Common Core Connections: In the Classroom

The Common Core State Standards, voluntarily adopted by more than 45 states, is, according to Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City public schools, “one of the most promising education initiatives of the past half century.”  For those of us who write nonfiction, it is an opportunity to not only continue to write books that provide students with knowledge and inspiration but also to share with teachers ways that our books can be used in the classroom. Here are some suggestions for implementing the Common Core standards with some of my books, by Sylvia M. Vardell, professor of children’s and young adult literature at Texas Woman’s University, and published in Book Links, November 2012.

In the classroom:

Use Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring, as a springboard for discussing the power of collaboration in creating a work of art. This is the behind-the-scenes story of how the famous Martha Graham ballet, “Appalachian Spring,” came to be from its inception through the composition of the score by Aaron Copland to the design of the innovative sets by Isamu Noguchi. Invite students to identify key moments of interaction between the players in the narrative and in direct quotes (such as when Graham gives Copland a script and he responds with comments that motivate her to rewrite).

But this book provides additional examples of collaboration, too. Check out Greenberg’s web site (jangreenbergsandrajordan.com) for the back-story on her collaboration with writing partner Sandra Jordan, editor Neal Porter, illustrator Brian Floca, and even book designer Jennifer Browne. Or share the audiobook adaptation of the book narrated by actress Sarah Jessica Parker that includes a performance by the Seattle Symphony of the very score that inspired the ballet. As a natural follow up, invite students to form partnerships or small groups for their own collaborative projects, creating a picture book, digital trailer, or audio podcast of their own.

 

Common Core Connections

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 the text.

 In the classroom: Asking questions is a big part of how Jan Greenberg approaches art and writing about art and artists. While she was growing up, her parents encouraged her with questions like these:

“What do you see?”

“What is the feeling expressed in the painting?”

“Which is the best picture in the gallery?”

Even within the narrative of several of her books, she frequently poses questions to invite the reader to wonder, interpret, and speculate. On p. 11 of Frank O. Gehry Outside In, for example, she uses his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to pose a series of questions that guide readers in “breaking down” the building and considering it from multiple “angles.” Walk through these questions with students to talk about the Bilbao Guggenheim or apply the same questions to the buildings that are right there in their own environments (such as their school building) since EVERY building is situated in a specific landscape, made of various materials, and created in certain shapes, evoking different feelings. Compare their responses and viewpoints with one another and with the author.

 

Common Core Connections

RI.3.1. Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

RI.3.6. Distinguish their own point of view from that of the author of a text.

In the classroom:

Pairing nonfiction and poetry may seem to be an unlikely partnership at first, but these two different genres can complement one another by showing children how writers approach the same topic in very different and distinctive ways, but both strive to convey key concepts in clear language. After sharing some of Greenberg’s picture book biographies (such as Action Jackson, Romare Bearden, Frank O. Gehry Outside In, and Ballet for Martha), guide students in discussing key ideas in the life and work of the book’s subject. Jot those ideas down, focusing on key words that are particularly vivid and descriptive. Then challenge students to create “found” poems by arranging words (of their choosing) from the list into poems. Share the poems and then add them to a library display of the books. For examples of found poems from a variety of nonfiction (and other) sources, see The Arrow Finds its Mark edited by Georgia Heard.

 

Common Core Connections

RI.3.2. Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.

RI.4.2. Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.

RI.5.2. Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'TIS THE SEASON....FOR NEW BOOKS

Children’s nonfiction continues to shine, and if I had to choose one word to define its glory, the word is VOICE. That voice ranges from whimsical to witty to irresistible “sit-down-and let-me-tell-you-a-story.” The “voice” or style of picture book illustrations is just as diverse. Here are a few new books I’ve enjoyed.

Jingle Bells in Savannah? Who knew? John Harris, that’s who. On a visit to Savannah he learned the genesis of the popular holiday song, took scraps of history, added a bit of social commentary and ‘what if?’ and came up with Jingle Bells: How the Holiday Classic Came to Be, illustrated by Adam Gustavson (Peachtree.) The composer, John Pierpont, was a Yankee Unitarian minister in the 1850s, presiding over a congregation that included a few African Americans, so we get a brick through the church window to point out the atmosphere of the time and place. But overall this is a story of nostalgia and celebration.

How do you write a biography about someone who spends his life sitting around making up languages and writing fantasy stories? If you’re Alexandra Wallner, you elicit the help of your husband, illustrator John Wallner who creates a board game that runs through the pages filled with magical creatures, strange letters and words, and playing cards that portray the real and fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien (Holiday House.) The “game” is the life and books of the author, born on the South African veldt filled with scary animals, raised in the bucolic English countryside (think Shire,) and ending up as an Oxford don creating the vast world of The Lord of the Rings. It’s a good story, made fantastical by the artwork.

[Aside: Reading Tolkien’s wonderful Father Christmas Letters became an annual tradition in our house. These letters written over twenty years to the Tolkien children are filled with elves and goblins and the clumsy but lovable North Polar Bear. Tolkien illustrates them as well.]

