Sample CCSS literacy strands follow each title discussed for lesson-plan possibilities.

Tony Preciado and Rhode Montijo clearly empathize with kids who would never pick up a grammar guide. Their Super Grammar (Scholastic, 2012; Gr. 2-8) delivers a group of dynamic comic-book heroes, asking readers to learn the character’s “names, powers, teams, and how they work together!” The book’s graphic-novel format employs bright primary colors for each section. The “Amazing Eight,” highlighted in red, teach the parts of speech. The green (and evil) “Sabotage Squad” trick writers into using sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and double negatives. In the later case, a boy and villain are depicted in a stand-off. “You’re not no superhero!” he declares, a comment corrected with new phrasing and an illustration that conveys the intended meaning. Notable for its broad appeal, this title allows young readers to create their own superhero worlds, and won’t turn off older students who benefit from visuals as they learn grammar concepts.

CCSS L.3.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. 3.1a. Explain the function of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in general and their functions in particular sentences.

CCSS L.3.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. 3.2c.Use commas and quotation marks in dialogue. 3.2d.Form and use possessives.

Employing the cartoon characters A. J., and Andrea from his “My Weird School” series, Dan Gutman offers humorous advice in his conversational My Weird Writing Tips (HarperCollins/Harper, 2013; Gr. 2-5). In crafting a story, the author recommends, “Start with a bang!” and create tension by having something bad happen to your main character. Gutman’s sample outlandish scenarios will amuse readers—and tempt them to take the bait. Once they have, Part 2 will help them finesse their narrative writing with information on the parts of speech, spelling and punctuation tips, and suggestions on how to communicate ideas and tell a good story.

“Cut! Cut! Cut!” suggests the author when revising, and reward yourself with an M&M candy each time you eliminate a word that doesn’t affect the meaning of your work. He cautions students not to “look like a dumbhead” by using texting language in school assignments. Students who aren’t receptive to more formal grammar instruction will find Weird a relatable guide that reinforces those easily forgotten, but important conventions.

CCSS W.3.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

CCSS L.5.2 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

Tapping into the young writers’ senses, Karen Benke offers  relaxation exercises to open the mind, and writing prompts such as eavesdropping on a stranger’s conversation to capture how people do communicate, or don’t communicate. The author also invites doodling and pre-writing in blank spaces provided throughout the pages of Leap Write In! Adventures in Creative Writing to Stretch and Surprise Your One-of-a-Kind Mind (Roost, 2013; Gr. 5-8).

Teachers will want this title for the dozens of novel approaches it suggests to engage students. An idea to create a cento or patchwork of different lines from stories and poems, as they’re written, then change them up, is a fresh way to get budding writers to observe how meaning changes with word and phrase placement. Text models, quotes, and poems serve as inspiration, and when asked to describe how to make a mud pie—“What? You’ve never made a mud pie? Drop this book immediately and go find some dirt”—readers will happily comply with the command.

CCSS W.6.3.b Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

Unsuspecting fiction readers will be surprised to find themselves in the author’s role in Pseudonymous Bosch’s Write This Book! A Do-It-Yourself Mystery (Little, Brown, 2013; Gr. 4-7). The story centers on a missing writer, who abandons a work in progress. It’s up to two siblings and readers to discover why, or as Bosch puts it, “Think of it this way: the book is a mystery novel—but this time the novel itself is the mystery…. Your job is to solve it.”

Bosch is a willing and enthusiastic guide, taking readers step-by-step through a novel’s structure, explaining the whys and hows from the foreword and preface to deciding on a setting and creating tension. Along the way they’ll learn about character and plot development, writing dialogue, literary terms, common writing pitfalls, and much, much more, all while determining the story’s direction. References to familiar books from E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit drive home points, while the many mini-assignments and fill-in-the-blanks help the reader/writer bring the story to a satisfying conclusion. Serious injections of humor and illustration add to the fun.

CCSS ELA-Literacy. W.5.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

CCSS ELA-Literacy. W.5.3a Orient the reader by establishing  a situation and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy. W.5.3b Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.

Three blind mice named Mary, Pee Wee, and Oscar help define nearly 100 literary elements, most unconventionally, in Catherine Lewis’s Thrice Told Tales: Three Mice Full of Writing Advice by (S & S/Atheneum, 2013; Gr. 7 Up). Depicted as cartoon critters wearing sunglasses, the trio is clever at finding ways to explain such terms as “red herring,” “immediacy,” “cliché,” “picaro,” and “interior monologue.”

The author’s tongue-in-cheek tone is evident in her definition of “Sentimentality,” illustrated by a spoof of a publisher’s rejection letter to Pee Wee for an overly emotional manuscript. The publisher suggests that he rewrite, incorporating more ambiguity, irony, and tension—and signs off as the “Big Cheese.” Despite the childlike drawings, this title will appeal to sophisticated writers (and readers) who see how the connecting thread of the simple classic story changes with each literary device. There are amusing nods to famous authors (“They were the best of mice, they were the worst of mice…”), but it’s the “Snip of the Tail” captions from the author that offer the most clarity to each term. Teachers may want to borrow the premise of a twisted tale, and turn a class loose to create their own literary term definitions.

CCSS RL 9-10. 5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.

CCSS W.8.3b Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events   within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as  mystery, tension, or surprise.

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003; Gr 9. Up). Thomas C. Foster guides high school students as they look for themes and patterns in classic texts. His How to Read Literature Like a Professor for Kids (2013, both HarperCollins; Gr. 3-7) demonstrates for middle school students how to do the same for both classic and modern children’s literature.

In a chapter titled, “Now Where Have I Seen Him Before?” the author compares Mowgli, the boy watched over by panthers in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1893), to Bod from Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2008), a boy raised by ghosts—both children in need of a family. Students will learn to identify elements of a quest, supernatural characters who grow in strength by weakening others (the ghost in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Stephenie Meyer’s vampires in the “Twilight” series), and more. While many young readers may not have encountered Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea or Homer’s Odyssey yet, the book can serve as a teacher tool to introduce these classics. Most valuable is the refreshing attention to the craft and structure of texts that will move classroom discussion from plot rehash to a higher level of understanding.

CCSS RL 8.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

CCSS W.5.9 Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or a drama, drawing on specific details in the text [e.g., how characters interact]”).

Stripes, Dots, and Swirls
From a Madagascan ring-tailed lemur, to a North American zebra swallowtail butterfly, to a sixline wrasse swimming through an Indo-Pacific Ocean coral reef, Susan Stockdale shows readers that animals with Stripes of All Types (Peachtree, 2013; PreS-Gr 2) populate the globe. Simple, lilting rhymes and enticing action verbs spotlight critters in their natural habitats: “Prowling the prairie,/perched on a peak./Crawling on cactus,/and camped by a creek” (handsome acrylic illustrations depict an American badger bounding through tall grass, a bongo profiled against a moonlit African sky, black-and-yellow cactus bees sipping nectar from a flower, and a Malayan tapir nestled by a stream). The final double-page image brings the action close to home as two children cuddle a pair of black-and-gray tabbies.

An afterword identifies each species and provides insight about the significance of its stripes, which are used for camouflage, communication, to warn off predators, or to attract mates. An interactive game challenges readers to match close-ups of the various patterns with their animal owners, encouraging kids to look more closely at the pictures, hunt back through the book to extract information, and make comparisons between these unique and striking designs.

Blending breezy rhymes with lovely collage artwork, Betsy Franco and Steve Jenkins’s Bees, Snails, & Peacock Tails (S & S, 2008; K-Gr 3) presents a sampling of the patterns and shapes found right before our eyes. For example, a beehive is constructed from tiny hexagon “fit side/by side/by side,” a sturdy and space-saving design; a moth’s wings are adorned with perfectly symmetrical “eyes” (thought to frighten away predators); migrating birds fly in a graceful V-shape (“By forming a wedge,/the swans and the geese/slice through the air/and travel in peace”); and when threatened, a puffer fish swells up to a larger-in-size—and harder-to-eat—sphere. Whether depicting the repeating pattern of footprints left behind by a scampering mouse or the straight-line scent trail followed by foraging ants, the textured illustrations make each concept crystal clear.

In Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature (Houghton Mifflin, 2011; PreS-Gr 3) Joyce Sidman and Beth Krommes focus on a particular shape that occurs repeatedly, revealing itself in many different ways. Lyrical and concise, the narrative describes the broad characteristics of this versatile form, expanded upon in the spectacular scratchboard illustrations awhirl with specific plant and animal species and examples of natural phenomena.

A spiral can be “Coiled tight,/warm and safe,” like a woodchuck hibernating underground; start small and grow larger “swirl by swirl” like a nautilus; or unwrap itself, “one/soft/curl/at a time,” like a lady fern unfurling feathery fronds. A spiral is “strong,” like a rolled-up bristles-out hedgehog or the impact-absorbing horns of a merino sheep, and “and clings tight” like the curled trunk of an Asian elephant or a spider monkey’s tail. It is “bold” (the whorl of a wave before it hits shore), “beautiful” (the precisely arranged petals of a chrysanthemum), and awe-inspiring (a spiral-shaped galaxy “stretches starry arms/through space,/spinning and sparkling,/forever expanding…”).

A brief afterword provides a bit more info about the featured examples and a quick mention of the Fibonacci sequence. Elegant, captivating, and imagination-stirring, this amazing meld of poetry, science, and artistry will inspire discussion and enthusiasm for spiral-seeking expeditions.

Color, Color, Everywhere
Melissa Stewart’s A Rainbow of Animals (Enslow, 2010; K-Gr 3) takes it color by color to introduce a menagerie of mostly monochromatic creatures. From red to purple, each section spans the globe to present an assortment of species (range maps appear at the end of each chapter).Each critter is allotted its own spread, bordered by the appropriate hue, and vibrant close-up photos are paired with an accessible introduction to the animal and the role played by its color (protection from predators, to warn enemies away, attracting mates, etc.).

Particularly interesting examples include the mandrill, monkeys that use their bright red noses to locate one another in the dense forest; the brown-throated three-toed sloth, featured in the green section because of its algae covered fur, which provides camouflage in the forest; and the blue darner dragonfly, which adjusts its color to the temperature (dark blue for warmth on cool mornings, light blue to cool down on hot afternoons). The eye-catching format and mix of familiar and exotic animals make this book fun for browsing and whets appetites for further investigations.

