year with the standards represents implementation 1.0, which means that there is still much to think about and consider as we move forward to further implement the standards. We must continue to think about ways to help expand children’s stores of academic vocabulary and make the staircase of text complexity ever more accessible without creating dependency (See Tuesday’s post on agency!). While we want to continue to think about asking the kinds of questions that help children dig into the deeper meanings of text, we also want to think about the limitations of the strategies and approaches that have been suggested as the standards have been rolled out.

The Common Core State Standards are complex, as is the mission of helping children achieve them. If we are to attain our goals of helping children become independent and proficient readers, writers, speakers, and listeners, it is imperative that we continue to open this box with our minds to evolve and deepen our understandings of the explicit and implicit intent of the standards. Such close reading of the standards seems the best preparation for implementation 2.0.

Filed Under: College and Career Ready, Common Core State Standards, Implementation, Instruction, Interpreting the Standards, Literacy Block, Planning for Instruction, Reading, Speaking and Listening, Staircase of Complexity, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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