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.

Interactive Comics

Thirty-two titles from the “DC Super-Pets,” “DC Super Heroes: The Man of Steel,” “Superman,” and “Batman” series are now available as interactive ebooks from Capstone. An additional 28 titles will be released in the fall. There’s a one-time fee for “DC Super-Pets” interactive ebooks ($31.99 ea.) and “DC Super Heroes” ($33.99 ea.), which grants access to unlimited circulation for all students 24/7 in school, at home, or on any mobile device. “Our DC Comics brand of full-color chapter books offers readers the perfect introduction to DC Comics characters and are among Capstone’s most successful and best-selling series,” noted Matt Keller, Capstone’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Librarians can expand their digital collection with the titles kids love without having to worry about hidden fees or circulation limits.”

Math Challenge

WGBH Educational Foundation’s Innovation Math Challenge is for anyone who wants to create fun and engaging math educational media—educators, student teams, gamers, or programmers. Applicants can submit entries of games, math videos, infographics, or manipulatives. The contest challenges individuals or teams to design and create a web-based digital resource between two and six minutes in length related to middle school math and connected to the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. The entry should be “engaging, rich in content and context, and go beyond strictly procedural teaching.” The deadline for submission is November 22. Check out the website for more information and contest rules. Up to 100 winners will each receive $1,000.

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

SPONSORED BY: Mackin Educational Resources, Capstone, Rosen Publishing, and School Library Journal
EVENT DATE AND TIME: Tuesday, June 4, 2013, 3:00 – 4:00 PM ET/ 12:00  - 1:00 PM PT

Archive now available!

Whether your district is Common Core or not, its arrival and collision with the broad digital transition create unmatched opportunity for librarians to take leadership on meeting standards using their collection development and technology skills–mixing up materials and tools, stepping up the professional development role with teachers, innovating on the collection level, informing curriculum, and integrating digital tools.
Takeaway: 10 Steps to Take to Lead on Standards

Panelists

Jennifer LaGarde- Lead Librarian, New Hanover Schools, NC
Bridgette Wagner- Director of Educational Services, Waverly Shellrock Schools, IA
Christine Poser- Teacher Librarian, Myra S. Barnes I.S. 24, NY

Moderator
Shannon McClintock Miller - District Teacher Librarian, Van Meter Community School, IA

Click here to view the archive for Be the Change: 10 Keys To Leadership
Click here to view the archive for Be the Change: Make the Administrator Connection
Click here to register for Be the Change:  Raise the Bar with Effective Collaborations

Didn’t make it on June 4? No problem! The archive is now available for on-demand viewing at your convenience!

Follow us on Twitter! @SLJEvent  #SLJBTC

By registering for this webcast, you are agreeing that School Library Journal may share your registration information with sponsors currently shown and future sponsors of this event. Click here to review the entire School Library Journal Privacy Policy.

As an incentive to get kids to visit the library during the summer, Bedtime Math is offering two math-focused programs for free to libraries across the country. The “Bedtime Math Pajama Party” kit contains games for three-to-nine-year-olds that teach basic math, such as “Twisted Tangrams,” as well as glow-in-the-dark magnets, party favor bags, and everything that’s needed to plan for programming the event in the library. The kit can be ordered online.

“Summer of Numbers” sets include two-month calendars (June 15–August 17) that feature Bedtime Math problems. The set also includes gold star stickers that kids can apply each day they do a math problem. Library representatives can order the calendars through May 15 for delivery before mid-June.

Both programs have been piloted in dozens of libraries in New Jersey and across the U.S. “Since the beginning, we have said that literacy and numeracy go hand in hand, and that public libraries are allies with Bedtime Math to keep students engaged and learning during the summer and all extended school breaks. We look forward to sharing these free library-and kid-tested programs more broadly,” noted Laura Overdeck, Bedtime Math founder.

National Geographic and Common Core

National Geographic Kids is being launched by Gale, part of Cengage Learning, as a new resource in their National Geographic Virtual Library product line. Intended for elementary and middle school students, National Geographic Kids includes full issues of the magazine from 2009 to the present, 500 downloadable images, and 200 National Geographic Kids books, including nonfiction titles and the National Geographic Readers. The resource’s content supports Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

You can purchase or subscribe National Geographic Kids as a stand-alone or as part of the complete National Geographic Virtual Library line. You can get a free trial of the product and find out more information.

Ebooks

Four S. E. Hinton novels are now available in ebook format for the first time from Diversion Books: Taming the Star Runner, Rumble Fish, Some of Tim’s Stories, and Tex. They can also be purchased from the iBookstore and all major online ebook retailers.

Capstone Partners with Save the Children

Capstone is working with Save the Children to raise money for the organization’s emergency fund to help children and families during severe crises and natural disasters with food, medical care, and education. Capstone will donate money to Save the Children from its sale of Flood, a wordless picture book by Alvaro F. Villa about a family’s experience after a flood. You can request a free reader’s guide to the book from Capstone Young Readers.

Unfortunately, strict Internet filtering is the reality in many schools. Check your district’s Internet Use Policy and make sure there’s a provision to unblock sites that students may need. Perhaps you could meet with other teachers and see which sites kids will need to complete their upcoming assignments. Then ask the IT person to unblock them in advance.

My school district is adamant that our students must meet the Common Core standards for reading and literature. I’m especially concerned about the “Production and Distribution of Writing” standard, which requires kids to “Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others.” Our school’s computers are heavily filtered, and the district’s policy doesn’t allow students to use email or social media during the school day.

Schedule a meeting with those who have the power to change the policy, including members of the IT department. Point out that this particular standard is impossible for kids to meet because the district’s current policy is so strict. Perhaps the IT department can come up with a solution. It’s also important to check your state’s privacy policy. Perhaps student writing should only be posted with a student’s first name or a unique screen name. You might also want to consider asking your district to subscribe to SchoolTube, which is a site where students can share their work.

One of our high school students is doing his senior project on Robert Cormier. He’s especially interested in exploring why many of Cormier’s novels were often censored. As part of the research, the student is required to use books, periodicals, newspapers, and websites. We have online access to some magazines and newspapers, but they don’t date back to when Cormier’s works were first challenged. I’ve done a quick search for online resources, but many of the sites that deal with censorship are blocked in our district. Any suggestions?