Also arranged by shade, Steve Jenkins’s Living Color (Houghton Mifflin, 2007; K- Gr 5) introduces several species per spread. Set against neat white backdrops, the cut-paper collages are amazingly lifelike and gracefully dynamic. Each section begin with a statement (e.g., “Red says…”), and a lively caption playfully sums up the connotation of each animal’s color—“Step carefully” for the extremely poisonous stonefish (adorned with 13 venomous spines along its back and lethal if trod upon by a swimmer), or “I stink” for a shield bug (which releases a foul-smelling chemical when threatened). Well-written paragraphs percolating with fascinating facts fill in the details.

The book’s layout encourages readers to search out similarities and differences, discovering, for example, that the male blue bird of paradise uses his rich-hued plumage to attract a mate, the color of the cobalt blue tarantula allows it to better hide in the dusky shadows of the forest floor, and the mostly brown blue-tailed skink twitches its bright appendage to fake out predators (when grabbed, the tail breaks off, and the lizard can make its escape; it eventually grows a new tail). Back matter provides more information about animal color and its uses and the creatures featured in the book (size, habitat, diet, etc.).

Explore Your World
In Ashley Wolff’s endearing tale, Baby Bear Sees Blue (S & S/Beach Lane, 2012; PreS-Gr 2)—and a rainbow of other colors—after he awakens in his den and steps out with his mother to investigate his environment. The gentle question-and-answer narrative shimmers with concrete details, sensual imagery, and a buoyant mood of wonder: sniffing the meadow air, the cub asks, “What smells so good, Mama?” She replies, “Those are the strawberries”….and “Baby Bear sees red.” After a busy day, mother and child curl up together in their cave, and Baby Bear “closes his eyes and sees nothing but deep, soft black.”

Balancing realism with soft-edged sweetness, Wolff’s linoleum-print-and-watercolor illustrations are filled with dazzlimg shades and pleasing textures. Their large size and the text’s repetitive structure make this charmer a perfect choice for sharing aloud in a classroom.

Presented with a similar sense of invigorating discovery, these books remind students that a multitude of shapes, colors, and patterns can be found in their own day-to-day worlds. On an “Apple crisp October day,” a father and two children take a trip to a pumpkin farm to Pick a Circle, Gather Squares (Albert Whitman, 2013; PreS-Gr 2). Felicia Sanzari Chernesky’s rhyming text and Susan Swan’s harvest-hued collages depict a delightful excursion as the youngsters point out circles (“Here’s the sun./Apples, pumpkins—/such round fun!”), square-shaped bales of hay, ovals (squash, corn, and speckled eggs), hexagons (honeycombs and pen-protecting chicken wire), and more. Filled with splashes of bright color and appealing textures, the artwork depicts lively action, engaging details, and additional shapes to find.

Jane Brocket’s Ruby, Violet, Lime: Looking for Color (Millbrook, 2012; PreS-Gr 2) presents a gorgeous gallery of vibrantly hued photos of flowers, foods, clothing, buildings, and other commonplace objects. Spreads focused on a particular color are aglow with varying shades, and the accompanying text utilizes descriptive adjectives and sense-based imagery to add resonance and a touch of imagination: “Green is crisp and lively. Lime frosting, mint-green striped socks, emerald lettuces, and jade gardens are fresh and zingy.” A visual and verbal feast, this book encourages kids to take a closer look at their surroundings.

Get Creative
Emily Gravett expands upon basic concepts of color and shape—and the science of animal coloration—in a playful tale filled with surprises, humor, and a message about remaining true to one’s self. With head held in hands, body slumped, and eyes despondently downcast, Blue Chameleon (S & S, 2011; K-Gr 3) is looking…well, blue, a mood expressed in his scratchy azure and cobalt body shading.

In the spreads following, the lonely lizard searches for companionship, mimicking in both color and form each of the objects or animals he comes across—yellow and crescent shaped as he approaches a banana, swirly tailed with two toes extended over head like tentacles as he creeps up to a snail, round and purple-dotted as he rolls toward a beach ball. Alas, no one will respond, and he finally gives up, sitting still as stone on a “Gray rock.” A page turn reveals what seems like a plain white backdrop, but a closer look—or perhaps even touch—reveals the chameleon outlined in a glossy same-colored ink. Readers will also notice a foot, similarly camouflaged, and accompanied by a tentative, “Hello?”

At last, the protagonist has made a friend, and two “Colorful chameleons” cavort together on the final spread, brightly arrayed in a kaleidoscope of colors, shapes, and patterns. Filled with gentle humor, the spare text and outstanding artwork invite readers to make visual comparisons between objects, recognize instances of symmetry, recount and contemplate the book’s changing moods, and think anew about the wonders of colors and animals. Use this book to initiate color-related creative writing and art projects.

After sharing some of these titles, take students on a nature walk in a nearby park or a ramble through the neighborhood. Have them focus on looking for, pointing out, and identifying the colors, shapes, and patterns that they come across, whether natural or manmade. Encourage them to look closely at familiar sights and utilize their observation skills. Youngsters can record their findings by drawing or writing in a field journal.

Kids can also scour their classrooms to search out colors, shapes, and patterns. Have them browse through books, magazines, or other resources about wildlife and nature to identify interesting visual designs. Check out National Geographic’s website, which includes a “Patterns in Nature” photo gallery filled with spectacular images organized by topic (animals, butterflies, sea creatures, trees, rocks and lava, snow and ice, etc.). These crisp, beautifully composed photos show the astounding spectrum and variety of nature’s designs. Using their own artwork and/or photos, clip-art images, or photos clipped from magazines, students can create their own concept books and perhaps share them with younger children just learning color and shape basics.

The Common Core State Standards below are a sampling of those references in the above books and classroom activities:

RL. 1.1. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
RL. 1.4. Identify words or phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.
RI. 1.1. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
W. 1.2. Write information/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and prove some sense of closure.
W. 2.7. Participate in shared research and writing projects.
SL. 1.2. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud….
K.G. Identify and describe shapes.

It’s the beginning of the school year and you’re being pulled in a million different directions. Your days are full to the brim as you get to know new students and their families, plan curriculum with colleagues, and consider the most effective teaching strategies and cutting-edge resources.

This school year we will be shifting the focus of our column to strategies for integrating curriculum content, Common Core State Standards [CCSS], content standards, and literature. What role can inquiry play? How can we harness an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning as a tool for integrating curriculum? And, what role does literature play in this curriculum?

We’ll be putting these various pieces together, a job that we believe is crucial, yet still largely incomplete. We’ll provide you with snapshots of what inquiry and integration look like when you and your students are studying topics in science, math, and social studies at the primary, intermediate, and high school levels—models and ideas that you can expand and adjust to make your own.

Moving towards inquiry and integration raises a number of questions for us. When we integrate reading, writing, listening, and speaking in meaningful ways, we are meeting many of the expectations of the Common Core standards. But what does using children’s and young adult literature across the curriculum require in an era of the CCSS? How do we teach for depth while also incorporating the standards? Standards are not synonymous with curriculum. Authentic learning can only take place in the context of rich curriculum; it’s about encountering big ideas, raising and answering questions, and making sense of evidence. This is not done in a vacuum, but in the context of the study of science, math, history, literature, and the world around us.

Small Steps, Large Possibilities

We can begin the integration process by taking small steps that have large possibilities for further development. Both of us have used small sets of related books many times over the course of our teaching careers. We’ve referred to them as powerful pairs, triplets, and quads and text sets. Others have labeled sets of related books as clusters. The name is not as important as the idea that even a small group of carefully chosen books can jump-start a meaningful investigation.

Here’s an example of what we mean. In our upcoming columns, you will see the following template. This will be a springboard for ways in which you can frame an integrated unit that utilizes reading, writing, listening, and speaking as a tool for accessing content, and employs quality children’s and young adult literature of all genres to frame inquiry within a disciplinary lens. One month we might consider a sample unit for primary-grade science, another month a unit for high school social studies.

We look forward to journeying with you through this school year, throughout the content areas and up and down the K-12 grade span. In the context of your busy teaching lives, we hope that these curriculum snapshots will help teachers and school librarians to work and plan together to immerse students in investigations that matter.

Your students may choose to volunteer for military service; they will certainly become voters and taxpayers. As educators, it is essential that we teach them how to become informed citizens–to examine evidence and argument related to the issues that shape political opinion and decisions.

Missiles launched at Syria are likely to provoke a response that spills over into a future conflict. However, if Assad’s government is not forced to face the consequences of banned weapon use–assuming that it has indeed used them–we are deciding that the immoral and impermissible is acceptable. In the 1930s, in both Spain and Czechoslovakia, we saw that not standing up to dictators only encouraged them and lead to larger, more horrific, conflicts.

To attack Syria is to increase the chance that the rebels–many of whom are the sworn enemies of the United States– will win, or carve out a toxic territory of their own, a haven for global jihadists. This is what the Russians claim. Assad is secular leader, while the forces fighting against him include extreme Islamic militants. Yet to allow this president to murder with impunity is to continue the bloody family business; his infamous father slaughtered tens of thousands of his Muslim Brotherhood opponents.

Which is the world we want to live in?  One in which Syria is a failed state, where Al Qaeda cells flourish close to Israel and Turkey, or a world in which we accept the deaths of tens and even hundreds of thousands of civilians?

It seems to me that this is the topic and debate that our students should be reading about, learning about, and having right now. Evaluating evidence, point of view, and argument is as Common Core as it gets. As global citizens, our students must be able to get beyond headlines, read a variety of complex texts, and form opinions based on evidence. What should the role of the school librarian be in sharing information about current issues? Librarians can lead students to articles from international papers such as The New York Times; news sources such as Al Jazeera that present insights and perspectives that aren’t often visible in American coverage; and the websites of groups that are on the ground, for example, Doctors Without Borders.

