GRUNT, QUACK, OINK: Focus on Animal Books for Kids in SLJ

Many thanks to Barbara Wysocki for the nice mention, along with authors Gail Gibbons and Seymour Simon, in her July 23, 2014 post in School Library Journal!  I am delighted that nonfiction books like ours, and the wonderful new titles that she lists are becoming a focus of Common Core.  Kids always love learning about animals!

GRUNT, QUACK, OINK: Focus on Animal Books

By Barbara Wysocki

While the nation’s schools align their curricula with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), school and public librarians serving children remain constant in their task of connecting young people with age-appropriate, meaningful materials. As Olga Nesi, a library services coordinator in the NYC Department of Education, notes, “While public and school librarians differ, our common patron base of children gives both groups fertile ground for growing ever stronger collaborative bonds.” Implementing CCSS for elementary students emphasizes content-rich text, and that means a wider range of carefully chosen nonfiction titles will end up in classrooms, backpacks, and, hopefully, even tucked into suitcases for family vacations. Linda Williams, children’s services consultant for the Connecticut State Library, highlights trade books found through reliable review sources. “Many books are advertised as suitable for Common Core use,” says Williams, “but librarians are looking for high-quality, complex texts.” She sees librarians as being well suited to help teachers find the materials they need, and is developing a webpage to assist in that effort.

As teachers team up with librarians to create go-to book lists and recommended websites, this is a starter set of animal-related nonfiction titles suitable for the elementary set. “Moo” and “Baa” are among a toddler’s first words, so it’s no surprise that young readers are fascinated by critters that swim, hop, and fly. (You’ll find some suggestions for classroom use tucked into the annotations.) While the focus is on outstanding books from the past three years, also recommended are standouts by authors such as Gail Gibbons, Caroline Arnold, and Seymour Simon, who’ve written excellent volumes for years. With a wealth of choices, this list covers a wide range of animals, but does not include insects. The books are divided into land, sea, and air, with a section devoted to more encyclopedic titles.

[Follow the link above for SLJ to see the list of books.]

SHARKS: Linking Informational Text and Poetry (repost from StarWalk KidsMedia)

The following post is from the April newsletter of StarWalk KidsMedia:

Read like a Writer—
Write like a Poet:
CCSS-aligned activities for National Poetry Month
This month we shift to writing and take a look at the link between informational text and poetry, using Anchor Standard 2 from the Anchor Standards for Writing: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.W.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. April's featured selections from StarWalk Kids Media offer wonderful mentor texts to support this Standard and even have some fun in the process!
For grades 3–5: A poem or an essay? Children love poetry. It's short. It has rhythm and beat. It raises pictures in your mind. It uses words very precisely to inform you, delight you, scare you, or make you laugh. And it leaves you with a feeling that is somehow deeper than a mere collection of facts. Yet as Jane Yolen wrote about her collection, Sea Watch, poetry can be a powerful means of conveying complex ideas. "It is amazing how much research goes into each poem, because the poem has to be accurate as well as poetic."

Choose one of the poems from Sea Watch. Warning: Sharks is easy to understand but it offers both information and a deeper meaning along with the thrill. With the whole group, read the poem and consider, what is fact? What is interpretation? Notice the precise choice of words such as "bear-trap jaw." What do you think Jane Yolen is saying about people, even though this poem is about sharks?

Ask your students to research an animal of their choice. The StarWalk Library offers 83 books about animals and animal behavior including Giant Shark, by Caroline Arnold. Then, using one of the poems from Sea Watch as a mentor text, invite them to write a short poem about their chosen animal that gives information and also says something deeper about the animal's place in nature or how it relates to humans. Don't just copy the poem, but use the techniques you observed in the whole-group discussion. Extend the project by having students illustrate their poetry with drawings or images from the Internet.

Share the poems. In ancient times poems were made to be told and sung!

Too Hot? Too Cold? OUTSTANDING SCIENCE TRADE BOOK

I was thrilled to learn that my book, Too Hot? Too Cold? is on the recently announced NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) Outstanding Science Trade Books K-12, 2014.  The list of winning titles is now available on the web and will be published with fully annotated reviews in the March 2014 issue of NSTA’s K-12 journals.  Here’s what NSTA says about the list:

This year, science teachers and mentors have been challenged to meet the high expectations of the Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards. The Framework urges us to help learners “[build] progressively more sophisticated explanations of natural phenomena…” while NGSS provides a model for “gathering, describing, and using information about the natural and designed world(s).” In the development of curricula that meet these challenges, literature is an essential partner. “The NGSS are aligned with the CCSS [Common Core State Standards] to ensure a symbiotic pace of learning in all content areas.”

Kristin Fontichiaro and Roger Sutton at the CLC Spring Workshop in South Pasadena

Last Saturday I went to hear Kristin Fontichiaro, Clinical Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the School Library Media Program at the University of Michigan School of Information, and Roger Sutton, Editor in Chief of The Horn Book Magazine, talk about the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and how they are going to affect school and public libraries--and already are.  This was the spring workshop of the Children's Literature Council of Southern California, held in the wonderful, spacious library at the South Pasadena Middle School.

Kristin's lively talk, peppered with "I'm going to Italy!" in anticipation of her participation in an international conference on this subject in Rome, focused on the features of Common Core and some of the practical and political issues surrounding its implementation.  She discussed 10 things you (meaning librarians) can do to support the folks implementing CCSS and their students. The slides for her talk are on the web and you can see them here.  Roger focused on how the CCSS are going to impact the publishing of books for children.  The emphasis in Common Core is on nonfiction and developing skills for close reading of nonfiction texts--which may mean an increase in the number of nonfiction books being published.  Good nonfiction, he said, has a point of view and is scrupulously researched.  For nonfiction authors like me, it sounds like nothing has changed--we still must write the very best books we can!