There’s a book about Cormier’s work in the “Authors of Banned Books” series that’s called, Robert Cormier: Banned, Challenged, and Censored (Enslow, 2008). If you check its chapter notes, you’ll find many valuable resources, including the names of websites with their URLs. If your school library doesn’t own this series, the local public library may. Consider getting it through interlibrary loan if you can’t purchase it by the time the student needs to complete his research. I’m sure that the public library can supply almost anything the student needs—make sure he has a public library card!

I’m an elementary school librarian. Recently, our principal asked me to remove the entire “The Popularity Papers” series from our collection after a parent complained about it. Our girls—and even some of the boys—really love these books. The fact that one of its main characters has two dads has never been an issue until the parent complained. When I asked our principal if he wanted me to remove the series because of the gay parents, he replied, “Yes, we can’t support that.” I haven’t removed the books. What should I do?

Does your district have a Materials Reconsideration Policy that deals with specific challenges? If it does, review the policy with your principal and the parent. Let them know that following a proper procedure is the most professional way of handling a challenge. The courts have already said that school administrators can’t pull a library book based on their “personal opinion or bias.” Point to the case in Davis County, UT, where the school district removed Patricia Polacco’s In Our Mothers’ House (Philomel, 2009) from its shelves. Parents who wanted their kids to have access to the book sued the district. The school board has reinstated the book, but the court case isn’t settled. If you don’t have a policy, now is the time to develop one.

Pat Scales is chair of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee. You can send your questions or comments on censorship to her at pscales@bellsouth.net.

The following examples range from picture book read-alongs for younger children to novels and nonfiction titles for middle and high school, and connect to a variety of Common Core Anchor Standards for Reading. There are, of course, other standards which would work equally as well in building curriculum units. The final Anchor Standard, “CCSS.ELA–Literacy.CCRA.R.10 Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently,” seems to address specifically what we hope to showcase this month: that stories and informational audiobooks paired together are, indeed, a winning combination for increasing both knowledge and literacy skills.

A Waddle of Penguins

One Cool Friend. Written by Toni Buzzeo. Illustrated by David Small. Narrated by Chris Sorenson. CD. 15 min. with hardcover book. Recorded Books. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4640-3571-5. $37.75. K-Gr 2

On an unwanted trip to the aquarium, Elliot delightedly discovers penguins and decides to take one home. Hilarity ensues as Elliot blithely changes household routines to care for his new friend, Magellan. Sorenson’s tone is inviting and his pacing allows time to absorb Small’s clever, understated 2013 Caldecott Honor illustrations which provide the perfect foil for Buzzeo’s straightforward text. Fanciful and amusing, this charming read-along gives listeners a fresh perspective on penguins.

Penguins. Written and illustrated by Gail Gibbons. Narrated by George Mazzoli. CD. 16:59 min. with paperback book. Live Oak Media. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4301-0951-8. $18.95. PreS-Gr 2

Mazzoli’s measured narration, with an underbed of penguin calls and sounds from the habitat, introduces these remarkable, flightless, feathered inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere. The simple, direct text is enlivened by Gibbons’s trademark brightly-colored illustrations and includes facts about penguin physiology, nesting patterns, and a geographic locator map.

Common Core Anchor Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

Instructional Extension: Students can explore the real world of Magellanic Penguins to determine if Elliot could really have kept his friend at home by visiting the Bronx Zoo’s wonderful website. Teachers will find lots of useful information, activities, and photos suitable for classroom use on Kidzone’s penguin pages.

World of Dance

Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring. Written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. Illustrated by Brian Floca. Narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker. CD. 1 hr. Brilliance Audio. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4558-7731-7. $29.97. Gr 2-5

The true story of the inspired collaboration among choreographer/dancer Martha Graham, composer Aaron Copeland, and set designer Isamu Noguchi that led to the creation of the ballet, Appalachian Spring. With Parker’s mellow inflections and measured pacing and the effective underbed of music from Appalachian Spring, this fascinating description of an inspired creative process is an effective introduction to dance, music, and design. This fine audiobook also includes a complete performance of the ballet music and fully narrated back matter. Students may want to keep a print copy nearby to look at Floca’s lovely illustrations.

Ballet Shoes. Written by Noel Streatfield. Narrated by Elizabeth Sastre. 6 CDs. 6 hrs. Listening Library. 2004. ISBN 978-1-4000-9497-4. $35. Gr 3-5

Great Uncle Matthew, off on world travels, discovers three little orphans and sends them home to his niece Sylvia in post-World War I London. When GUM, as he is affectionately known, fails to return, the three adopted sisters grow up in genteel poverty, attending a ballet academy, dancing on the stage, and making their own way in the world. This old-fashioned story is narrated to perfection by Sastre, who manages a variety of British accents and genders with ease. Her tone and pacing invite listeners into a fascinating world long past.

Common Core Anchor Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.3 Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

Instructional Extensions: Students can watch a production of Appalachian Spring on YouTube, danced by Martha Graham and the original company, with Noguchi’s sets to compare Floca’s interpretation in the print edition of Ballet for Martha. They might also watch the 2007 British television film version of Ballet Shoes (Koch Vision) and discuss how that medium is different from the audiobook.

Civil Rights Movement

The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963. Written by Christopher Paul Curtis. Narrated by LeVar Burton. 4 CDs. 4:45 hrs. Listening Library. 2003. ISBN 978-0-8072-1777-1. $38. Gr 5-8

In 1963, Kenny Watson’s family takes a summer trip from Flint, Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama, unaware that they are traveling to one of history’s darkest days. LeVar Burton’s narration combines humor and distress, creating an exceptional listening experience as events unfold in that violent summer when four young girls died in their church as a result of a bombing. Curtis blends comedy with drama as the Watsons confront the segregated South alongside the hopefulness of the Civil Rights Movement in this 1996 Newbery and Coretta Scott King Honor title.

We’ve Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children’s March. Written by Cynthia Levinson. Read by Ervin Ross. 6 CDs. 6:22 hrs. Listening Library. 2012. ISBN 978-0-385-36151-4. $40.. Gr 4-8

Unadorned narration, extensive bonus material, the singing of the gospel song composed for the Birmingham March, an author’s note, and interviews with the now-adult marchers make this a strong nonfiction offering for classroom use. Listeners will be engaged by the individual stories of Audrey, Booker, Arnetta, and James as their experiences during the Civil Rights Movement are recounted and then reinforced by hearing their own grown-up voices in author interviews. This serves as a good example of an audiobook that surpasses a print reading; hearing the actual voices of the witnesses to history adds a valuable dimension.