The story of Belle, The Last Mule at Gee’s Bend, is told to a young boy in the voice of an older woman, Belle’s owner. It’s a poignant history of the people of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and how Martin Luther King inspired them to vote and march for civil rights back in the 1960s. And Belle? When the sheriff closed the ferry that took the people to the polls, Belle and her colleagues hauled wagons the long way around. Then, in 1968, she pulled the cart with King’s coffin during his funeral procession. The voice here is slow and steady, just like Belle, and mesmerizing too. Belle… is written by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud, illustrated by John Holyfield (Candlewick.)

The Christmas Coat: Memories of My Sioux Childhood, told in third person, is author Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve’s own story, illustrated by Ellen Beier (Holiday House). We enter the bleak frigid Midwestern winter world with children wearing drab clothes that don’t fit anymore, waiting for the “Theast” box of used clothes to arrive from New England at Christmas. We also see the joyful and colorful indoor life of these Sioux families, as Virginia’s family dresses up to dance to music on the radio, and young Three Kings wear Sioux feather headdresses in the Nativity play. Will Virginia get a new coat that fits her from Theast box this year – that beautiful silver fur, or a red one with a hood that she longs for?

How about this for a new twist on an old topic – Green Bible Stories for Children by Tami Lehman-Wilzig, illustrated by Durga Yael Bernhard (Kar-Ben.) The linkages are ingenious – Noah and biodiversity; Abraham, Lot, and sustainable grazing; God, Moses and crop rotation. The tone is colloquial: “One day God told Moses, “I’ve decided that the Sabbath is not only for humans.”” Activities are added to each story – sprouting seeds, recycling, saltwater experiments and more. Green Bible Stories… illustrates that ecological problems and solutions have a long history.

A Bridge to the Classroom

As most of you know, the questions I’ve been asking for many years, the questions behind the database of our books aligned to national education standards on the Ink Think Tank website and the questions behind the formation of Ink Think Tank itself are: Why aren’t our books used as primary reading sources in classrooms? Why are our books usually considered “enrichment” not to be read as part of the daily fare? Why are teachers so intent on “covering” curriculum material that has a good chance of showing up on assessment tests rather than on engaging students in a true learning process? One possible answer is that “covering the material” is entrenched tradition shored up by lesson plans, questions for discussion, and tests provided by textbook companies. Teachers fear that in straying from this path they’ll miss something crucial for the tests. (Never mind that the tests are made up of reading selections excerpted from our books.) Is one of reasons that our books are not used as widely as they should be this the lack of support materials? Do teachers need help in understanding how to use nonfiction literature in the classroom? Is the prospect of creating one’s own support materials, figuring out how to use nonfiction literature in the classroom, overwhelming for the overworked teacher?

According to Dr. Myra Zarnowski, who teaches nonfiction literature to prospective teachers, both graduate and undergraduate students at Queens College, CUNY, the resounding answer is: Yes! They do need a bridge to know how to effectively use our books. And Myra is just that. She is our “not-so-secret-weapon” at bridging the divide between authors/teachers/students. In recent days I have come to appreciate what she brings to the mix. We didn't do so well on our own. Let me explain.

Last school year, Ink did an experiment. We tried out a couple of “Computerside Chats” where authors talked online about using our books in the classroom. Myra listened and felt that our chats were not as focused as they could be. So we asked for her help.This year Myra is hosting a series of CILC “Spotlight” webinars where she is interviewing us with real strategies and guidelines for teachers. It has been an eye-opener for me! While there is some overlap between authors and teachers,the skill set needed by teachers is not the same as those used by authors. Myra suggests using our books in three different ways.

1. The author as co-teacher. How does the book help illuminate the content you have to teach?
2. The author as exemplary writer. How does the author bring the “magic mix’ of being funny, friendly and factual to connect with the reader?
3. The author as inquirer: How does s/he know what they know?

How do I know Myra’s approach so well? We’ve been working together. I’m in the first of four free “Spotlight” webinars produced by CILC along with Alexandra Siy. Science Writing that Makes You Question What You Know will be live on November 30, 2011 from 4 to 5 pm EDT. It will be recorded and archived.

The other upcoming Spotlight events (all from 4-5 pm Eastern Time) where Myra interviews INK authors are:

Person-Centered Views of the Past: Penny Colman, Jim Murphy, Andrea Warren 2/1/12
Innovative Picture Book History and Social Studies: Trish Marx, Roz Schanzer 4/25/12
Math and Science for Young Thinkers: Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, David Schwartz 5/16/12

For more information and to register for Science Writing that Makes You Question What You Know go here. Hope to see you there.

Author-in-Residence: A Dream Assignment

I have had a great gig this year: author-in-residence at the Michael J. Perkins School in South Boston, a small elementary school set right in the middle of Old Colony Housing Project. Old Colony is being renovated and I was hired to work with the Perkins kids on a blog about being in the middle of a construction zone. I described more about the situation in last October's post.

As the end of the school year approaches, it's natural to look back and access the experience. Having done school visits for many years, I have always been in awe of classroom teachers. Now, I bow down to them. To see what they do every day, day after day, is amazing. To see the pressure to fulfill a state's curriculum--teach X from October 12 to November 3rd and then segue to unit Y on the 4th. To understand more fully how my coming to the classroom with extras means extra resources and richness but extra work squeezing to fit everything in, however worthy it all is.