How can we tell if chemical weapons were used? A perfect science assignment. Why would Assad use poison gas when he was winning the war and United Nations’ inspectors were about to arrive? A great question for social studies classes. Could the rebels have staged an attack on themselves in order to get international powers to attack Assad? Every child who has an older sibling understands that strategy: provoking the bigger kid to lash out so that s/he will take the blame.

Syria is not so far away–what we decide to do there will directly affect every student in your school. Right in front of our eyes events that may well have decade-shaping consequences are playing out. Librarians can provide the resources that allow students to parse the arguments and find their way to reasoned answers. We cannot stumble into war blindly, nor can we ignore the need for strong responses. We must take the sober, adult, responsibility of making hard choices. By providing students with evidence, librarians can help them to become the responsible citizens our nation requires.

As students around the country return to school, those in New York City are facing a future without certified school librarians, as the NYC Department of Education (DOE) has asked to be excused from a decades-old state mandate on minimum staffing requirements. The request for a “variance” from the law (Commissioner’s Regulation §91.2), filed August 9 with the New York State Education Department (see SLJ’s coverage, “Educators, Parents Fight NYC Bid to Bypass State Mandate for School Librarians,”), proclaims a sad lack of vision concerning the contribution librarians make to this great city. Mayor Bloomberg, surely this is not the kind of legacy you wish for? This is how we wisely invest in our future?

The Wall Street Journal reports that there are a meager 333 certified librarians serving the city’s 1,700 schools, after steady declines for years. We have reached a new, perhaps critical, low.

The timing couldn’t be worse for our schools. It’s been shown that kids in schools with librarians do better than those in schools without—a pretty simple and sufficient case. By whatever name (teacher librarian, media specialist, or librarian), these professionals deliver on basic literacy, digital literacy, research skills, college readiness, and much more. And, now, when all too many teachers lack training on the new Common Core standards, the city continues to defund this key human capital investment. This, just as the reaction to the first scores truly tests the implementation of the standards. We need the skills that media specialists bring to our schools.

The DOE should be positioning librarians to provide on-the-ground support for the implementation of the most significant educational initiative of our generation. School librarians are a natural source of professional development on materials—print or digital—and they can be a vital link to parents in explaining what to expect in the transition. Librarians, including those directly confronted by the NYC DOE’s move, are out front on the Common Core nationally. We’ve published several of them here.

The fact is there has been an ongoing disregard for the mandate itself. This law, in place for decades, articulates the will of the public for the public good. It is an expression of thoughtful process. Undermining it via a series of one-off executive decisions made by principals under immediate budgetary pressure is not how our social contract works best. Perhaps it is not such a bad thing that this penny-wise, pound-foolish cost-savings tactic has been brought out in the open—and back into the political process.

We don’t need what the DOE calls “equivalent service” in its August 9 letter. We don’t need vague assurances of “arrangements” and “steps” that will be taken to cope with this disinvestment. The NYC DOE’s request presents an opportunity for those of us who know what librarians do to challenge what’s been happening and to demand that the department take the lead in producing better educational results by supporting the deployment of the Common Core and those who are key to its success.

Will the DOE provide a vision of how to improve our children’s education? Or will it continue to cut costs in ways that at best seem small-minded?

Welcome back to school, people.

Rebecca T. Miller
Editor-in-Chief
rmiller@mediasourceinc.com

But what I noticed right off—and surely struck many of you—is that we need to stop talking about the Common Core State Standards in the singular. There is a whole set of distinct Common Core challenges, and we need to be clear sighted about what they are, and the tools needed to address them.

I realized some time ago that there was more than one kind of Common Core experience. For young children, in preschool or elementary, Common Core is and will be their school experience. Year after year they will be exposed to content-rich nonfiction and increasingly complex texts and vocabulary, and they will gain skills in close reading and mining textual evidence. But for the students already in middle, and especially, high school, the Common Core Standards present another challenge. The schooling they received and learned to negotiate does not match the assessments that require them to demonstrate the above-mentioned skills. We need to define the needs of students who are in free fall as well as those who are rising through the new system. That is step one. Step two is more difficult.

The New York State results put me in mind of a suggestion a principal made to me earlier this summer: we must disaggregate scores to determine which cohort is experiencing the sharpest decline. This principal, accustomed to the daily triage of deciding where to best use limited resources, recognized that the lowest scores are not seen evenly throughout our schools. The steepest drops in scores seem to be in the most challenged schools. This may seem self-evident, but it is not. The needs of students— and communities—vary. What are the needs of a school where many families have deep pockets and available resources versus the demands of a school where almost all of the support and instruction takes place within the school building? And the issue is not just the burdens the students face, but school policies. In my experience, struggling schools too often turn to programs—teaching scripts, mandated curricula, and (very) limited and structured reading requirements. The cure makes the ailment worse.

Here’s a project for those reading this column: Can we compare the Common Core outcomes of schools with parallel demographics, a first set with accredited full-time school librarians against another that uses aides and volunteers, or in which the librarian essentially checks out books? Does a librarian make a difference in outcomes? How? We all need to know that—but we won’t find out until we look past the headlines and into the numbers.

What’s to be done? In one sense, I think the New York results are encouraging. The Common Core standards were initiated because high school graduates were not prepared for the next stage in their lives. The recent assessments have allowed us to examine those gaps while the students are still in our buildings. We have time to help these students. But what resources must we adopt to do so? How can the deep thinking and engaged reading required by the Common Core standards be effectively taught in the schools where there the pass rate was between 0 to 5 percent? Can we develop Common Core assessments that address vocational needs? I can’t be the first person to ask these questions. I’m eager to learn what kinds of programs and interventions you have seen that are effective, ineffective, or produce middling results. Surely there are innovators and researchers who are blazing trails, testing ideas, and pointing the way for the rest of us.

From any conventional point of view, these are the centuries you can skip on the way to the Crusades, the High Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. But this new scholarship points to an era of lively intellectual exchange. Indeed, from my research on Sugar Changed the World (Clarion, 2010), it’s clear that Hindus, as well as the last of Athenian scholars (whose intellectual lineage leads back to Plato and Aristotle), were also part of this world.

I realize, of course, that however fascinating the recovery the academic reviewer calls “submerged worlds” may be to scholars and interested adults, this period will never make its way into K-12 curricula. Or could it? Just yesterday I read Jonathan Israel’s review of Anthony Pagden’s new book, The Enlightenment: And Why it Still Matters titled “How the Light Came In” (June 21 2013, Times Literary Supplement), which outlines a very different age of intellectual ferment, the Enlightenment. The reviewer is deeply versed in that era and in his essay he lists writers across Europe and North America and two centuries, who, in various camps, were part of that period. Then I came across a third review—that of Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of ‘The Great Gatsby.”  Now Gatsby is a novel high school students do read, and Churchwell’s book seems to capture the wide intellectual world that fed F. Scott Fitzgerald as he wrote it—especially the work of the modernist writers T.S. Eliot and James Joyce.

The themes of these essays and the books they examine—ancient theological debate, centuries of humanist and Enlightenment ferment, and the cluster of early 20th-century experimental artists—are that the individuals, inventors, and ideas we offer to students as a sequence of greatest hits were really the expression of much larger moments of upheaval and exchange. What if we shifted our educational focus from “Key People and 5 Things You Need to Know” to an exploration of how such a hub of exchange forms, flourishes, and fades away? What if we said it doesn’t matter if you are teaching about the invention of bronze, the Renaissance, the birth of atomic and quantum theory, or digital innovation today, we want your students to examine and understand how a group of thinkers and creators comes together, argues, debates, steals, shares, competes, builds, and yields exponential leaps in thinking, creativity, and invention?

If growth was our theme, we could get past the  “Plato to NATO” goal of passing on names and dates and explore patterns of innovation. We might end a unit of study by asking students to look around and discover where nodes of creativity are taking shape today. How might they best train to be part of those lively places and spaces? Would that not be a useful approach to education? I’d love to think about how to make this kind of curriculum real.

Andrews, Beth L. Hands-On Engineering: Real-World Projects for the Classroom. (Prufrock, 2012).
Designed for use in grades 4-7 and aligned with “various standards for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM),” this compendium offers 26 kid-friendly lessons that teach science concepts through student- designed and tested objects. The book begins with an overview of design and engineering and the lessons that follow list the skills taught and materials needed. Vocabulary, an outline of purpose and objectives, online resources for building students’ knowledge of the topic, and step-by-step directions for preparing and implementing activities are also included. Reproducible worksheets are provided along with additional project suggestions that incorporate writing and research activities to extend the learning. From designing a transportable bridge to creating a catapult that hurls pennies to making an egg-cooking solar oven, kids are bound to learn important concepts as they build.

Edson, Marcia Talhelm. Starting with Science: Strategies for Introducing Young Children to Inquiry. (Stenhouse, 2013).
Edson, a clinical assistant professor at Boston University’s School of Education, effectively argues that inquiry-based science “should be at the center of every early childhood classroom.” More an expert in literacy than science, the author shares some best practices she discovered when challenged to design “a more robust science methods course” for early childhood majors.

The result is a well-organized, readable, and comprehensive overview on how to implement inquiry with the youngest students. Edson defines inquiry-based science; reviews teaching strategies; establishes the connections with reading, writing, and speaking; describes child-centered assessment; and discusses how to design an inquiry unit. Throughout, samples of student work and accounts from real-life classrooms and children provide clarity. Finally, early childhood teachers who have embarked upon the hard work of inquiry discuss how to succeed despite common impediments, while an appendix includes a pet study to get the ball rolling.

Fries-Gaither, Jessica & Terry Shiverdecker. Inquiring Scientists, Inquiring Readers: Using Nonfiction to Promote Science Literacy, Grades 3-5. (NSTA, 2013).
Divided into two parts, this interdisciplinary guide begins by examining the research, noting a steady decline in the time spent on science in elementary classrooms (in part due to large blocks being devoted to ELA and math instruction). The authors remind teachers that “simply reading about science” cannot replace “the actual doing of science.” The learning cycle model for science instruction—engage, explore, explain, expand, assess—is reviewed, and opportunities for authentic literacy experiences within science inquiry are considered. Part II provides 11 complete inquiry units, primarily teacher-directed, a choice made by the authors in order “to support teachers new to inquiry.” Using multigenre nonfiction text sets as an anchor, each unit (the water cycle, fossils, the Moon, etc.) includes an overview, objectives, standards alignment, time frame, a list of texts, reproducibles, and a step-by-step description of how to guide students through each phase of the learning cycle.