Common Core State Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

Instructional Extension: An excellent video excerpt of Mighty Times: The Children’s March can be watched on YouTube, making a fine accompaniment to these audiobooks. The full documentary is available online or on DVD, with a teacher’s guide provided by Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Peachtree Publishers has also recently launched a website based on the print edition of We’ve Got a Job that includes information featured in the book for students to explore at their own pace.

The Holocaust

Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust. Written by Doreen Rappaport. Narrated by Emily Beresford and Jeff Crawford. 5 CDs. 5 hrs. Brilliance Audio. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4692-0625-7. $64.97. Gr 5 Up

Beginning with the heartfelt introduction read by Rappaport (“Even as a Jew, growing up in a Jewish household, I had only ever heard that ‘Jews went like lambs to the slaughter’ during the war.”) and moving to incredibly brave attempts—often by teenagers—to combat the Nazi machine, the events in this well-researched book will surprise listeners. Beresford and Crawford alternate the telling of uprisings large and small from Warsaw to Sobibor, and from Greece to Theresienstadt, highlighting a seemingly endless string of courageous acts against an incomprehensible enemy. The narration is without frills, employing measured pacing and consistent intonation that allows the strength of the text to tell the harrowing, yet often hopeful, story. Viewing the bonus CD, which includes photographs and other information from the print edition, expands the listening experience.

Once. Written and narrated by Morris Gleitzman. 3 CDs. 3 hrs. Prod. by Bolinda Audio. Dist. by Brilliance Audio. 2005. ISBN 978-1-7409-4902-6. $24.95. Gr 5-8.
Then.Written and narrated by Morris Gleitzman. 3 CDs. 3:35 hrs. Prod. by Bolinda Audio. Dist. by BrillianceAudio. 2008. ISBN 978-1-7420-1545-3. $24.95. Gr 5-8

Gleitzman narrates his own work in these two stories of the Holocaust. In Once, ten-year-old Felix is living in a Catholic orphanage, hidden there by his parents who hoped to keep him safe from the Nazis. In a naive attempt to reunite with his parents, Felix runs away from the orphanage to go back home. On his way, he meets six-year-old Zelda and, together, they flee from the relentless evil of Nazi cruelty. Their story continues in Then as they escape from a death train and find shelter on a Polish farm. Gleitzman’s unvoiced reading alternates between childlike innocence and the sure knowledge that life should not hold so many horrors. Listeners will believe Gleitzman as he takes on the persona of Felix, the storyteller.

Common Core Anchor Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

Instructional Extension: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website has pages particularly geared to students, where they can do further research on a wide variety of topics and view many photographs from the period.

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).

]]> http://www.slj.com/2013/04/books-media/collection-development/listen-in/fact-and-fiction-listen-in-april-2013/feed/ 1 http://www.slj.com/2013/04/opinion/consider-the-source/national-history-day-a-perfect-support-for-common-core-consider-the-source/ http://www.slj.com/2013/04/opinion/consider-the-source/national-history-day-a-perfect-support-for-common-core-consider-the-source/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:00:07 +0000 Marc Aronson http://www.slj.com/?p=38616 Lately, as most of you know, I’ve been examining the Common Core crosswinds—the obstacles that make it challenging to fully implement the new education standards. But today, I want to focus on some encouraging developments. Last week I observed a regional History Day competition in New Jersey and what I saw was thrilling. And I’m hardly the first person to say that. In Minnesota, nearly 30,000 students in grades 6 through 12 are passionately working on projects to bring to their state’s History Day in early May. The winners will go on to compete in a National History Day (NHD) contest in Washington, DC, June 9–13. While you’re probably aware of this, let me review what National History Day is, and how it relates to the Common Core standards.

In effect NHD has turned history into a science fair. That is, instead of marching through whatever subjects are mandated by the local curriculum and dutifully matched to an approved textbook, students can decide which area of history they’d like to explore. There are some limits: every year NHD selects a theme, so kids who take part in the regional, state, or national competitions are given a general framework, but they still have a lot of latitude. For example, this year’s theme: “turning points in history,” can be examined from a U.S. or global perspective, or in terms of its impact on technology or law, singular events or lengthy campaigns, matters of high morality or pop culture, etc. Whether students choose to work on their own or in groups, they’re required to use both primary and secondary sources and to document their research. They can choose to write a paper, create a display, build a website, or perform on stage.

All of the above may be done well or poorly—so simply having a contest doesn’t, in itself, enhance Common Core thinking. But what I saw shows that there’s a very nice connection between the two. I viewed displays that ranged from civil rights and labor strikes to video games. In every case it was clear that the process of creating the presentation was the reward—students were doing real history, real research. They were investigating, gathering evidence, comparing interpretations, and arriving at conclusions. Every one of them was surprised by how much they learned in the process. Sure, that’s a handy phrase to tell a judge, but the animation with which they presented their projects, and the examples they gave could not be faked. These were young people of every age and background, some immigrants struggling to speak English, some accomplished presenters speaking rehearsed lines, who had discovered what history offers: the pleasures of researching, thinking, learning, and arriving at your own conclusions that you craft for an audience.

Congratulations, NHD! You’re helping the Common Core without ever stepping into a classroom. If any of you readers work in a school that doesn’t compete in NHD, I encourage you to read up on it and to share the information with your students and fellow teachers. You’ll be doing them a big favor.

(Nina Simone, “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” from the 1962 album Nina Simone Live at the Village Gate)

I’ve just returned from two days in Rochester, NY, where Sue Bartle and I ran some Common Core (CC) workshops, and our lively exchanges with teachers, librarians, and administrators reminded me of Nina’s words. We were there to talk about Common Core in the final run-up to New York’s first assessments, but this wasn’t a lecture. In fact, it quickly turned into a group therapy-cum-revival-testimonial session. Everyone had stories to share. We were hearing, straight from the trenches, about the Common Core crosswinds.

The first day drew people from wealthier suburban districts that have invested heavily in guided reading and in Lucy Calkins’s Reading and Writing Project workshops. The second day—a beautiful warm Saturday, no less—attracted a full house of people who work in inner-city schools where administrators seek to tightly script teaching and learning—often in ways that make Common Core’s emphasis on “depth over breadth” impossible to achieve. I’m using this column to sort out my thinking—and to invite all of you to share your own CC crosswinds—because one of the best things to come out of the day was the cross-school collaborations and exchanges of ideas.