But some great things happened this year, from K to 5. Some of the highlights:

When the kindergarteners read Mike Mulligan and his Steam Engine, they wondered what the workers on the site had named their machines. They were amazed--maybe a little horrified--when they realized those excavators and dump trucks were just called "it" or "they." That's when the Name That Crane campaign was born--the two kindergarten classes each nominated names, ran campaigns and voted for the name to call the huge crane that lifted the steel (they also learned the democratic process in the bargain, which made the See How They Run author very happy). Voting Day was very exciting, take a look.


Here are the kindergarteners at the naming ceremony--with the Big Giraffe, the newly dubbed 400-ton crane in the background. (A fine name, but I was personally rooting for Mr. Lifty! That's democracy for ya--besides I didn't get a vote.)


For National Poetry Month, one first grade class experimented with acrostic poems, which use the letters in a topic word to begin each line. Then all the lines of the poem relate to this topic. Given what was going on outside their class window, they used the word, CONSTRUCT. This poem above was one of my favorites.
One second grade class is collaborating on a book about the day in the life of a construction worker and what these men and women must do to stay safe. For one week, they spent an hour a day observing the construction site and writing down what they saw.

Then they did interviews; two workers came to their classroom to answer their questions about safety. The kids got to touch and try on the equipment so they could really understand what they were going to write about. In other words, these young kids were learning to research exactly the way we professionals do.



The fifth grade teacher asked me to come in to talk to her class to kick off their nonfiction book writing unit. While I was there I mentioned that I've found that when I'm really interested in my subject, I find that my book turns out better. So this intrepid teacher decided to abandon the "everybody writes about a person in history or an animal" assignment and let the kids pick. Pretty brave for a school where the kids have computer class once a week and no school library, really.

But the next time I came back, the kids were running with it. Give kids a choice and what do they come up with? Books about cancer, profiles of each of the ingredients in pizza, why tears are salty, the history of video games, snakes that swallow their prey whole, New Jersey's role in the Revolutionary war, and a profile of a favorite teacher--among others. Oh, and the Big Bang Theory.

Today I'm going in to show them about dummying up a book. The teacher says it's tough, it's a bit chaotic, but the kids are running with it and have never been so excited about a project. Isn't it the way it should be? Aren't they lucky? Aren't I?

Can't wait for the publishing party.

For anyone who is interested: www.michaeljperkinsschool.blogspot.com

Art Curriculum in the Classroom

This week, I received a call from another elementary school looking for Art Appreciation Presentation material.  I recommended that they look at my Art In the Classroom blog and the many links on the sidebar. After hanging up the phone, it occurred to me that I should probably hop over to the blog and check to make sure all the links were working. (Sad to say, the blog is in need of some much needed lovin’. Admittedly, if I could spend all day writing on the blog, I would.) All the links worked and it appears some have been updated since I first added the links. An amazing abundance of Art Appreciation curriculum is available for teachers and educators to use in the classroom – many created by world-class art museums.

Here are a few of the resources available:

National Gallery of Art Classroom
Kennedy Center - ArtsEdge

Art Institute of Chicago
Guggenheim Museum
Louvre
Los Angeles County Museum of Art/LACMA
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Modern Art/MOMA
Americans for the Arts
Art Appreciation Resources
Mrs. Picasso's Artroom
The Teaching Palette

This afternoon, after teaching my after-school art class, I had a wonderful discussion with the school principal. The conversation started because I mentioned that, in the twelve years of my teaching art appreciation classes, every class has been filled with insightful, enthusiastic, amazing students. Then, she told me the students didn’t have art at the school – as part of their regular day. What? No art in the school? It was my understanding that Illinois had a state mandate of half an hour per week - shocking in itself and why I started teaching art appreciation. She said that the teachers try to add art lessons that, more often than not, tend to be craft projects. With that being said, the above art curriculum links are a necessity in the schools.

And, of course, here are some new interesting nonfiction books to add to the classroom:

Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave

Laban Carrick Hill (Author)

Bryan Collier (Illustrator)

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (September 2010)

2011 Caldecott Honor Book

How the West Was Drawn: Cowboy Charlie’s Art

Linda L. Osmundson

Pelican Publishing (January 2011)

Dolley Madison Saves George Washington

Don Brown

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (October 2007)
I love the Portraits of the Presidents at the National Portrait Gallery.

I have to show off the beautiful drawing that one of my students made for me after she finished the class assignment.    ♥

Wishes for the New Year

‘Tis the season for both gifts and good wishes. Sometimes the two are one and the same. Still good wishes don’t always sound so pretty.

1. I, like so many people, am confused and outraged by the article in the New York Times about certain parents deciding to bypass picture books as quickly as possible to move on to chapter books. (Full disclosure—I write picture books.) This reported trend reminds me of a past fad using flashcards with quasi-verbal kids in an attempt to catapult them into SAT courses about the same time they finished toilet training. Hey, I’m a parent too; I worry all the time about my kids being well and happy and getting ahead. BUT COME ON!

My first wish? I wish that parents will realize that snuggling with their young child and a picture book, looking at it together accomplishes more than the chapter books I write as well. The child hears words she could never read at her age and enjoys a sophistication of story, relationships and ideas he could never read about by himself. The pictures act as an artistic dictionary, helping that young reader equate the look of a word and the word itself with its meaning via a drawing. Why be one of the seven blind men trying to define an elephant when you can just look at a picture of one? Furthermore we live in an increasingly visual age; why deprive a child of a model of using word and image together from the start?

