Navigating Nonfiction

TCRWP Paris Institute

Books Discoveries

Have you been on Good Reads or Nerdy Book Club? They have changed my reader life. I now have a way to discover personal books, as well as books for my classroom. Below are my new (to me) discoveries.

Primary book

Yard Sale by Eve Bunting

The Right Word by Jen Bryant

A River of Words by Jen Bryant

Enormous Smallness by Matthew Burgess

Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

The Invisible Boy by Patrice Barton

Ish by Peter Reynolds

Middle school book

Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Information text

Egg by Steve Jenkins

A Chicken Followed Me Home!: Questions and Answers about a Familiar Fowl by Robin Page

Eye-to-Eye: How Animals See the World by Steve Jenkins

Guts by Seymour Simon

New Literacies

The reason people started writing books was to connect. Now, there are alternate modes of communicating, so how do harness that? Our kids are engaging with the world differently, and our teaching should reflect that. That's where new literacies come into play.

Principles of New Literacies:
1. Critical literacy is a crucial component
2. Engagement with multimodal texts
3. Production of counter texts or research/action projects

Role of New Literacies Teacher:
1. Be critically literate themselves
2. Reframe their assumptions about what literacy is and teach students how to “interrogate” text and media 
3. Assume the role of resource managers
4. Be con-constructors of knowledge with their students
5. Function as design consultants

There's Always Another Perspective

While I'm a proponent of the CCSS, I believe they are missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. Students are asked to identify the author's point of view, yet they are rarely asked to question this perspective. How do we expect students to vote in an informed way and advocate for change if they are constantly identifying and agreeing with the author's point of view. Our students must talk back to texts.

In Teaching Children's Literature: It's Critical!, Leland, Lewison and Harste provide a list of questions students might ask themselves to consider alternative perspectives while engaging with texts.

• Which character do I want to defend?
• Which character do I want to criticize?
• How did the author's use of language influence my decision to defend of criticize any of them?
• Who might agree or disagree with my perspective?
• Why should readers consider different views?

Prompts for Mini Readers Theater

1. Beginning of the Book: A passage that helps us get to know the characters and the world of the story
2. Beginning of the Book: A passage that reveals something important about the characters
3. Middle: A passage that is a "turning point"-- a moment that represents big change!
4. Middle: A passage that seems to be a critical moment--that stops you in your tracks
5. End: A passage that seems to be at the heart of the story--what the book is really about, what it's trying to teach us, what the big ideas are...
6. End: A passage that feels like it is written in BOLD-- one that makes you slow down, that will stay with you...

Talk Moves

Conversation prompts help students grow ideas.

Thoughts About Extended Day and Summer School

"It's incumbent on schools to ensure that very nearly 100% of the school's day instruction is appropriate to each child's needs. I would argue that creating after-school or summer school programs is professionally unethical unless we are absolutely sure that all children receive optimal instruction all year long during the regular school day. All of us need to focus our primary efforts on ensuring that children have access to high-quality teaching in their classrooms before we consider adding extended-time interventions." -Richard Allington (2006)