I wrote about the problems that guided reading can pose for Common Core in a previous column—see “(Mis)Guided Reading”—and Mary Ann Cappiello, an assistant professor of language & literacy at Lesley University, sent me word of a recent article by the creators of guided reading, Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, in which they discuss the difference between their actual system and how it’s all too often applied (“Guided Reading: The Romance and the Reality,” The Reading Teacher December 2012 V. 66 #4, pages 268-346, which unfortunately isn’t available for free online). I encourage any of you whose students are trapped by the guided reading’s carefully calibrated reading levels and not encouraged to follow their own interests to bring this article to the attention of teachers and administrators. Rigid, misunderstood, and misapplied, guided reading is directly at odds with Common Core.

I’d planned to write about the problems with Lucy Calkins’s approach, but New York City beat me to it. Dr. Calkins is a fixture at Columbia University’s Teachers College and, quite naturally, her ideas and the students she has trained have had a strong influence on the New York City school system. But in March, New York announced that after carefully weighing a number of curricular approaches, it was selecting two: Core Knowledge and ReadyGen. The city’s announcement didn’t mention Calkins, but the shift in focus was clear, and it’s easy to see why. Calkins has been the guru of the writing process, especially text-to-self connections. This was a welcome relief in the heyday of No Child Left Behind and encouraged a culture of writing and revision in many schools. But the CC English language arts standards expressly de-emphasize that area of subjective response and instead, focus on evidence that’s found in the text: “What does it say?’ over “how do I feel about that?” Schools and districts that have invested in teaching students how to write about “small moments” and have discouraged writing assignments linked to curricular subjects are at cross purposes with CC—in the same way as those that are turning guided reading into alphabet prisons.

Friends, as the New York City’s experience proves, just because your school or district has made a recent, expensive, investment in a system doesn’t mean you need to keep using it. Common Core drives the assessments—and your administrators need to know if you and your students are being hampered, rather than helped, by the tools that you are using. And that brings me to administrative rigidity. On that balmy Saturday, I kept hearing about scripting: a dual-language school that has had a decade of success with its existing program of alternating full days of English with Spanish, has now been ordered to use an English-only “module” in the middle of every day; a Montessori school, built around the multi-age classroom, has now been told that all of its students in each grade must follow a different curriculum; a middle school ELA teacher who has creatively matched fiction and nonfiction (as CC requires) for years is now mandated to use a curriculum that leaves him no choice in materials; reading teachers who teach students how to locate and analyze evidence in a text (which, as I just mentioned, is the heart of the CC) by making marginal notes and comments is concerned that on the CC assessments students will now be forbidden to use the very skills and methods they’ve been taught.

Just at the moment when Common Core is meant to encourage deep learning and thinking, and constant questioning, we see anxious administrators mandating scripts, uniformity, and blind obedience. This is simply wrong. What can we do? The first thing is to speak up; others are facing the same challenges that you’re facing, and we can exchange ideas. We always end our Common Core sessions with a workshop in which teams of teachers and librarians work together on a project. Right there in the room, you see a culture of collaboration taking shape—ideas from one classroom that fit a library across the city. The great thing about Common Core is that it is really “common”: everyone in 46 states is tackling this challenge.

Speak up: about what is working, what is not, and where the crosswinds blow. As you can see, I’m listening—and I want everyone to know.

Archive now available!

What are the best nonfiction Common Core books to stock with your shelves with? DK Publishing, Teacher Created Materials, Lerner Publishing and ReferencePoint Press are here to help fill your library’s nonfiction section by presenting their upcoming titles that fit perfectly into the new standards. This is a must-see resource for Common Core, featuring forthcoming books, nonfiction trends,  and answers to your questions!

Panelists
Jaimie Cona – Children’s Marketing Manager, DK Publishing
Susan Copeland – Director of Education, Teacher Created Materials
Terri Lynn Soutor – Vice President, Marketing & Digital Products, Lerner Publishing Group 
Chris Nasso -  Marketing Director, ReferencePoint Press

Moderator
Jennifer S. Price - Youth Services Librarian , Buncombe County Public Libraries

Didn’t make it on March 12? No problem! Archive now available!
Follow us on Twitter! @SLJEvent  #sljccbuzz

By registering for this webcast, you are agreeing that School Library Journal may share your registration information with sponsors currently shown and future sponsors of this event. Click here to review the entire School Library Journal Privacy Policy.

Common Curriculum

Ready or not, here they come. Currently adopted in part or in full by 45 states, the Common Core (CC) standards are seemingly on everyone’s mind. At almost every school I visited this year, teachers asked me to address the Common Core in my workshops. Planning lessons with CC in mind presents a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. New sites and services are popping up on the Web every day with the express purpose of helping plan lessons around Common Core. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Online resource Common Curriculum is designed to help educators align their lesson plans with CC standards. Common Curriculum provides an online plan book, which enables you to keep track of your class schedules and write your lesson plans. Enter a lesson into your Common Curriculum planner, then click “search for standard” to find a match for your lesson plan. Including more text in your lesson will improve search results, I’ve found.

A free application, Common Curriculum also enables users to attach files and links to their lesson plans, which really makes it easy to organize those digital materials in one place. Common Curriculum also has a built-in blogging feature. Once activated, the blog option will automatically post your lesson plans for you.

The heart of the Mastery Connect (see screencast below) service is an assessment tracker in which teachers and administrators can monitor each student’s progress toward meeting specifically selected Common Core standards. That data can be extremely useful in planning lessons. In an especially nice feature, Mastery Connect offers an app for iOS and Android that makes all of the Common Core standards available for immediate access from a smartphone. The app has been used by teachers more than 5.6 million times, according to the company. And you needn’t go it alone when planning your lessons. Mastery Connect offers an online network in which teachers across the country can connect to share ideas and lessons planned around the Common Core.

Need some inspiration for planning a Common Core-related lesson? There are a couple of places to start your search. The One Laptop Per Child project (one.laptop.org) recently created a wiki of elementary school lesson plans aligned to Common Core standards, XO Plans For You. Select your grade level, then a content area to find sample lesson plans. The lessons are archived as Google Documents, which you can download and or save onto your Google Drive account.

Popular virtual penpal service ePals has recently launched its own Common Core standards resource. The ePals Common Core Implementation Center is a bank of free project plans created by teachers and ePals staff. Search for projects by grade level and content area—currently limited to ELA and science. Many of the projects, though not all, involve using ePals. There are alternatives, if you don’t choose to use the service, but it might take a bit more creative effort on your part to make those particular lessons work.

As you plan your lessons in the new year, remember these free resources and take some of the stress out of aligning your plans to Common Core standards.