And finally, we not only learn by doing, we learn by liking what we do. Kids love spending undistracted, interactive time with their parents (at that age, anyway) when the parent and a book are guides into new exciting worlds. They love reading picture books. And once they’ve practiced decoding letters and become used to bunches of them together with spaces between them, they love reading chapter books.

So I wish you guys would just calm down, then sit down and read a picture book to your kids.


2. Many writers here at I.N.K. have blogged about evolution and its detractors. They have been as impassioned and eloquent as I could ever be. So I’ll just start this wish/rant by saying, “ditto,” and move on to the general principal that we have never had better access to good, accurate information.

I wish we would value it more. Enough with “truthiness,” Mr. Colbert! And enough of cherrypicking facts or factoids that simply support our previously held views. I wish people would work harder to dig for this accurate information, find it, actually THINK about it, and use the results to create their opinions. Then let’s talk about how to reduce the deficit or raise our students’ math scores.

In other words, I wish we’d all start ascribing to a wise thought attributed to everyone from Bernard Baruch to Daniel Moynihan: Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.


3. I mentioned in a previous blog that I am currently an author-in-residence in a Boston school located in the middle of a public housing community. There is nothing like extended time in a school to remind you that teachers are heroes. They’ve got a hard job that is everyday and most of them try their best to do it well. I wish society appreciated them more.

As an author, I also wish they would/could use better hand-crafted books (nonfiction and otherwise) in their classrooms. I now understand better than ever how hard it is for teachers to use initiative and personalize the lessons they teach. There are seemingly endless mandated tests beyond the required state exams. Grade level curricula have units that must be covered from, say, October 11th to November 7th and others that pick up on November 8th. Where is the time for spontaneity? For the magic that comes from an inspired lesson or experiment or book?

I wish that we can somehow figure out how to slip more want-to’s in with ought-to’s. I can see from my time at the Perkins School that sparks do get kindled in kids and we just have to have a sufficient variety of kindling around to reach the future poet and scientist alike.


4. Besides all this, I wish we all could have world peace and a Happy New Year.

There's a New Blog in Town

First things first—a shout out to Linda Salzman. Just as we must become parents to appreciate our mothers and fathers, I now understand the effort our blogmaster has made to keep I.N.K. running smoothly—from pinpointing the visitor counter as the culprit that gummed up the other software to making sure posts were scheduled and published. This is no easy task. Thank you, Linda.

I have come to this new realization because I’m now a blogmaster myself. This year I’m the author-in-residence of the Michael J. Perkins Elementary School, which is right in the middle of Old Colony Housing Project, which is right in the middle of South Boston. For those of you who don’t live in Boston, perhaps you remember the huge fights in our city about desegregating the schools in the early 70s. Southie, primarily an Irish-American neighborhood at the time, was right in the thick of it. Others of you might have seen Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River; its story took place in South Boston. Ben Affleck’s movie, Gone Baby Gone, was filmed in Old Colony.

Times have changed in many ways. Some of South Boston has been gentrified. The kids who attend the Perkins School look like an assembly of the United Nations. But Old Colony still has the red brick institutional design that labels its residents. Soon that’s going to change too. Stimulus money is bankrolling Phase 1, taking the first part of Old Colony down and constructing zero energy buildings in its place.

The Perkins School is literally across the street so its students have the best seats to watch the show—to find out about construction and sustainability, to think about their community and their relation to it, to learn to write about it. Hence the blog, hence the author-in-residence, hence me.

The day before school started, I went to a meeting of all the teachers. Most of it was about bus schedules, etc. But principal Barney Brawer also talked about how this massive renovation could double as a living museum, offering lessons in science, math, and writing to children in every grade. Then I talked about ways I hoped the blog could fit into curriculum and classrooms, and the thrill of having one’s work published for all to see.

Later a teacher came up to me and said, “You know what excited me most about your suggestions? You mentioned brainstorming with the kids about who they can ask to get answers for their questions, then actually talking to these experts. That’s a whole new idea for them. It’s something they need.” Her comment made me very happy.

So come visit the PerkinsBlog, subscribe even. Some day I’ll figure out how to install a visitor counter without gumming up the works.

www.michaeljperkinsschool.blogspot.com

Presenting Our Brand-New I.N.K. Brainchild!

This blog was originally posted on October 7, 2009


The I.N.K. bloggers, past and present, are pleased to announce the launch of our new website: INK Think Tank: Nonfiction Authors in Your Classroom. The main feature of this website is a FREE, searchable database of hundreds of in-print books all written by the 22 award-winning I.N.K. authors. Now you can find lists of books for all grade levels covering content mandated by National Education Standards and your state curriculum. Instead of feeding kids material from bland, uninteresting books, we offer a cornucopia of delicious, appetizing titles guaranteed to nourish both reading and learning. No single book can be all things to all students, but the LISTS of books generated by our database will come close. We believe that if kids learn through these high-interest, well-researched books that have been vetted for accuracy, they will perform better on the required assessment tests. We have included, on our new website, a page of references and studies that support our position. Now you can have fun playing with our database. For teachers, it’s designed to give you peace-of-mind that you’re fulfilling the requirements of your school district while you’re rediscovering the joy of teaching. For parents and librarians, it will provide you with a quick reference to pull books from shelves that tie in with children’s interests and classroom content.
We built our database from the ground up. The books were analyzed for it by those who know them best, their authors. Like any new idea in today’s technological world, our database is still a work in progress. We expect it to grow and change, depending on feedback from you, our users. We will be adding books of new author/bloggers to give you increased breadth of subject areas. And, of course, we will be adding our new books as they are published. We want to know how you search so the database can be as user friendly as possible. There are links on our website for you to contact us with your suggestions. You can also email us at: thoughts@inkthinktank.com