Froschauer, Linda & Mary L. Bigelow. Rise and Shine: A Practical Guide for the Beginning Science Teacher. (NSTA, 2012).
Written specifically for the new teacher, this compilation of enthusiastically offered advice introduces five fictional teachers of varying backgrounds—Alberto, a former high school biology teacher now assigned middle school environmental science; Heather, an elementary substitute teacher just hired as a science specialist; Jason, a recent graduate teaching middle grades and high school; Sherrie, an industrial chemist switching careers; and Tanya, another recent graduate taking on high school Earth science. The 13 clearly written chapters are full of counsel supplemented by checklists and insightful comments from actual educators. Questions posed by the novice teachers are answered by Ms. Mentor (see the NSTA blog for more by Ms. Mentor), covering everything-a-new-teacher-needs-to-know from navigating the school environment and managing the first week of school to creating a learning environment and teaching strategies. Online resources for each chapter are available.

Hanuscin, Deborah & Meredith Park Rogers, eds. Perspectives: Research & Tips to Support Science Education, K-6. (NSTA, 2013).
In this compilation of past “Perspectives” columns from NSTA’s Science & Children journal, readers will find 27 articles grouped under six topics: “General Teaching Goals,” “Strategies to Facilitate Learning in Science,” “Teaching Science and Other Disciplines Together,” “Student Thinking and Misconceptions,” “Society and Science Learning,” and “Developing as a Teacher.” Each article-length chapter presents a teacher-posed question about an aspect of science instruction that’s answered by experienced educators with an eye to current research and suggestions for practical application in the classroom. There’s a lot of advice packed into this slim volume regarding important teaching issues, such as the effective use of children’s literature, understanding the learning cycle, the use of inquiry, how to support English Language Learners, the value of project-based learning, and the art of asking questions. In addition, the editors offer a few suggestions for using the articles in professional development workshops.

Martinez, Sylvia Libow & Gary Stager. Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. (Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, 2013).
For anyone interested in learning more about the maker movement in education, this is an excellent starting point. Innovative educators, Stager, Executive Director of The Constructivist Consortium, and Martinez, President of Generation YES, urge teachers to look far beyond test prep and getting the answer right to offer students project-based learning that turns classrooms into settings where teachers talk less and children do more, makerspaces that value “making, tinkering, collaborative learning, and invention.” They start with a brief history of the maker movement, highlighting the work of Seymour Papert, a very early proponent of creative computer use by children, and continue with an in-depth look at how to get started. Ideas range from the “constructionism” learning theory to designing a good project to new fabrication tools (3D printers, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Makey Makey, etc.) to creating the learning environment and advocating for makerspaces in schools. A companion website provides links to the resources listed in the book—professional development, tutorials, project ideas, books, videos, creative materials, and much more.

Librarians are often more comfortable working in the literacy classroom than manipulating mathematical data, but it may be statistics that prove to be our greatest ally. When the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were rolled out two years ago, they were packaged as content standards, and six instructional pedagogical shifts were identified. Those shifts called for additional attention to vocabulary, nonfiction materials, text complexity, literacy across content areas, increased curriculum rigor from kindergarten through high school, and a focus on producing evidence (versus opinion). By drawing conclusions from data extrapolated from the English Language Arts (ELA) CCSS, librarians can build a strong case for a seventh shift: research.

In the world of statistics, occurrence, or frequency, is often used to interpret results. Viewing the CCSS standards through a statistical lens as a body of data and assessing importance based upon word frequency produces results that support that case. Start by assuming that the ELA standards represent the intentions of the authors of the CCSS, and the objectives, learning targets, and pedagogy that they are asking educators to embrace. Investigate the language of the standards and examine the number of times certain words appear; you’ll notice that the term “research” appears 132 times, exceeding the mention of “vocabulary” (79) and “nonfiction” (64), and comes in close to “evidence” (155) and “complexity” (196). The word “information” (244) is used more often than all five, but behind “reading” (388).

Clearly, research is an essential component of the learning process in the CCSS classroom. In most schools, it’s the librarian who teaches the higher-level skills that equip students to access, evaluate, and synthesize information—information that they use to speak and write with accuracy and authority when they produce evidence and draw conclusions for discussions, debates, or written assignments.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, half of this generation’s students will earn their living from the creation, dissemination, analysis, and communication of information. Under the CCSS, students begin exploring multiple points of view and presentations in the elementary years; by sixth grade, they are “researching to build and present knowledge” and by seventh grade are expected to conduct “short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.” These benchmarks broaden and expand until 12th grade, by which time students should be “college and career ready.”

In addition, the pedagogy of evidence—text-based answers and the close reading of text—is part of the research process. Approximately half of the Common Core writing standards acknowledge that research is part of the writing process (see, Writing for Information Standards 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10). In the introduction to the ELA standards, under “Key Design Consideration” is this strong indication of that role: “To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new….”

Perception data (the court of public opinion) can be as powerful as concrete data. It’s time for library professionals to craft a national message regarding research—in the same way that the arts have implanted themselves into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) movement in education, turning it into STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, + Art/Design). Formally acknowledging a research shift underscores its function in “building and presenting knowledge” and adds weight to the librarian’s instrumental role within the CCSS.

The time has come to raise our megaphones and strut our stuff. This is an evidence-based claim. We have the data to support it.

Paige Jaeger (pjaeger@WSWHEBOBES.org) is coordinator for school library services, Washington Saratoga Warren Hamilton Essex BOCES, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Anyone who has attended one of my talks or workshops has probably heard me rail against state history assignments. I have never understood why they exist in the curricula of all 50 states, at a moment where fresh minds could be ablaze with so many more rewarding subjects. But this summer my 8-year-old, who will be in fourth grade this fall, and I took a little tour: we went to baseball games in Washington, DC; Baltimore, MD; Pittsburgh, and then Allentown, PA, where we caught the IronPigs. That tour helped me to understand this country in a way I never had before.

I’ve lived all my life in New York City and I now live just outside it. I grew up playing pick-up ball in Central Park—no little league for me and my friends. We went to games and watched them on TV, but not one parent, relative, or family friend ever donned school colors and rooted for a high school or college team. For us, the tide of seasons was the flow of New York teams, and our eyes were always on championships–—they were what mattered. We were interested in success, not in the upward movement of local talent from high school, to college, to pro. Our eyes in sports, just as our eyes in politics, history, and culture, were looking to the world; which was, in a way, our localism. Paris mattered, Peoria didn’t.

In each stadium on this trip, I saw kids, couples, families, and grandparents decked out in team colors. I felt intense local pride in each stadium, the sense that the team was their team, a reflection of their hometown. Of course, this was most evident in the minor league park. For the first time I perceived what announcers talk about when they pan the audience at a college games and mention the “Cameron Crazies,” or some similar nickname. I saw how, for a whole slice of this country, sports is about the local—the neighborhood kid who does well in a school game and gets his or her picture in the paper, later plays in a high school tournament, and then is recruited for State U. The local still has a meaning and importance that it never had for me

And yet. As we walked into the IronPigs stadium (Coca-Cola Park, as it happens), the ticket taker pointed to the person who came in just ahead of us: a tall, thin, young man bedecked with film equipment. “He’s a scout from the Japanese league,” she explained. Indeed, one of the best players on the IronPigs, Josh Fields, had just been playing in Japan.

And there is another “and yet:” on our way from Pittsburgh to the Lehigh Valley we took a detour to visit Fallingwater, the breathtaking home built by Frank Lloyd Wright. In his way Wright was also intensely focused on the local—using stone quarried nearby, building into the cliff, and incorporating the waterfall into the house itself. Every aspect of the building emerges as a kind of plant from the soil on which it stands. And it is so purely abstract that on walking into it my then-cranky son exclaimed, “It is so modern.” And so it is—local as essence, essence as local: the meeting place of drilling down and wide-angle lens to vast, international horizons. Like Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Famila in Barcelona, Spain, it is architecture as epic, as symphonic, as profound and deep as dreams.

The local abides—that was the lesson to me from this road trip. But the international is there—woven into the fabric of even these most hometown of events. That is what we need to do to make state history matter. How it is, was, and always will be been linked to the history of the nation and the world. We need to probe for essences as Wright did—finding pure truths in local stone.

First off, the authors clarify what they mean by a “multimodal, multigenre text set.” Simply put, it’s a group of resources—print, audio, and visual—on a particular topic or theme presented in a variety of genres. Here genre is defined as “a form of writing that serves a socially recognizable purpose”—a designation that includes everything from tweets to recipes to articles to books.

Text sets support the goals of a unit of study, can be used in elementary through high school, and are compiled, ideally, by a team of teachers and a librarian. Librarians familiar with pathfinders might recognize a connection here, but there’s an important difference. As Mary Cappiello explains, “a text set is a classroom tool for a teacher to use strategically…it is not everything but the kitchen sink (though in the gathering and sifting phases it is) but rather an expert culling to structure a specific learning experience.” Students use the skills and strategies being taught to delve into content across the curriculum that grabs their attention (and meets state and local standards), honing their proficiency and knowledge along the way. The authors know this is demanding time-consuming work, but their enthusiasm is infectious, and they lighten the load by supplying detailed how-to’s and models.

In Part II, “Text Sets in Action,” the authors demonstrate the process of putting text sets to work by sharing the collaborative efforts of teachers in two different schools. In one, they detail the enhancement of an already successful but slightly outdated social studies unit on immigration, and the second takes readers through the design of a new unit on the solar system. Each example documents the tasks of collecting resource materials, organizing the texts for instruction, and using the texts with students in classroom instruction that supports inquiry and critical thinking. Sample planning charts, graphic organizers and worksheets, activities for students, and examples of student work are all available to use as a model or jumping off point. (A Digital Resource CD with printable files is included.) Four chapters offer additional resources with sample units on the Great Depression, immigration, space, and honeybees, while a text set for a unit on trees is included in an appendix. Tree units specific to Massachusetts and New York City are also available online.