Richard Byrne (richardbyrne@freetech4teachers.com), a high school social studies teacher, writes the award-winning blog “Free Technology for Teachers.”

Scholastic

During the webcast—which will be globally accessible—Baldacci will present some of the most fascinating artifacts in the Smithsonian’s national collections, including the Lewis and Clark compass (which is featured in Baldacci’s 39 Clues book), Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch, and the original Star-Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired Frances Scott Key to compose our national anthem. Viewers will also “meet” renowned museum curators and explore some of the most mysterious moments in American history.

“I’m thrilled to be part of the joint program between the powerhouse combination of Scholastic and the Smithsonian,” Baldacci says. “History and books, what could be better? Each entertains and educates. And The 39 Clues series and the Smithsonian do both, splendidly.”

Day of Doom will be the sixth and final book in the multi-platform series of books, collectible cards, and an online game that debuted in September 2008 for ages 8-12.

Prolific and bestselling author David Baldacci‘s first book, Absolute Power, was published 1996; he has since written more than 25 novels, plus two titles for young readers in the Freddy and the French Fries series. He was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2011.

David Baldacci. Credit: Travis Riggs, Creative Edge Studios.

“Scholastic is honored to have author David Baldacci as part of our groundbreaking and innovative 39 Clues team and we couldn’t be more excited that he has agreed to lead our exclusive webcast,” says Ellie Berger, President, Scholastic Trade. “We are also thrilled to collaborate with the renowned institution, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, on this unique and educational virtual tour that will reach countless classrooms and libraries around the globe and is a perfect way to merge history, mystery, and storytelling.”

According to the company, the webcast will help teachers meet the “Speaking & Listening” Common Core Standards for English and Language Arts. There are currently more than 15 million copies in print worldwide of the series and more than 2 million registered users for the online game.

A movie is currently in development with Dreamworks.

First, a tangent: anyone who has spent time grappling with the Common Core (CC) English Language Arts standards knows that they have significantly raised the stakes on text complexity. Books that, say, we once thought were a challenging choice for fifth graders are now considered appropriate for fourth graders.

Why has the bar been raised, even though, just a few years ago, No Child Left Behind focused on kids who read below the old, less demanding, grade-level standards?

A key reason is that the metrics for upper YA titles—the types of books that teens have been assigned as the ultimate high school challenge—are 200 Lexile points below what high school seniors will be facing the following year in college. If K–12 education is a fire truck ladder, then we’ve built it too short to reach the escape window. In order to make sure that students are prepared for college, we needed to add more rungs to the ladder.

CC increases the text complexity so much that by kids’ final year in high school there are, as far as I know, no YA nonfiction books that meet the new education guidelines. To remedy that situation, students must necessarily read adult books, primary sources, or academic books. Fine. So if that’s where we’re leading students, how do we get them there?

An adult history book assumes that the reader already knows—or can know, or should know—something about the topic. If, for instance, a writer talks about the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts in a biography of John Adams, he assumes that the reader has studied them in school or can quickly Google them. The author’s job is to give an engaging take on what the passage of those bills tell us about Adams, and how this fresh perspective helps us see Adam’s time, and perhaps our own, in a new light. Since the reader knows the basic information, the originality is in the author’s thinking and presentation, and a source note may simply list where he got the primary source.

YA and academic books, though, have different goals. Books for young readers don’t presume our audience already knows the story. Indeed, even as we’re presenting what we hope is an enticing view of either an unfamiliar event (such as the race to make the first atom bomb or the outbreak of an 18th-century Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia), or a familiar one (like the Great Depression or the 1963 March on Washington), we need to make sure that our readers understand both the basics and our new take. We have to treat the information itself as potentially new to them. This puts those of us who write for young adults in the same place as an academic historian, since he or she is presenting original research that’s aimed at shifting how we view the past.

Thus we, like the academic historian, need to let our readers into the process: Where does our information come from? Are there other perspectives? Are our sources reliable? We can’t presume that our readers have the necessary background, so we need to provide them with it; that’s why our citations need to be annotated. We need to show kids how our claims, our knowledge, are cooked.

Authors who merely cite sources without discussing them are seeing YA history as using a story to pass along settled information. This is appealing to fiction fans, who enjoy the narrative flow of a nonfiction book (and are thrilled that it doesn’t resemble a textbook), but for whom the information is the medicine which the spoonful of narrative sugar makes palatable. Not being familiar with either the content or the way that historians construct knowledge, they don’t miss what they don’t know. Those who question, discuss, and compare their sources see YA history as using a story to acquaint readers with the process of how knowledge is created. This is at the heart of historical writing, but may be totally unfamiliar to fiction readers, who often enjoy speculating about character and motivation in novels, but may have never learned that the same kind of thinking must be applied to our understanding of the real world.

I think annotated citations are great even for kids in the youngest grades, because we want them to be pestering us, demanding that we explain “How do you know that?” But by the upper-middle grades and certainly by high school this is no longer a choice. Our books are always as much about the construction of knowledge as about the information itself. To put it a different way, our highest goal isn’t merely that history should read like a novel, but that it should be as much of a puzzle as a math problem and as open to interpretation as a poem.

“Well-written” in nonfiction necessarily means “well-considered.” History is, ultimately, an invitation to the reader to participate in the process of thinking about, and thus re-imagining, who we are and how we got that way. That is what college offers. We can only make the link by sharing our process of discovery with our younger readers.

Coda: Right now, a related debate is going on among prominent historians and history educators. Stanford’s Sam Wineburg recently wrote a marvelous critique of Howard Zinn’s work—featuring his poor use of sources, which was then criticized by NYU’s Robert Cohen. For my take on the debate, with links to the Wineburg essay, see http://nonfictionandthecommoncore.blogspot.com/2013_01_01_archive.html; and for Cohen’s critique, visit http://hnn.us/articles/when-assessing-zinn-listen-voices-teachers-and-students.

Here’s what Sarah had to say about page four of my book: “There are two paragraphs here, which begin with the sentence, ‘There are two ways to tell the story of America.’ Again I was pulled to an abrupt halt. Really? (I thought) There are two ways to tell the story of America? Two? Not three or six or twenty.’”

Obviously, I don’t agree, and I look forward to a lively discussion with the Flowers team at some future gathering. But I’m restating my point here not to wrangle over my book’s language, but rather to reflect on the recent presidential election and some of the post-election analysis and complaints.