In addition to our books, we authors are also an under-utilized resource for classrooms. So, through the Ink Think Tank website, we are making ourselves available to teachers. You can see our encapsulated author profiles on our INK Thinkers page. We are an amazing group! There is probably no corner of the globe that one of us hasn’t visited. Without exception, we are all life-long learners. We are not afraid to admit when we don’t know something. Indeed, not-knowing is a welcome opportunity to learn something new. Now we want to inject our enthusiasm for learning into your classroom. We have included our email addresses and links to our websites. Many of us are available for school visits and professional development. We will also answer questions related to our books. (BTW, the word “author” means “source.”)



This month our blogs will be devoted to creative ways our books can be used in classrooms. We want to excite you to the possibilities!



The internet has spawned behemoth websites that seem to require a Ph.D to navigate. There is so much information and so much choice! The INK Think Tank is a boutique. We’re small so the choice is not limitless. The selection is made for you. For many, that may come as a relief! On the other hand, as a group we are quite powerful. We are prepared to work as teams to help you and your district. We offer guidance and professional development unique to the worlds of both publishing and education. The launch of the INK Think Tank: Nonfiction Authors in Your Classroom website is just the beginning. Contact us. Let us help you empower your students so that they love to learn!

What's Good for the Goosling...

Besides writing books, I teach at Lesley University’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. During the June residency, one of my duties is to conduct a seminar on children’s nonfiction. It’s needed too. We have a couple of Writing for Young People students working with nonfiction and a few more writing picture books and middle grade novels, but nowadays most seem to be in YA (along with every other new writer AND the marketplace).

After teaching the same course the same way for years, I’ve decided to shake it up a bit. Instead of starting with a little historical background and presenting books that embody important qualities of good nonfiction, I think I’ll begin by adapting an exercise I sometimes use when visiting elementary school classrooms. I pass out a report by Susie Goodman on brown bats that seems plagiarized from an encyclopedia. It certainly is as dull as if it had been. I tell the 4th or 5th graders we have to help Susie rewrite her report so it’s fun to read. I remind them that nonfiction can be an exciting narrative story with all the elements of fiction; you just have to make sure that they are all true.

Of course they don’t have a clue about how to do that, but I do. I simply ask them to read through this short report and tell me what they find interesting or exciting. One kid likes that bats fly at speeds up to 40 miles per hour. Another mentions echolocation. Inevitably a boy picks the part where bats use sharp teeth to chew their insect prey. I write all these things down on newsprint with space in between them.

Then we decide what feeling we want our report to evoke—happiness, humor, spookiness, whatever. Guess what they pick. Since we know from the report that these bats live all over the U.S. we can factually pick a scary location, often a cemetery or forest. That goes up on the board too, up at the top because I know (even if they don’t yet) that we’ll begin with a dramatic setting for the opening scene.

Then we continue by brainstorming about each topic—finding strong images for the dark night (nocturnal hunters), great verbs to describe diving for prey at 40 mph, and dramatic ways to describe mangling a moth (keeping in mind that this is nonfiction and there wouldn’t be enough blood to drip and splatter). Afterwards we start painting our setting and introducing our hero—a single bat looking for dinner. Slowly but surely, we draft its story of search and success with all the graphic enthusiasm a bunch of eleven-year olds can have for the macabre. We use most of the facts “Susie Goodman” copied from the World Book. And we make the most of those facts, using them as the hook that suddenly makes most anything about the brown bat come alive.

If this exercise gives young kids a new sense of nonfiction’s potential, why not MFA students? Once I have them the M.O. it will be an individual endeavor not a group one. But I’ll let them find the story in the facts—maybe about bats, maybe about the Battle of Gettysburg and its casualties of nearly 50,000 men, or the shenanigans orchids pull to get fertilized. And I'll hope that writing those few strong paragraphs will be a great hook that suddenly makes all the other nonfiction I show them come alive as well.

How Do Teachers Use Our Books?

I’ve been wondering how we authors can help teachers use our books. This, of course, requires that we learn more about what teachers actually do with our books in the classroom. So I created a questionnaire and Cheryl Harness gave it to Susan Hutchens, a teacher friend at Mountain View Elementary in Windsor, CO who went to the trouble of filling it out. The results are below. My questions are in boldface. Susan prefaces her responses as follows:

I'm a special education teacher for grades 3-5. I primarily work with 4th and 5th graders, teaching reading, writing and math in "core replacement" groups. Explanation: all of our 4th graders have reading at the same time, so the group I have is getting "core replacement" in my room at the same time their peers are being taught reading in the general education classroom. Same with math, writing and 5th grade reading. My school also has a literacy teacher (for students who are doing a bit better than mine academically) and a Title 1 reading teacher.