Within the CCSS framework, everyone is in the vocabulary business. That’s right—everyone, according to Adams, research professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown University. Adams’s body of research contributed significantly to the six English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core shifts in instruction: the addition of more nonfiction texts, the focus on building knowledge, the escalation of text complexity at every grade level, the increased importance of citing textual evidence, the emphasis on literacy across disciplines, and the attention to academic terminology.

If you read and study Adams’s work, you will note that she distills achievement to its basic elements: the more you read, the greater your vocabulary. The greater your vocabulary, the better you read. The better you read, the more you comprehend. The more you comprehend, the broader your knowledge base, and the broader your knowledge base, the more you can achieve. Therefore, on a rudimentary level, achievement is dependent on vocabulary.

Adams provides plenty of other insights on language, such as the fact that our everyday spoken language is, typically, grammatically incorrect, void of adjectives and prepositions, and includes a mere 10,000 words. In our students’ work, we underscore correct punctuation and grammar, complex sentence structure, and a vigorous vocabulary. This exposes a fundamental dichotomy that we can address by modeling. We need to elevate classroom discussions and articulate and mirror our expectations of our students. Conversely, we need to require a higher level of reading.

The link between poverty and vocabulary deficit has long been acknowledged and accentuates the disparity between verbal and written skills. Librarians actively support programs (Reading Is Fundamental, etc.) designed in part to battle this shortfall. We can further embrace the Common Core vocabulary shift by reenergizing our efforts to select read-alouds with robust language, helping students find engaging (and challenging) nonfiction books that match their interests, carefully choosing titles for reading lists, and initiating independent reading incentives. We can encourage students to “research like a detective and write like a reporter,” as David Coleman, a CCSS ELA author, suggests.

Locally, we have recommended an approach whereby we purposefully integrate academic vocabulary into classroom instruction whenever possible. When students hear unfamiliar terminology, they simply hold up a hand making a “V” sign with their fingers, so teachers will know to flood the conversation with synonyms. It’s a visual assessment technique that enhances instruction without interrupting it. The unknown word becomes part of the student’s receptive vocabulary, and closer to his or her productive vocabulary, leading to comprehension and achievement.

The CCSS also embrace the premise that every subject area has content-specific terms that can be used to assess student understanding, referred to as “tier-three vocabulary.” Content knowledge and understanding is often demonstrated or measured with the correct usage of tier-three terminology. Research has its own content-specific vocabulary such as “credibility,” “bias,” “annotate,” “cite,” and “synthesize.” Terms encountered in the library are the expressions of the Information Age and should not be overlooked.

Librarians can model vocabulary-rich lessons. Start a “word of the day” program. Include games such as Scrabble and Upwords in your lending library. Model a dynamic vocabulary. Simply by holding words in high regard and spotlighting lyrics and language, librarians will begin to embrace the CCSS shift. Even with explicit vocabulary instruction and implicit vocabulary acquisition, most students’ vocabularies fall far below the one million words they encounter in print. It is a mighty high hill for them to climb, but we can be their guides.

Paige Jaeger (pjaeger@WSWHEBOCES.org) is coordinator for school library services, Washington Saratoga Warren Hamilton Essex BOCES, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Deb Delisle, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education, and Richard Gonzales, Senior Advisor for Early Childhood Development, Department of Health and Human Services, joined Ralph Smith, Managing Director of the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, and Susan H. Hildreth, Director of IMLS, for a joint press event today highlighting the report.

“This report issues a call to action: Now is the time for policy makers and practitioners to fully use the capacity of libraries and museums in their early learning efforts,” says Hildreth in her introduction to the report. “Libraries and museums reach millions of children each year. It is exciting to bring that capacity into focus so that libraries and museums can more effectively engage in early learning strategies at the community, state, and national levels.”

For IMLS, the report is only the first step in a deeper and expanded commitment to the youngest and most at-risk children in the United States, Hildreth says. She notes, “We will be pursuing special efforts to assure that libraries and museums can reach under-served children and provide opportunities that can make a difference that will last a lifetime.”

According to the report, libraries and museums support learning are by increasing high-quality early learning experiences, engaging and supporting families as their child’s first teachers, supporting development of executive function and “deeper learning” through literacy and STEM-based experiences, creating seamless links across early learning and the early grades, positioning children for meeting expectations of the Common Core State Standards, addressing the summer slide, linking new digital technologies to learning, improving family health and nutrition, leveraging community partnerships, and adding capacity to early learning networks.

The report also outlined areas and questions that deserve further impact study, and specific recommendations for improving early learning outcomes and increasing school readiness through federal, state, and community efforts.

Federal policy makers, for example, should include museum/library grants in funding priorities, support research to identify best practices for early learning in museums and libraries, and invest in professional development for museum and library staff.

Communities, the report recommends, should include museums and libraries in initiatives designed to increase family engagement in school readiness, examine ways to help vulnerable, underserved families access museum and library services, and launch public information campaigns.

For districts and schools, the report calls for joint professional development to teachers and museum and library staff, and the establishment of partnerships between schools and local museums and libraries that support building content knowledge.

The report also highlights and details current successful programs in New York (the Children’s Museum of Manhattan); Idaho; Texas (Children’s Museum of Houston); Washington; Virginia (Richmond Public Library, Arlington County schools); Pennsylvania (the greater Pittsburgh region); Florida (Miami Science Museum); Massachusetts (Boston Children’s Museum); Maryland (city of Baltimore).

Photographers Gerda Taro and Robert Capa

It’s been my experience that when the tests are over and the school year is winding down, librarians want a nonfiction author to charge up the students, and a Common Core speaker to share insights with the staff. So, all through May and June, my calendar is full.

Very often, the day includes a lunch session with a small group of students, that has an opportunity to gab with me over sandwiches. During one such get-together, a brave 8th grader asked, “Why should we care about history, anyway? It’s over.” She was straight talking, direct, and I thought she probably spoke for many of the others present. I gave her the answer I give myself: she and her peers live in the eternal now—perhaps teenagers always have—but popular culture, the media, social networking, and an array of electronic devices make it easy to be inside whatever is trending at the moment. I’ve learned that Internet trends follow the same spike-and-crash arc, and that many of today’s teenagers live within that 24-to-48 hour-blast-and-demise of rumor, hit, meme, song, and video. Surely that must-know imperative has always been with us—whether the information was whispered among friends, shared along on a village path, or written in a letter. Now, however, there appears to be no push back from our surrounding culture, no sense that the immediate world, however compelling, is of less weight than centuries of accumulated knowledge, art, culture, or history. So what could I say to that teen?

I took a plate and held it horizontally: “This,” I said, “is your world. You live in the eternal now.” Then I took a second plate, and placed it vertically, beneath the first: “This is what you stand on.” History is that column, that pillar, on which the present rests. As we investigate the past, as we ask new questions, as we line up cause and effect in new ways, our present changes. Indeed, as we begin to see how easily events could have been different or altered, we begin to see that we can influence the present and craft a new future.

We study history not out of reverence for the past, but to give us the tools to make a better future. Living in the eternal now, how will we ever know if we are just refashioning old mistakes? (I ran across exactly this idea in the work of William Crary Brownell, Edith Wharton’s first book editor, and the subject of my doctoral dissertation.)

All of this, however, is background to another recent experience I had in a school. I decided to make a PowerPoint presentation on the book my wife, Marina Budhos, and I are writing: The Eyes of the World: How Three Friends (Two Lovers), and a Camera Tried to Fight Fascism (Holt, 2014) The book is about Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour (Chim) during the period of the Spanish Civil War.

There are many hooks for readers in this story, and one huge problem: few, if any, teenagers know or care about the Spanish Civil War. So what could I do to engage the students I was visiting? I decided to draw a parallel between nations’ choices about getting involved in the conflict in Spain in 1936 and our choices now about Syria. The parallels are striking: two clear sides, one we support and one we oppose, and a situation in which there are so many crosscurrents and dangers, few want to get involved. I crafted my PowerPoint and the kids responded positively. And then I read an article by Harvey Morris on The New York Times website, in which many scholars were drawing precisely the same parallel.

Why read history? Because we face terrible choices today, and we have the past to study—not as a lessons about right and wrong, but as a mirror that allows us to examine our actions and ourselves more closely. History matters because it is us—deepened, scrutinized, enriched in contemplation. It provides us with an opportunity to pause, weigh, consider, and reflect before we act. That is what I had to offer the questioning teen. I suspect she left with an inkling that I just might be right.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) provide several ways to incorporate what students have learned from listening to classics during the summer as starting points for individual writing and classroom discussion:

[CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.2] Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

[CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1c] Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives.

A natural extension for listening to these audiobooks is viewing their film adaptations, a compare and contrast study that can be found in several reading, speaking, and listening Standards. The experience offers abundant opportunities for student discussion and writing.

Literary and modern classics are included in many national and regional lists for the college bound, such as the comprehensive list from the Arrowhead Library System in Wisconsin (http://ow.ly/kwSPV). Check with your local public library for copies of classics in print, audio, or DVD formats to round out lesson plans.

All Quiet on the Western Front. Written by Erich Maria Remarque. Trans. by A. W. Wheen. Narrated by Frank Muller. 6 CDs. 7 hrs. Recorded Books. 1994. ISBN 978-0-7887-3441-0. $72.75. Gr 9 Up
This World War I narrative was originally published in 1929, while the senseless destruction of the Great War was still fresh in the minds of those who lived through its horrors. Hearing 19-year-old Paul Baumer describe his experiences as a German recruit, the depth of his deprivation in the trenches, the cruel loss of life, and the cumulative devastation on mind and body is heart wrenching. Muller’s understated performance, with its steady pacing and paradoxically soothing vocal timbre, enhances the lyrical language and elicits a palpable sense of the terror faced by Paul and his friends through the unrelenting close combat. In 1930, the movie adaptation won the Academy Award for best picture and best director and is now in the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board’s Film Registry (http://ow.ly/kwRp2).