As the New York Times reported, some Republican voters in, for example, Wyoming are discouraged by the election’s outcome. Those businesspeople see what they term “dependency” on the government as “unsustainable” and directly counter to what they’re certain is our nation’s can-do, self-reliant, and individualist core. Of course, it was precisely this split between the 47 percent of takers and, implicitly, the 53 percent of doers that Governor Romney spoke of in that captured video—a split echoed by Bill O’Reilly and many others after the election.

From the Colonial days, when Pennsylvania’s rich lands were called the “best poor-man’s country,” through Emerson’s canonical essay on self-reliance, through the generations of graduation speakers who have used his words as their guide and inspiration, America has stood as a land where an individual has a chance to make good. Our emphasis on the individual as an individual was in stark contrast to the rest of the world, where a nation or empire generally embraced an established religion. In those societies, one was defined as belonging to the prevailing faith or viewed as an outsider. There was also a set class system in which your expectations were defined by your birth—and a strong sense of national heritage in which to be English, or Chinese, or Zulu was defined by not being something else. Of course, this made it difficult to figure out what rights to grant minorities, such as Jews, Quakers, Uighurs (Muslim Chinese), Koreans in Japan, etc.

No wonder the Wyoming voters are angry and feel as if the America they know, love, and believe in is slipping away and joining the muck of the world that their ancestors left behind. But there’s one key flaw in that narrative of American history. When Congress first set rules for how an immigrant could be become a naturalized citizen, it faced a major dilemma. Should just anyone be allowed to come here and join the American experiment, including Jews who could not vote or hold office in England and Catholics who might be beholden to the Pope? In 1790, Congress decided that religion would not be a barrier. Indeed, any free white person was eligible for citizenship. (The rule was amended to include Africans after the Civil War—and thus specifically excluded Asians and later Hispanics; the law was not fully replaced until 1952.)

For some Americans, being an individual has always been trumped by being part of a group: African Americans, Native Americans, LGBT Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist Americans, and even female Americans have always been aware of their group identity—once considered a demerit, now often a source of pride. Here’s the second narrative of American history: no matter who you were as an individual, the shadow of your group defined how others perceived you, and it greatly influenced your prospects. If you identify with any of these groups, American history has only fractionally been a story of individual effort. Rather, it has always been a matter of collective profile.

In the recent election, members of precisely these same groups tended to side with President Obama, and all of the post-election demographic analysis has been about their rising power. One narrative of America’s history that emphasizes collective experience is edging past another that emphasizes that individuals are free to seek their own destinies. But there are, as I said at the beginning, two narratives of our past. Both are, in their own way, true. Indeed, it’s the weave, the intersection, of belief in the individual and the assumption that that individual is white and male, that’s our national story. Both of these stories, taken together, subvert and enhance one another and make up the real pageant of our past.

What a perfect Common Core topic: present your students with a cluster of resources, some that focus on America as the land of the individual and others that focus on our nation as the land of group prejudice and collective experience. Soon, I hope, your libraries will be alive with sound of the resulting questions, comments, and debates. I can hardly wait.

Downed tree on the way to New Canaan Library, CT.

The day after Hurricane Sandy, my wife and I walked around our town. We’d been fortunate. Even though a fallen tree blocked our street, with every sort of power line beneath it, we had power and water and even TV and Internet. Our house was filled with neighbors charging their cell phones and craving hot coffee.

As we picked our way past trees and police tape and fallen wires, we saw home after home darkened, trees upended across yards, porches, and roofs. We finally reached my 92-year-old mother, who was trapped in her cold, powerless home, and my mother-in-law, who was even more imprisoned in an apartment with neither power nor running water. I’m sure you’ve all had similar experiences or have seen images such as these, and far worse.

The storm brought change. We all also saw President Obama and New Jersey Governor Christie work together—an image of what our nation could be and should be. And that brings me to the main point of this column. I believe that students in every school in America should address the following question: Are human actions changing our climate? And if they are, how? What can we do about it?

We’re living amidst wild nature. Is that due to climate change? What could be a more perfect Common Core question? What could be more central to our lives, and our students’ futures? To address these questions, kids need to use science, history, economics, ecology, biology, math, and social action—they can read dystopian novels such as Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (Little, Brown, 2010) or M. T. Anderson’s Feed (Candlewick, 2002). These are questions on which experts disagree. That’s perfect. We’re not preaching to our students, we are engaging them in answering a question that’s as central to their generation as civil rights was to mine. Why should schools focus on anything else? Students will learn every required skill, but not as textbook abstractions, rather as the central issues facing us, all of us, right now and in the future.

I urge you, readers, make the case to your school. Or, if the teachers and administration are too pressed by tests to add a new unit, start a display in your library: Is human-induced climate change leading to catastrophic weather? Include books, print-outs from websites and magazines, and ads. (The New York Times has a fine set of learning resources about Sandy.) Then invite kids to add their notes, comments, and questions. Build it and they will come—and you’ll be the agent asking the key questions that must be asked… and answered.

Author interviews: “Writers Speak to Kids” is a free series of 17 videos from NBC Learn that features interviews with popular and award-winning children’s books creators. The authors, responding to questions posed by NBC News correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, talk about their writing process and experiences. The series launched on September 17, with interviews of Peter Brown, Doreen Cronin, Jeff Kinney, Daniel Kirk, and Mo Willems. Gordon Korman, Ridley Pearson, Laura Vaccaro Seeger, Philip Stead, Rebecca Stead, Clare Vanderpool, and Jacqueline Woodson are among the other authors that will be interviewed during the fall. The program is intended to inspire students and help them learn about creative writing techniques.

Mora Award Winner

Día celebration: The Lynden Public Library of the Whatcom County Library System in Washington has won the 2012 Estela and Raúl Mora Award for exemplary efforts promoting El día de los niños, El día de los libros (Children’s Day, Book Day). More than 250 people attended the festivities, and each child was given a book. The event featured craft activities led by bilingual teen volunteers, and had several storytimes that ended with a game of lotería (Mexican bingo) with books given as prizes. There was also a disc jockey, a piñata, and other games. The Lynden Public Library will receive $1,000 and a special plaque. “What resonated with the committee was the grassroots involvement of Lynden’s Día,” said Beatriz Pascual Wallace, Mora Award chair. “There was a strong sense of community connection with this event, of everyone coming together to plan, celebrate, and share.”

For the first time, three honor awards were given: the District of Columbia Public Library, King County (WA) Library System, and Sacramento (CA) Public Library each received $300. The award, presented annually in partnership with REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish speaking, was established in 2000 by author/poet Pat Mora and her siblings to honor their parents. The award will be presented during the American Library Association’s (ALA) Midwinter meeting in January 2013 in Seattle.