What kind of reading assignments do you give kids? In class, we all read the same story/book together. Sometimes, I'll let the kids read silently to themselves or in pairs, but this is usually not very effective because of their lack of reading skills.

How important do you feel it is for every kid in your class to read the same assignment on a topic? For my kiddos, this is very important. This way, I can be assured they are reading correctly, and we have wonderful discussions to ensure comprehension of the material. Most of my kids are way better verbally!

Do you feel you MUST teach from the textbook? Unfortunately, yes. If so, why? District requirement. But, I supplement a lot in my classroom by reading non-fiction books at the beginning of each reading class (the kids love books by Cheryl Harness!) and also by pulling in additional non-fiction books to support stories we're reading. (ie: 5th graders are reading a story about cowboys that mention Nat Love, an African American cowboy. He wrote a book about his experiences and I found it online. I copied it and shared selections of it with the kids - they loved it!)


Have you ever gone to the library and looked for books on the content you have to teach? Honestly - I usually hit half.com or ebay first. I like to purchase books with my own money, then I'll have them for the next years! I have quite a collection of books in my classroom and like to have them "at my fingertips" to pull for kids!

Have you ever used a trade (library) book on a subject covered by your textbook instead? Yes. If so, why? Usually because the story provided in the book I'm required to use doesn't go "in depth" enough about the subject. Also, I like to show my students that each and every book about a subject can offer different/additional information! For instance - my students are stunned to know that I personally own more than 50 books about Lewis and Clark.

How closely do you coordinate what you are teaching with your school librarian? Honestly, not much. Our school library is pretty limited, although our new librarian this year has consulted with me to order more non-fiction books at a reading level my kids could handle! Yay!Does she pull books for you? I know she would if I asked.

Does she come to you or do you go to her? We've done a bit of both this year.

Do you find ways to have kids read different books on a topic and share their experiences in class projects and discussions? Yes. If so, what are your strategies? My students are given a "book bag" each week with a small book in it to read at home. I try to coordinate these books with what we are reading in class. It's fun to watch them make the connection!

How proficient do you feel in your knowledge of children's nonfiction literature in the subjects you have to teach? Pretty good. But, I must admit, my association with Cheryl Harness has really provided me with so much more knowledge about good non-fiction for students! She's kind of "adopted" my students during the past few years, and is always willing to answer their questions (they love that a real author writes to them!) and mine as well. She's pointed me to many books, websites, etc., to help expand my kids' knowledge.

Would you find professional development by authors in this area useful? I think that would be great! I love to learn new things, especially when I can pass information along to my students and make learning more fun for them! In my position as a special education teacher - I don't think it's enough to just teach a child to read. My students may always struggle with reading, so I feel it's important to instill a LOVE of reading in them! If they're interested, engaged and excited about reading - then they will read! I've learned that non-fiction is the best way to get my students excited - more so than talking animals and fantasy.

Thank you, Susan! If you would like to respond to my questionnaire, you can find it here. Email it to me as Word attachment and I’ll post results next month.

By the way, Ink Think Tank, LLC, our new company that has come out of the blog, is getting ready to offer exactly this kind of professional development to teachers via videoconferencing. Stay tuned.

Broad Connections in Literature: Pairing Nonfiction with Fiction

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I will hop on a plane bound for Philly to attend one of my favorite conferences of the year—NCTE (National Council for Teachers of English). There are many fun events on the schedule, from the ALAN Breakfast to the Children’s Luncheon and all things in between, but first up will be a panel presentation on making interdisciplinary connections for readers by pairing nonfiction with fiction, and vice versa.

With Teri Lesesne presiding as moderator extraordinaire, four authors will discuss how to make the most of our books in the classroom. One of the exciting things for me as a reader is to lose myself in a time or place that is new to me. And the more connections I can make to that time or place—or topic—the more vivid my understanding becomes. Here’s a sneak preview of our panelist pairings.

For the scientists among you, try having kids read Loree Griffin Burns’s Tracking Trash while exploring 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne), Flush (Carl Hiaasen), and The Highest Tide (Jim Lynch) to help kids come to grips with conservation issues. To make broader connections between historical fiction and real life events, Jenny Moss pairs her historical fiction novel, Winnie’s War, with nonfiction titles such as The History of Everyday Life by Elaine Landau and Epidemic! The 1918 Influenza Pandemic by Stephanie True Peters.

Kate Messner will share her new middle-grade novel, The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z., which introduces readers to botany and the poetry of Robert Frost, as well as touches on themes of organization of time management and how that affects kids. Some of Kate’s pairings for The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. include Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost, Identifying Trees by Michael Williams, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey.

And in Almost Astronauts, the historical context of what life was like for women in the 50s and 60s grows ever more broad if we make literature pairings that deepen the ideas being introduced. So, if you have a reader who likes learning about women trying to be astronauts when they were not yet allowed, or is intrigued by themes of discrimination, or just wants to get their hands on more material about space and aviation, try also giving them novels like Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith, White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages, Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce, or Promise me the Moon by Joyce Annette Barnes.