The Call of the Wild. Written by Jack London. Narrated by Jeff Daniels. 3 CDs. 3:15 hrs. Listening Library. 2010. ISBN 978-0-3077-1026-0. $30. Gr 8 Up
Originally serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, June 20–July 18, 1903, this classic remains relevant over 100 years later. The universal themes of survival, kindness, cruelty, and natural instinct are strengthened by Daniels’s performance. His voicing provides just the right conversational and friendly tone with a touch of comfortable rasp, adding fresh energy to the timeless story. Buck, a four-year-old St. Bernard–and Scotch Shepherd cross breed, who weighs 140 pounds, has his life changed forever when he is kidnapped and taken to the cold bleakness of the Arctic to work with Klondike gold miners. A film adaptation of this story starring Clark Gable was released in 1935. Comparing and contrasting the audio production and the film will offer students many chances to write about or discuss the two versions.

Dracula. Written by Bram Stoker. Narrated by Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, and a full cast. Digital Download. 15:30 hrs. Audio Theater/Audible. 2012. $29.95. Gr 9 Up
The strength of this audiobook production of the 1897 classic is the performances by a full cast that includes the incomparable Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance, and Katherine Kellgren, all seasoned and award-winning narrators. Voicing the various characters with individual accents and unique vocal stylings makes for a memorable listening experience. Tension builds immediately as listeners become privy to the journal of young solicitor Jonathan Harker, who travels from England to Dracula’s castle and, with a sense of grave foreboding, realizes that he is a prisoner of the undead Count. This chilling narrative opens Stoker’s tale of Victorian moral fears that sparked the vampire genre and furnishes an excellent example of how listening to a terrifying story, performed beautifully, raises text, plot, and characterization to a new level. Viewing the 1935 movie adaptation of Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi, also on the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board Film Registry) will encourage discussion not only of classic literature, but also of classic filmmaking.

Fahrenheit 451. Written by Ray Bradbury. Narrated by Stephen Hoye. 5 CDs. 5:30 hrs. Tantor Media. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4001-4818-9. $24.99. Gr 9 Up
In this foremost example of dystopian fiction, Bradbury twists the heroic role of firefighters. In a futuristic society, firemen don’t put out fires, they start them. Specifically, they burn books and the subversive ideas contained within their pages. The trouble begins when one fireman, Guy Montag, begins to question the system and seeks to escape the control of the city. Hoye is a superb guide through this terrifying world, moving both action and reflection along with exactly the right pacing. First published in 1953, the story remains disturbingly contemporary and the ending, with its determination to keep books alive by memorizing them and speaking them aloud, is well suited to the audio medium. The 1996 film, directed by François Truffaut and starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner, veers from the original story, making it particularly useful as a student exploration of the differences between Hoye’s interpretation of Bradbury’s words and Truffaut’s greater liberties with the text.

Hamlet. Written by William Shakespeare. Narrated by Simon Russell Beale, Imogen Stubbs, Jane Lapotaire, and a full cast. 3 CDs, 3:25 hrs. AudioGo. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7927-2985-3. $33.95. Gr 9 Up
Perhaps the best known of Shakespeare’s tragedies, this story of destiny and revenge pits a young prince against the murderous uncle who has stolen the throne and queen. Students often struggle when reading Shakespeare, and listening can serve as a bridge, facilitating understanding. This excellent full-cast production includes musical interludes and an insert with scene-by-scene summaries, making it not only a strong listening experience, but also the perfect adjunct to literary appreciation. Fans of the long-running British science-fiction series Doctor Who, and David Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor, will be mesmerized by the 2010 BBC television production featuring Tennant as Hamlet, with Patrick Stewart as the nefarious uncle, Claudius.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (and The Adventures of the Dancing Men). Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Narrated by Simon Prebble. 6 CDs. 6:30 hrs. Tantor Media. 2009. ISBN 978-1-4001-1515-0. $17.99. Gr 9 Up
Sherlock Holmes takes on the intriguing case of the heir to the Baskerville estate who seems destined to be the next victim of the mysterious, and deadly, hound thought to have killed several of his ancestors. Dodgy servants, an escaped prisoner, and a supposed brother-and-sister duo test the famous detective’s mettle. Prebble is more than up to the task of directing listeners through myriad characters, clues, and deceptions. Subtle voicing differentiates the large cast and expert pacing heightens the tension. Be sure to have students watch the first-rate British (Granada Television) production starring Jeremy Brett as Conan Doyle’s brilliant, but decidedly peculiar detective.

Things Fall Apart. Written by Chinua Achebe. Narrated by Peter Francis James. 6 CDs. 6:30 hrs. Recorded Books. 1997. ISBN 978-1-4025-4462-0. $72.75. Gr 9 Up
Published in 1958, Achebe’s seminal work heralds the revolution that preceded Nigerian independence in 1960. Designed to teach students about the rich Igbo heritage, it tells the heartbreaking tale of Okonkwo’s single-minded rise to success among his people and the surrounding villages, followed by a heinous act, banishment, and descent into total failure. James narrates this story of the European colonization of Africa, the encroachment of Christianity, and the disintegration of traditional cultures with appropriate gravitas and measured pacing, bringing out all of the nuances of the text. Students can listen to Achebe read a part of the story (http://ow.ly/kwRJe) and then watch a portion of a production that includes the same text (http://ow.ly/kwS2a) for comparison. Round out the unit with PBS journalist Jeffrey Brown’s interview with Achebe on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart (http://ow.ly/kwSpg).

To Kill a Mockingbird. Written by Harper Lee. Narrated by Sissy Spacek. 11 CDs. 12 hrs. Harper Audio. 2006. ISBN 978-0-06-1808-12-8. $34.99. Gr 8 Up
Spacek, with her lilting Southern accent, perfectly captures the voice of Scout, the young girl whose life is thrown into turmoil when her father, the upright and highly ethical lawyer Atticus Finch, takes on the defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Their sleepy Alabama town may never be the same and Spacek’s exceptional pacing propels this Pulitzer Prize-winner—a staple of many high school reading lists—to its inexorable conclusion. The 1962 film, starring Gregory Peck (who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch), was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1995.

Sharon Grover is Head of Youth Services at the Hedberg Public Library, Janesville, WI. Lizette (Liz) Hannegan was a school librarian and the district library supervisor for the Arlington (VA) Public Schools before her retirement. They are co-authors of Listening to Learn: Audiobooks Supporting Literacy (ALA Editions, 2011).

hat will be in your tote as you head out to the beach, a nearby lake, or your own front stoop this summer? Our bags are already heavy with Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things (Harper Collins, 2013), and Mark Bittman’s VB6 (Clarkson Potter, 2013), on his adventures as a part-time vegan. Then there’s Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power (Random, 2013), the fourth volume the author has written about Lyndon Johnson, this one weighing in at a hefty 700 pages, and Emile Simpson’s War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First-Century Combat as Politics (Oxford University, 2013), which Marc insists is a must-read, “to understand the long war that is likely to be before us for at least the next two decades.” Sure, all three of us will also be borrowing novels and short stories from our local libraries. But, like so many children and teens in schools across the country, we also enjoy reading nonfiction for pleasure.

How can we use the summer to provide kids with more opportunities to grow confident as nonfiction readers? Let’s start with the summer reading list at your school. What’s on it? Discussions about summer reading often surface the deep-seated beliefs about students’ reading habits that shape the choices teachers and librarians make throughout the year. Some educators require a specific list of books or a range of genres. Others allow children and teens to make their own selections. Each school has to grapple with balancing students’ interests and teachers’ expectations and make the decision that feels right for its community.

Regardless of what approach your school or district takes, we hope that your required or recommended reading lists include nonfiction. Unless you are in a year-round school district, summer is often the time students have the most freedom and flexibility with their schedules and reading. For avid readers, this is the time to follow their interests. For students who have not been exposed to a great deal of self-selected nonfiction, the summer reading list can point them in that direction and help them discover books they may not find on their own.

If you are recommending summer reading lists to your students and patrons, be aware that nonfiction is not represented equally on all of them. The American Library Association’s (ALA) Association for Library Services to Children’s recommendations are on three graded lists, each annotated, and include a mix of fiction and nonfiction. A great list based on children’s suggestions is the International Reading Association-Children’s Book Council Annual Children’s Choices. The Horn Book Magazine’s recommended reading list also includes fiction and nonfiction, while the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge recommends only fiction on its website.

If you are creating your own summer reading list, be sure to share the 2013 Orbis Pictus Award, 2013 ALA Robert F. Sibert Medal, and 2013 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winners and honor recipients. These titles, along with the National Council of the Social Studies–Children’s Book Council Notable Trade Books and the 2013 National Science Teachers Association Outstanding Trade Books lists provide marvelous nonfiction offerings of interest to students.

But let’s not forget, for most students it’s the content of the book that will drive their selection, not the shiny award stickers on the cover, or the special display case you so carefully put together. Children choose nonfiction for many reasons. To convince their parents they are ready for a pet, they may select books about taking care of animals. If they’re interested in growing vegetables on their apartment balcony, they may read about container gardening. Some kids spend summers attending sports camps or playing baseball on a local team or in a nearby ballpark, and read up on techniques to improve their skills. Still others collect shells, explore the local pond, or go birding with their families. Some children build go-carts or craft, others are armchair travelers.

During the vacation season, and indeed throughout the school year, students need to see adults reading nonfiction for pleasure. They need to know that their parents and teachers and family friends enjoy nonfiction as a leisure activity, and they should see their own lives reflected in their reading choices whether selecting fiction or nonfiction. Let’s hope that this summer students are encouraged to choose nonfiction both for pleasure and personal enrichment.

Most recently, I have been in New Jersey, where the Common Core assessments will arrive next spring. That state is just entering the territory New York has traveled—and I am sure that when I visit Kansas, Tennessee, and Nebraska later this year I will see some mixture of New York’s advance scouting and New Jersey’s sense that the game is now afoot.

So what lessons are to be learned from the states that have been through a full year of Common Core training, testing, and evaluating? My first suggestion is that if you are in a state new, or relatively new, to the Common Core, hunt around on the Internet. Go to EngageNY, or the Kansas State Department of Education site. There is everything to be gained from people who have already ventured down the Common Core road. Think about how to apply what they have learned, and experienced, to your state, district, and school.