Common Core

Free writing rubrics: Turnitin, in partnership with the English Professional Learning Council, has made writing rubrics developed to align with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) available free to educators. The rubrics for argumentative, narrative, and informative essay assignments for 9th and 10th graders and 11th and 12th graders help instructors explain to students what is expected of them, assess student work, and track their progress. You can also watch a free video on the Common Core writing rubrics.

Early Learning

Digital content: Capstone’s myOn reader has expanded its collection of early childhood reading content with the inclusion of hundreds of enhanced digital titles from eight additional publishers: Bellwether, August House, Little Folk, August House Story Cove, Orca, Rourke, Speakaboos, and Sylvan Dell.

Launched in 2011, myOn reader is a personalized literacy program that offers access to an integrated library of digital books with reading supports, customized to a student’s interest and reading abilities. Teachers can monitor, track, and measure student reading growth. To date, myOn reader offers more than 2,500 books. These titles include reading supports such as an embedded dictionary, highlighting, and audio. “Reading proficiency is the foundational aspect of learning, so building students’ literacy skills early is critical to putting them on the path to success throughout school and beyond,” said Todd Brekhus, president of Capstone Digital. “The expanded collection of early childhood content available on myON reader combines a student’s love of technology with their innate curiosity and interest in learning.”

A Booklist for Teens

Best books: Sixteen school and public libraries have been selected by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), as official book groups for their Teens’ Top Ten, a booklist created by and for teens. Groups of young adults from these libraries nominate titles published during the 2013-2014 calendar year to create the Teens’ Top Ten nominations. Then, it’s up to teens across the country to vote for their three favorites. When the ballots are tallied, the Top Ten list is created. And that’s not the only job for these teen book groups. They also evaluate books for more than 30 publishers. New groups are chosen every two years.

The libraries that have been selected are: BHS Book Club, Barrington (IL) High School; Book Hook, Cecil County Public Library, Elkton, MD; Bookhype, Perry Branch Library/Perry High School, Gilbert, AZ; Bookmarked, Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology Academy, Jefferson, LA; CCHS YA Galley Group, Concord-Carlisle (MA) Regional High School; Greene Teens Review Board, Springfield-Greene (MO) County Library; HCRHS Bookworms, Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Flemington, NJ; Interesting Reader Society, Poudre River Public Library District, Fort Collins, CO; McReaders, Oakridge Middle School, Clover, SC; Mount Carmel Academy Book Club, Mount Carmel Academy, New Orleans, LA; PPL Teen Book Club, Prescott (AZ) Public Library; Read, Read, and Read Some More, Milton (VT) Middle School and High School; The TABbler, La Vista (NE) Public Library; Teen Book Posse, TAB, and Q Club, Kitsap Regional Library, WA; Teens Know Best, Metropolitan State University and St. Paul (MN) Public Library; Young Adult Advisory Councils, Johnson County Library, Shawnee Mission, KS.

Granted

Literacy skills: Want to help teens in grades 10–12 learn news literacy skills like distinguishing between fact, and opinion and between propaganda and news? Public libraries and library consortia can apply for more than $50,000 in grant money from the News Know-how initiative. Funded by the Open Society Foundations and administered by the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF), students get training and support from librarians, journalists, and news ethicists.

Participating libraries select 12–15 diverse students from the 10–12 grades from their community. The students must attend about 25 hours of training during the summer 2013 and complete a team project that requires about 25 hours of outside work. All students who complete the project receive a stipend. Make sure to apply by December 8.

Book donations: Three Coretta Scott King Book Donation Grants are available for underfunded libraries, schools, and non-traditional organizations that provide educational services to children. Recipients of the grants will receive more than 100 titles submitted for consideration for the 2013 Coretta Scott King Book Awards as well as all the winning books. You have until January 31 to apply for the grant (make sure you click on Book Donation Grant after you log on). Winners will be notified in February.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards are presented each year by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee of the American Library Association’s Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) “to encourage the artistic expression of the African-American experience via literature and the graphic arts.”

Elementary teachers often feel that it is impossible to meet all the literacy, math, science, and social studies benchmarks for which they are accountable. Middle and secondary content specialists lament the lack of time they have to delve into specific moments in history, concepts in economics, or specialized topics in the sciences that can serve as a catalyst for understanding essential concepts. As a result, students sprint through the content standards, with no time to rest, breathe deeply, or examine closely.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Content Literacy, on the other hand, are process-oriented. Teachers have an opportunity to choose broadly the content to examine, and can view the CCSS as a toolkit to explore topics, themes, and genres.

There are practical ways to teach for content over coverage. Primary teachers will want to integrate their teaching and create multidisciplinary curriculum units. Secondary science and social studies teachers can use the CCSS as a vehicle for exploring important topics within their required state content standards at a greater depth and model the ways in which professionals approach their disciplines, as they equip students with some of “the tools of the trade.”

Such work begins with selecting a range of materials for units of study, material beyond traditional basal readers and textbooks. If the educators in your school must use required texts, they can incorporate these resources into a larger curriculum text set. Librarians can help them find books and materials outside the same old parade of facts, and lead them to a variety of fiction and nonfiction genres when possible and appropriate. You can also assist them in locating relevant newspaper and magazine articles in digital databases, and point to museum, library, and research-based websites for examples of available primary and secondary sources. As much as possible, encourage teachers to rely upon a number of formats, so that students can read, listen to, and view texts in more than one modality.

After selecting material for content study, we need to consider approach. One misconception our students often have is that all nonfiction should be read in the same way. They are unaware that historians and scientists approach content differently. We can teach students to read as these professionals do by modeling and allowing them to try out these processes. The CCSS foster disciplinary literacy, recognizing that each field of study has its own framework for asking questions, considering evidence, and creating new content to communicate knowledge.

As educator Sam Wineburg has explained, historians rigorously question what they read. The questions they raise about historical sources are the same questions that our students should be asking. Who wrote it? Why? What do they want me to know? Historians also compare different accounts of the same events.  Do my sources agree on the facts? If not, why not? How do they differ? And finally, they ask about the unique conditions of the era they are examining and consider how these conditions influenced people’s behavior. What is distinctive about the period I am studying? What is familiar? What is unfamiliar? Encourage your students to use these frameworks referred to as sourcing, corroborating, and contextualizing.