And if you’re in Philly tomorrow, please come by for unabridged version of our talk!

Biographies in the Classroon

All month we INKlings have been discussing using our books in the classroom. I’ve been mightily impressed by the ways that our authors, along with teachers and librarians, have brought books to life for students.

I had a lot of fun writing a curriculum guide for Jeannette Rankin: Political Pioneer (see my website: www.gretchenwoelfle.com.) Jeannette’s long life in politics made her a massive subject to write about (she lived over ninety years!) but an easy subject for kids to relate to. Rankin was a women’s suffragist, our first Congresswomen, and lifelong peace activist.

Though women have reached new heights of political office, their presence does not reflect their demographics, i.e. 50% of the population. I ask students to research their city and state. What percentage of their representatives are female? What percentage of female lawmakers belong to each political party? [Math exercises.] Why do you think so few politicians are female? [Debate topic, with social studies angle.]

Research a female lawmaker in your state, including her early life, education, and path to political office. Read her website and see where she stands on various issues. Write her a letter and tell her where you stand. Jeannette Rankin advised high school students to do this back in 1940! Take a poll of your classmates about gender politics and graph the results. [Math again.]

Classroom activities such as these show students that my biography can relate to what is happening right now. The issues that fill the news and affect our lives are not new, and biographies of people like Jeannette Rankin connect us to history and perhaps show us a way forward.

NB: Be careful what you wish for. Besides the activities I suggested, one teacher asked her students to fact-check my book for errors. They thought they had found three. Their further research vindicated me twice, but they were spot on with the third example. Ouch!


Picture book biographies are a booming genre these days. Each publishing season offers more terrific stories of people I’ve never heard of.

The Daring Miss Quimby (Holiday House) by Suzanne George Whitaker, tells the story of the first American woman to receive a pilot’s license (in 1911) and to fly the English Channel (in 1912.) Harriet Quimby was an adventurous soul, pushing against all sorts of boundaries for women. Catherine Stock’s loose watercolor illustrations depict this mood perfectly. A “Women in Aviation Time Line” extends to 1999 and suggests classroom projects: research the many women found in the timeline, bring it up to date, and read Tanya Stone’s Almost Astronauts for a look at the discrimination aviatrixes encountered.


Sky High: The True Story of Maggie Gee (Tricycle Press) by Marissa Moss, illustrated by Carl Angel, describes a Chinese American’s girl’s love of flying. In World War II she joined the highly competitive WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilots. Moss describes Maggie’s career but also weaves in her family’s stories: immigrant grandparents farming in California, parents growing up in traditional China, mother who worked in a World War II defense plant – each generation assimilating more and more. This book can lead to students exploring our immigration history, both politically and personally. How did early Asian immigrants fare in the United States? Where did your family come from and what are their stories?

Biographies can build many bridges in the classroom connecting the historical with the contemporary, the political with the personal. Can you guess that I’m hooked on writing them?

Action Jackson in the Classroom

In celebration of our new Ink Think Tank Database, I would like to share a classroom activity for my book Action Jackson (K-4). I hope classroom and art teachers, as well as librarians, will find this teaching guide useful. The section called Responding to Art can be applied to other paintings, as well.
Begin by reading Action Jackson by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker. You can read it out loud, have the children take turns reading it aloud, or allow them time to read it to themselves. Then let everyone take good look at the reproduction of Jackson Pollock’s painting, Lavender Mist. Children should also have the chance to look at any work of Pollock’s that you have in your collection.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

The Abstract Expressionists abandoned the idea that painting is a picture window looking into the real world. To these artists and others who followed them, three-dimensional effects in painting were sheer illusion. A painting to them was a flat surface with paint on it, an object to be appreciated for its own sake. The subject matter of these paintings is not realistic image, as in a portrait or still life. The subject matter is color or line or shape or texture, or the relationships among these elements. The artists use color or line to translate their emotions on canvas, stressing risk and unpredictability, thus capturing the mood and rhythm of contemporary life.

JACKSON POLLOCK
Born 1912, Cody, Wyoming; died 1956, The Springs, New York.
Studied at the Art Students League, New York. His large paintings, in which he dripped and poured paint on canvas spread on the floor, are considered the most starling and influential paintings of his generation. Drip painting, action painting, and gestural painting are some of the terms that critics have applied to Pollock’s unrestrained creations.

RESPONDING TO ART
What do you say after you say, “I like this painting” or “I don’t like it?” For a moment, forget how you feel about the painting and think about what feelings the painting expresses. You can figure this out by answering some questions:
1. Do your eyes travel all around the painting, or focus on one spot in the center?
Is there a repeated pattern?
2. What do you see? Is it a house or a tree or a design without a recognizable
image?
3. Sensory words refer to qualities in the painting that appeal to your five senses: sight, touch, smell, sound, or taste. What are some sensory words that describe the elements of color, line, shape, or texture in the painting?
a. Are the colors bright or dull, soft or garish?
b. Are the lines straight or curvy, wavy or angular?
c. Is the paint thick or thin? If you put your hand on the surface would it be flat or bumpy?
d. What kind of shapes do you see?
e. If you were to step inside the canvas, would you move slowly or quickly? Would it feel as if you were walking on a soft cloud, on rocks, or through syrup?
4. What is the mood of the painting as expressed by the colors, lines, shapes, and texture?
5. What kind of music would you choose to go with the painting? Jazz, rock and roll, or classical?
6. Pretend you are holding a paintbrush or a stick. Move your arms following the lines of the painting as if you were a conductor leading an orchestra.