The short form of what I have seen is this: the Common Core brings significant change to a school building. School librarians have the tools and position to be key players in this change—they understand inquiry and are eager to help students engage in research that goes beyond fact-finding missions. But to be essential participants in the Common Core initiative, librarians must know their nonfiction as well as their fiction. Nonfiction does not just mean subject areas, it requires that stakeholders become familiar with the different styles and approaches of a variety of authors.

Our past understanding of the phrase, “good for reports,” is meaningless. Under the Common Core, a report will not be three or five key facts, it will be facts plus sources that yield more than one point of view, or a comparison of approaches, or what one source presents against another. “Good for reports” is now understood to mean “good for thinking, questioning, and examining.”  In addition, under the Common Core librarians must become even more assertive. Teachers and administrators must see the librarian as an agent active in meeting the standards, not a passive assistant to another’s plans.

I urge those of you who have been through a year or more of training and testing to share your experiences. What worked? What didn’t? What was difficult? What was satisfying? What did you learn? What would you do differently next time?

One of the wonderful things about the Common Core initiative is that we are in it together. We can and should model for our students our willingness to share, to learn from others, and to teach from experience. We face this challenge as a nation, not alone. One of the key experiences of the consciousness raising of the late 1960s was understanding that many of the problems we faced were systemic, not personal. Common Core offers us a national exercise in mutual education. I hope to hear your insights.

The question for educators: what types of instruction help students develop these skills? In an ideal world, it’s instruction that asks students to do something with information: the raison d’être of librarians.  So how do librarians insert themselves into the critical discussions taking place around these instructional shifts?

Professional development is a good place to start—in the best cases, across institutions. In 2011, the New York City Department of Education Office of Library Services formed a partnership with the City University of New York to do just that—to design a community of practice around the Common Core and the high-school-to-college transition.

Participants—teachers, college faculty, and librarians—began the work by identifying the challenges first-year college students face. These included different knowledge demands and task requirements (for example, secondary schools often require students’ reactions to texts as opposed to thinking about texts within the disciplines), the movement from assignments with built-in supports to independent work, and the increasing volume and complexity of readings. (An opportunity to express some of their frustrations allowed participants to build trust and, thereafter, to focus on instruction as the method to change student outcomes.)

A detailed agenda with clear goals kept everyone engaged and focused at each meeting. Five sessions were devoted to revising and aligning a high school curricular unit on Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Algonquin, 1991) to the CCSS and college demands. An instructor introduced the unit and received feedback using a set protocol. A summary, which included the findings and listed next steps, was shared by a documentarian for further learning and reflection.

The Common Core prepares students for college by having them discover and apply critical approaches to complex texts to other primary texts and writing assignments. Participants commented on how this unit, focused on a novel, presented many opportunities to integrate informational texts similar to those a college faculty member used in his class. The librarians provided literary analysis from databases such as Contemporary Literary Criticism and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (both Gale) to incorporate into the unit, which reflected the types of well-structured arguments students will analyze and write in a first-year college course.

Participants suggested various pedagogical methods for integrating text excerpts from the articles. In this case, the group decided to create its own graphic organizer to model the critical reading approaches they wanted students to incorporate, including space for text excerpts, directions for identifying the author’s main points, and unfamiliar vocabulary. A second organizer posed questions to facilitate textual analysis. During the final session, participants structured the order of the texts for the unit and discussed how to use the same graphic organizers to address the increased complexity of the texts.

The Common Core challenges teachers to look beyond the novel or a textbook as the primary instructional source in favor of collections of texts. Students must build strong content knowledge by reading complex texts and developing the critical thinking skills involved in evaluating arguments and evidence. Participants left the workshop knowing that they can turn to librarians for support in identifying materials for instruction and developing assessments.

The Common Core provides no easy answers or ready-made lesson plans because it focuses on the tough task of making students think. This collaborative model is effective because it outlines a process articulating how librarians contribute to this essential work—collaborating across institutions and disciplines to align curriculum and instruction to students’ sense of wonder and curiosity—and to good old-fashioned inquiry.

Leanne Ellis is a library coordinator for the New York City School Library System, NYC Department of Education, Office of Library Services. To submit an On Common Core opinion piece, please contact Rebecca T. Miller at rmiller@mediasourceinc.com

As anyone who has followed our work in School Library Journal knows, Sue and I are advocates of clustering books (“Wondering How to Put Common Core into Practice? It’s Easier than you Think.” SLJ, Nov, 2012). But the focus on rereading short passages suggested a new idea: constellations. A constellation is a linked set of brief passages that librarians can select and offer to teachers as a course pack, or to students as an example of what close reading can yield.

It is one thing to juxtapose related materials such as books, databases, websites, and YouTube videos (as suggested in the above article), but quite another to choose and present excerpts, passages, and chapters that both link together and serve to support the kind of close reading and rereading that Common Core demands. While an experienced—or highly motivated—teacher can pull together such resources, clearly this sort of mining is within a librarian’s expertise. And it is this type of work that will become ever more important in the school environment as more print materials are available in e-formats. So, from a pure show-your-value-to-teachers-and-admins point-of-view, constellations are worth your time. Their real reason for being, though, is students.

Here are some examples of constellations:
For teachers: access a print of Dorothea Lange’s black-and-white photo “Migrant Mother (available free of copyright from the Library of Congress). Find a passage about the image from a series title about the Great Depression; juxtapose that text with the appropriate pages from Martin W. Sandler’s account of the photo in The Dust Bowl Through the Lens (Walker, 2009), Elizabeth Partridge’s Restless Spirit (Viking, 1998), Don Nardo’s Migrant Mother (Compass Point, 2011), and Albert Marrin’s Years of Dust (Dutton, 2009). These resources will provide at significantly different descriptions of how and where Lange took the photo and of the people portrayed in the photo, as well as distinct accounts of how (or whether) the image was retouched, cropped, and framed. This one constellation offers lessons in visual literacy, history, and historiography, and an opportunity for a close reading of texts and an image.

For students and teachers: Write down the first five words of the Gettysburg Address: “Fourscore and seven years ago.” Consider what those words mean, and why Abraham Lincoln chose them. Teachers can reference Gary Wills on YouTube discussing his Lincoln at Gettysburg (S & S, 1992), in which he masterfully analyzes that speech. For Lincoln’s listeners who knew their Bible, the word “fourscore” recalled Psalm 90:10: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (King James Version)

Digging deeper, what does “fourscore” mean? Check your Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll discover that “score” as a 20-year period comes from the same root as to “shear” as a sheep, and to “mark or notch.” At one time, when counting his sheep, herders would score, or notch, a stick after the 20th creature passed by. “Fourscore and seven years ago,” closely read (and reread), offers links to the deep resonances of a famous phrase, a modern interpretation, and a trip into etymology.

To prompt thinking: Try this: open up Jim Murphy’s The Real Benedict Arnold (Clarion, 2007) and Steve Sheinkin’s The Notorious Benedict Arnold (Roaring Brook, 2010) and select passages where the authors each explain bad Ben’s motivations. Or, open up a random book on your shelves—I grabbed Russell Freedman’s Kids at Work (Clarion, 1994) and found this: “Boys began working as doffers when they were seven or younger. It was their job to remove the whirling bobbins when they were filled with thread and replace them with empty ones.” Link to definitions of “doffers,” “whirling,” and “bobbins, as well as books on Iqbal Masih,  or M.T. Anderson’s recent Op-Ed in the The New York Times on the Bangladesh clothing factory fire.

Get the idea? Find a passage or passages, a phrase or an image, and then search for related links that can be excerpted and/or highlighted. As you do so, you’re training young people to discover more in the starting place (thus close reading and rereading) and to follow what can be a endless—and exciting—trail of curiosity and inquiry. Let me know how it goes.

Because the standards require reading and rereading texts closely, the books must be engaging enough to keep students interested and substantial enough to merit close study. Our shelves have many books that suit those needs, such as those highlighted by this list. Each of these books is paired with a standard for a specific grade and meets the CC reading formula measures for that grade. All are multifaceted enough to lend themselves to other standards and a range of grades. And they’re only a small sample of the great nonfiction that finally has a chance to share center stage.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Barretta, Gene.Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin. illus. by author. Holt. 2006. ISBN 978-0-80507-917-3. Gr 2–5

Byrd, Robert. Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. illus. by author. Dial. 2012. ISBN 978-0-8037-3749-5. Gr 4–7

Fritz, Jean. What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? illus. by Margot Tomes. Putnam. 1976. ISBN 978-0-698-20365-5. Gr 3–5
Schroeder, Alan. Ben Franklin: His Wit and Wisdom from A to Z.illus. by John O’Brien. Holiday House. 2011. ISBN 978-0-82341-950-0. Gr 2–5
CC Standard RI.4.9 Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.

Ben Franklin wore so many hats that he merits many biographies. These illustrated books at different reading levels take a variety of approaches to his life and work. Barretta uses a “Now/Then” structure, focusing on Franklin’s inventions in his day and how they’re used now. Schroeder uses an alphabetical arrangement that mixes miscellaneous facts; the letter “B,” for example, covers Boston, bifocals, and balloon. The Fritz and Byrd biographies are chronological structures, but have different tones and levels of detail. Students can compare emphases and structures, perhaps using a graphic organizer, and also compare the varied illustration styles and what they add to each text.

Gibbons, Gail. Monarch Butterfly. Holiday House. 1989. PreS–Gr 2
Marsh, Laura F. Caterpillar to Butterfly.National Geographic. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4263-0920-5. PreS–Gr 2
CC Standard RI K.9 With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures).

The amazing transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is conveyed in different ways by these two colorful books. Kindergarteners will be able to identify similarities in the information and differences in presentation such as photographs versus paintings. Both books use labels in the visuals to highlight body parts. The Marsh book has a table of contents, numbered chapters, a glossary, and tips for a butterfly garden. Gibbons’s book features a map of migration routes and explains how to raise a monarch butterfly.

Kudlinski, Kathleen V. Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs! illus. by S. D. Schindler. Dutton. 2005. ISBN 978-0-52546-978-0. Gr 2–4
CC Standard RI.4.8 Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text.