Scientists also question rigorously. They evaluate claims being made by others to see if they come from carefully planned observations, and try to determine if inferences are justified. When our students are reading nonfiction accounts of scientists engaged in inquiry, they, too, can pose questions: What is the problem the scientists are trying to solve? Are they collaborating with others? How? Is there evidence that they are willing to reconsider previous conclusions in the face of new evidence? Are the investigative methods they are using creative and imaginative? What have they learned? What else do they want to know?

These queries will move conversations about nonfiction sources well beyond factual recall and remembering. Instead, students will begin to think about how knowledge is created and how scientists and historians continue to refine their understandings. In other words, your discussion will present science and history as subjects that are vibrant and alive.

As we introduce more nonfiction, let’s keep in mind that to engage in critical thinking, we need a robust and varied collection of material to investigate. These clusters of information sources are the foundation of critical conversations.

This list of tools and resources from SLJ staff, bloggers, and contributors will enrich your understanding of the national initiative to implement new standards of language arts, information literacy, and mathematics for grades K–12.

SLJ 3-Part Webcast Series: On Common Core

We kicked off a 3-part free webcast series last week on the on how the new Common Core education standards are impacting your library, your school, and your students. You still have time to register for the next session, Librarians, the Secret Weapon, being held on November 20. In these three (3) one-hour webcasts, library, literacy, and education experts from across the country will explore how to effectively implement this nationwide initiative.

All Aboard!: Implementing Common Core offers school librarians an opportunity to take the lead.
By Rebecca Hill

Understanding the Common Core State Standards : A review of John Kendall’s book, a primer on CCSS
By Alicia Eames

CCSS and us: a video Q&A with John Kendall
By Joyce Valenza

Librarian Creates Guide to the Common Core Standards 
By SLJ Staff

Editorials by SLJ  Editor-in-Chief, Rebecca T. Miller on Librarians and the Common Core

‘I Can Help You With That’: Providing solutions puts librarians at the center of Common Core | SLJ June 2012 Editorial

What Creativity Looks Like: Put a Bunch of Librarians in a Room, and Great Ideas Fly | Editorial
Entries from SLJ’s “On Common Core” column by various experts in the education and library fields

By Olga Nesi
The New Standards Dovetail Elegantly with Inquiry, and We Know Inquiry
The Question of Text Complexity: Reader and task trump traditional measures

By Paige Jaeger
Is a Picture Worth $2,500?: Understanding Facts Visually

By Melissa Jacobs-Israel
A Sticker Won’t Do the Job: We need appealing nonfiction that will engage students and build rigor
Making the Parent Connection

By Mary Ann Cappiello, Myra Zarnowski, and Marc Aronson
Cultivating Collaboration
Creating Community

Installments from Christopher Harris’s “The Next Big Thing” column

The End of Nonfiction: Common Core standards force us to rethink categorization
A Librarian’s Tricks for Finding Those ‘Complex Texts’ Cited in the Common Core
We Could Be Heroes: Research plus tech skills are a hot commodity
A Video Hosting Solution for Schools

Related entries from “Consider the Source” blog by author and educator Marc Aronson

The Problem with Common Core’s ‘Appendix B’
The Reign in Spain
The issues and questions raised by Common Core come up abroad as well.
Convergence
Discusses a set of books that looks at one moment in history from three different angles.
Shuffling Off to Buffalo
The role of the librarian in teaching students about “guided inquiry.”

Tools profiled in Joyce Valenza’s column, “Neverending Search”

New from AASL: Best Websites for Teaching and Learning
New Google Education Search Hub
You’re gonna want to share ShareMyLesson

Informational texts, novels, ideas, and websites that align with the Common Core

The Wild World of Steve Jenkins | An Author Study
By Barbara Auerbach

On the Radar—Top Picks from the Editors at Junior Library Guild: New Science Nonfiction Supports Common Core
By Deborah B. Ford

To Infinity and Beyond | New Sci-Fi Titles for Teens
By Joyce Adams Burner

Underneath the glitz of spaceships, extraterrestrials, and techno bling, these young adult sci-fi novels feature complex characters exploring the question of what it means to be human. Incorporate them into social studies, technology, and literature classes, and blast off into discussions touching on politics, culture, science, the environment. The possibilities are limitless!

Afghan Days, Afghan Dreams
By Daryl Grabarek

The resources are ideal for teachers looking to educate students about Afghanistan while also embracing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Kno Launches K–12 E-Textbooks, Geared Toward Parents, Home Use
By Kathy Ishizuka

Education software outfit Kno has partnered with publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to offer interactive textbooks for K–12 students. The digital titles, which align with Common Core subjects, are available for $9.99 or less for a one-year rental.

At the Core: Audiobooks Promote Critical Reading Habits | Listen In
By Sharon Grover and Lizette Hannegan

Finding a Voice | Writers’ Guides
By Vicki Reutter
These three guides make the often daunting task of writing a little easier by instructing students how to write in a variety of genres, including journalism, poetry, humor, and more.

Libraries, Ebooks and Beyond: Library “Makers” Share How It’s Done
By The Digital Shift

Searching for some great ways to get kids hooked on creating digital content? Attendees at the October 17 Digital Shift event got some great tips from Wes Fryer, Melissa Techman, Liz Castro and Erin Daly, all participants in a panel on “Makers in the Library.”

Get Kids Designing with Student-Created Games | The Gaming Life
By Brian Mayer
A program that gives students a new avenue to display mastery-level understanding of the curriculum while incorporating 21st-century skills as well as the Common Core Standards.

What Is the Future of Reference?
By Henrietta Thornton-Verma

Christopher Harris, of New York’s Genesee Valley Educational Partnership, and Wendy Stephens, of New Market, Alabama’s Buckhorn High School led a spirited discussion of the merits of print vs. digital learning, the impact of those Common Core guidelines on publishers’ plans, and other timely and vexing topics.

News Bites: Support Common Core with a New Nonfiction Program from Scholastic
By Phyllis Levy Mandell

Wii Learn: Surprise elementary grade students with a fun way to learn math
By Matthew C. Winner and Meghan Hearn

Viewing the video game console through the eyes of an educator opens up a world of mathematical applications through which students can master concepts, teachers can align with the Common Core Standards, and classrooms can reflect students’ experiences and interests.

Common Core in the news:

Romney Doesn’t Support Fed Dollars for Common Core
By Rocco Staino

Study: Teacher Support for Common Core Standards Growing; Public Awareness Still Lags
By Debra Lau Whelan

Kentucky First to Adopt Common Core State Standards Initiative
By Lauren Barack