It was once believed that dinosaurs dragged their tails; now fossil finds indicate that they held their tails out straight. This upbeat book with humorous illustrations provides a valuable lesson in how science uses new findings and ideas to reevaluate accepted beliefs, comparing what scientists used to think about dinosaurs with what they think now. Students can make a chart listing each past belief, each new belief, and the evidence that prompted the change, and judge whether the evidence seems sufficient. The book explains that scientists still don’t have all the answers, often due to insufficient evidence, and they don’t always agree with one another in interpreting evidence. Students can look for language that indicates uncertainty, such as “there is no way to be sure.” Some students might like to compare this book to Kudlinski’s Boy, Were We Wrong about the Solar System! (Dutton, 2008) which has a similar structure.

Leedy, Loreen. Seeing Symmetry. illus. by author. Holiday House. 2012. ISBN 978-0-8234-2360-6. Gr 2–4
CC Standard RI.3.7 Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

Bright computer-generated pictures use familiar objects like food, animals, and people to show examples of vertical, horizontal, and rotational symmetry. The simple text explains the concepts and introduces new vocabulary like line symmetry, mirror image, horizontal, vertical, and rotate, terms which will require going over more than once. Students can then seek out examples in school and at home to demonstrate their understanding of the types of symmetry. Teachers may also want to use the two craft activities given at the back of the book to reinforce the concepts.

Macaulay, David, and Sheila Keenan. Castle: How It Works. illus. by David Macaulay. Roaring Brook/David Macaulay Studio. 2012. ISBN 978-1-59643-744-9. Gr 1–3
CC Standard RI.2.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 2 topic or subject area.

The master of architectural books turns his talents to a younger crowd with this easy reader that meets the CC need for texts on technical subjects. With a slight fictional story line, the appealing text and pictures introduce castle residents, parts of the building, and different weapons, using technical terms in context like siege and portcullis, which are also defined in the glossary. At certain points the voice is second person, such as, “You are deep within the castle.” Students can note where that’s used and what it adds. Another book in the series by the same authors is Jet Plane: How It Works, which has similar features and approach.

Mann, Elizabeth. Empire State Building. illus. by Alan Witschonke. Photos by Lewis Hine. Mikaya. 2003. ISBN 978-1-93141-406-7. Gr 4–8
CC Standard RI.5.3 Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in it.

The Empire State Building dazzled New York City when it was built in 1931. This engaging Orbis Pictus Honor Book employs cutaways and numbered diagrams to demonstrate how it was constructed. Students can analyze how the text and visuals, including paintings and historical photographs, convey the process, noting that building skyscrapers depended on technological advances such as the inventions of steel and the automatic elevator brake. Another central idea is that during the Great Depression the Empire State Building was an important symbol of hope to New Yorkers, who were proud of the height made possible only by those technological advances. Check out other books in the “Wonders of the World” series, too, which satisfy the CC call for technical content.

Pinkney, Andrea Davis. Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters. illus. by Stephen Alcorn. Harcourt. 2000. ISBN 978-0-15201-005-8. Gr 4–8
CC Standard RI.5.2 Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.

From Sojourner Truth, born around 1797, to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, born in 1924, this collective biography introduces 10 remarkable black women. A striking full-page color portrait of each individual precedes about 10 pages of text that describe her life and accomplishments. Pinkney emphasizes the strength of the subjects and the importance of fighting for change. An author’s note, which could be read aloud, points to these themes and to her motivation in writing about them. Students can approach the book as a whole or focus on one chapter to explore the main ideas and identify details that illustrate the women’s contributions and their commitment to freedom.

Rappaport, Doreen. Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. illus. by Bryan Collier. Hyperion. 2001. ISBN 978-0-78680-714-7. K–Gr 3
CC Standard RI.1.2 Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.

The lyrical words and expansive pictures in this stunning award winner make it an excellent read-aloud. After listening to the book more than once or reading it independently, students can discuss its title and subtitle, which point to the main topic about the power of words in Dr. King’s life. As a class or in small groups, they can find details in the text, including the quotes in a colored typeface, that relate to the theme. Enrich the experience by listening to a clip from one of Dr. King’s speeches at Stanford’s MLK website.

MIDDLE SCHOOL/HIGH SCHOOL

Aronson, Marc and Marina Tamar Budhos. Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science. Clarion. 2010. ISBN 978-0-61857-492-6. Gr 8 Up
CC Standard RI.9-10.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.

“Only 4 percent of the slaves taken from Africa were brought to North America, which means that 96 percent went to the Caribbean, Brazil, and the rest of South America, mostly to work with sugar.” This surprising fact points to the authors’ contention that the enormous growth in the sugar trade in the 17th and 18th centuries was the major factor in slavery. They argue, too, that sugar was instrumental in spreading the idea of freedom, an idea that changed the world. Like other books by Aronson, this work prompts readers to question previous assumptions and delve into the arguments presented, and encourages them to think like historians.

Burgan, Michael. Breaker Boys: How a Photograph Helped End Child Labor. Compass Point. 2012. ISBN 978-0-7565-4510-9. Gr 6–9
CC Standard RI.6.5 Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.

Photographs can change history. So contends this and other entries in the valuable “Captured History” series. Breaker Boys’ straightforward text focuses on a 1911 photograph by Lewis Hine of a group of boys who sorted coal at a Pennsylvania mine for 10 hours a day. The four chapters discuss coal mining, children in the mines, Hine and his work, and the slow changes in child labor laws. Students will be able to identify the structure as cause and effect, and analyze the role of the four chapters. They can also look for sentences and paragraphs that develop the idea of the political influence of photographs. To extend the topic, have students find more Hine photographs about child labor at the Library of Congress website or Flickr.com that can be used in presentations.

Burns, Loree Griffin. Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion. Houghton. 2007. ISBN 978-0-61858-131-3. Gr 6–9
CC Standard RI.7.3 Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events).

This fascinating photo-essay presents the work of an oceanographer who studies ocean currents by following the movement of debris like rubber ducks and hockey gloves spilled by container ships into the Pacific. Students can identify the central ideas about principles of ocean movement and issues around pollution, and trace their interaction through the text, noting how information about the scientist’s work and scientific methods are integrated with those ideas. Students can also consider how photographs, diagrams, and maps are crucial in developing the concepts. Other entries in the excellent “Scientists in the Field” series also lend themselves to use with Common Core.

Freedman, Russell. Who Was First? Discovering the Americas.Clarion. 2007. ISBN 978-0-618-66391-0. Gr 7 Up
CC Standard RI.11-12.5 Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.

In looking at beliefs about who first discovered America, Freedman starts with Christopher Columbus and moves backward in time to examine claims about earlier explorers. He shows that some claims don’t have adequate evidence, but also looks at one from an amateur historian that is now accepted. The book’s unusual structure makes it perfect for analysis to see if the reverse chronological organization is effective in making points about how historians evaluate new information and sometimes adjust their beliefs about the past. The chapter-by-chapter bibliographic essays are also models for research and documentation.

Hoose, Phillip. Moonbird : A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95. Farrar. 2012. ISBN 978-0-374-3046803. Gr 7 Up
CC Standard RI.9-10.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

For the past 20 years, a bird nicknamed the Moonbird has flown annually from Patagonia to the Arctic and back, a round-trip of 18,000 miles. Unfortunately, the remarkable species of rufa Red Knots is diminishing in number for several reasons. Hoose brilliantly weaves together the Moonbird’s story, the threats to the species, and the international effort to save these birds. He engages readers with one bird’s amazing journey that’s dependent on a complicated web of ecological factors. Students can look carefully at the choice of words and content as well as Hoose’s background as an environmentalist to try to determine his purpose in writing the book and consider if that affects how a reader should approach the text.

Macaulay, David. Mosque.illus. by author. Houghton. 2003. ISBN 978-0-61824-034-0. Gr 7 Up
CC Standard RI.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.

Mosque explores in detail the building of a fictional mosque in the Ottoman Empire starting in 1595. Each generous spread combines sophisticated text with appealing large and small illustrations including maps, cutaways, diagrams, floor plans, and numbered step-by-step processes. Labels identify specific aspects of the building and introduce new vocabulary such as alem, pendentive, and dershane. The question addressed is how such a large structure was built so long ago. Students can consider the different and related roles text and art play in addressing that question and in presenting complex technical information. For a different media source on the same topic, listen to Macaulay’s NPR interview about Mosque.

Schlosser, Eric and Charles Wilson. Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food.Houghton. 2006. ISBN 978-0-61871-031-7. Gr 7–10
CC Standard RI.8.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced.

Fast food—good or bad? In adapting Schlosser’s best seller Fast Food Nation, the authors thoughtfully added material relevant to teens about how fast food is marketed to young people and about teenagers who work in fast food restaurants. They point to problems with working conditions at the restaurants and with inhumane treatment of animals at companies that supply meat. They also argue that fast food harms the environment and consumers’ health. Students can consider whether the authors provide credible evidence for their arguments and if they acknowledge competing arguments about benefits of fast food such as convenience and low prices.

Stone, Tanya Lee. Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream.Candlewick. 2009. ISBN 978-0-76363-611-1. Gr 6 Up
CC Standard RI.8.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.

In the early 1960s, 13 women highly qualified to become astronauts were excluded by NASA from the Mercury space program. This appealing Sibert Award winner, notable for the author’s strong point of view, explores the reasons and biases behind the decision. Students can examine the text for language and other evidence that show Stone’s position on the topic and the people involved. For example, what words does she use to describe the women, some of whom she interviewed? How does she present opposing viewpoints that argued that women shouldn’t be included? One of the book’s main themes is that society minimized women’s abilities and restricted their opportunities. Students can consider how photographs and artifacts like advertisements are used to make that case, and if it’s presented fairly.

Kathleen Odean, chair of the 2002 Newbery Award Committee, presents workshops on new young adult books and Common Core nonfiction. She’s the author of Great Books for Girls (2002) and Great Books for Babies and Toddlers (2003, both Ballentine).On May 21, she will be moderating a free webcast on materials selection in light of the Common Core State Standards.