TAKE ACTION
Spread a sheet of brown paper on the floor. Moving around the painting with a paintbrush or stick dipped in black paint, make swooping line from one edge of the surface of the paper to the other. Let the paint dry. Add a new color. Use different arm motions-long and sweeping, short and quick. Notice that the way you use your arm changes the lines on the paper. Walk around the painting, working from all sides. You can let bare patches of brown paper come through. Make a handprint or two in the corner.
Put some music and paint in rhythm to the music. Now you will have an idea of what it felt to be Jackson Pollock working in that quiet barn.

So Much Student Writing....Who Knew?

With one exception, my school visits require that I perform. I do assembly programs designed to turn kids on to science and to motivate them to get involved in reading in general and reading my books in particular. It is this one exception that I want to talk about. This blog is part of our theme this month to share exciting classroom uses for our books, which you can find in our database on our new website, INK Think Tank.

I was invited to Cummings Elementary School in Alief, Texas back in 1986. Cummings was one of those Eisenhower Award schools. (I’m not certain if the award is still given.) The building was fairly new and the teachers were rightly proud of it since they had had a say in the design. Every classroom opened onto an atrium—the heart of the school— the library. The mission of the school, among other things was and is to encourage independent and creative thinking and to produce life-long learners. The thing that made this gig so different from all others was that I was invited to be an audience of one to view what the students had done from my books (most of them now out of print). They were not hiring me for my performance.

The first graders did the activities from Gobs of Goo. They made glue and mayonnaise and bubbles, among other icky things. The second graders did Lots of Rot. One boy wrote: “A grape grows gray mold. An onion grows black mold. Cake grows rhizopus mold. Cheese grows blue mold. Meat grows green mold. They all smell awful!” The third graders made paper and string from Fuzz Does It! and put on a science fair. The fourth graders did a magic show from Magic…..Naturally!, which they performed for all the other students during the day as I watched and applauded. And the fifth graders did tricks from Bet You Can’t and Bet You Can! with much verve and enthusiasm. (These tricks live on in my new book We Dare You!)

As I walked through that beautiful library and hallways festooned with displays of all the work the kids had done from my books, I was deeply touched and honored. What a validation of my work! This was my dream fulfilled! How do I remember it so well? The school produced a book for me entitled, “Getting Ready for Vicki Cobb.” It’s in my lap right now as I write this.

But the biggest bonus was the surprise lesson the teachers learned from this venture: They had never gotten so much writing out of the kids as they did when they had to write up their science projects! Think about it. Writers, even kids, have two problems. The first is having something to say. The second is finding a way to say it. Obviously you can’t do the second without the first. A science activity is a specific, finite act with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Students can use the way it is written in the book as a model. But they can also put their own spin on it because they have actually experienced the activity. The Cummings faculty decided that they would routinely incorporate hands-on science activities in writing lessons in the future. Can you understand my frustration with schools that say they don’t have time to teach science because they’re too busy teaching reading and writing?

Those kids are all grown up now. I’ll bet they read and write and think quite well.

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose--but not always

It’s good that a book can be about different things to different people. A biography about Lincoln is, of course, a book about Lincoln. But one reader might be captivated by the portrait of a marriage, another by the polarization of nineteenth century America, still another by the amazing triumph of such a melancholy man under unspeakable pressure.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog entry on why I wrote On This Spot, my book that describes a specific place in New York City from present day all the way back through geologic time. If you want, you can read it at http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/2009/08/sometimes-truth-finds-you.html. In it, I said that the book was inspired by my wanting to convey to kids that things change. That was true, but I also loved intriguing kids with the mind-bending idea that one spot could be home to everything from wooly mammoths to mountain tops to a tropical sea. The book meant both things to me. Someone from New York told me he loved the enduring quality it gave to a spot in lower Manhattan very close to where the World Trade Center once stood. Many kids mention loving the fact that dinosaurs walked on what became Fifth Avenue.

Teachers have told me that they like the book for different reasons too. One used it to teach a math lesson. She had her kids compute the number of years between each event and space themselves on a timeline of correct proportions down the school corridor.

Another teacher had his students use their town as Their Spot and see how far back in time they could go.

I did a workshop at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan where I presented kids with many objects from my cell phone to a rock to Barbie to a pocket watch and had them arrange the items from newest to oldest. If they had been older and in a classroom, I would have brought in more objects and helped them learn to research to determine the right chronological order.

I have assembled some of these ideas and others in a teachers guide for On This Spot. You can access them at http://www.susangoodmanbooks.com/educators/spotguide.html. Or, you can make one up that speaks to you.

I’d love to hear about it.



Part of a 20-foot scroll in which kids illustrated the book with their own pictures. What a welcome into their school!

The Value of a Good Photograph

When I was a kid, I loved National Geographic magazine. I won’t pretend I was the kind of precocious child who would actually read the articles. What I loved was the photographs.

I was drawn to their quality—the superb focus and clarity, the amazing composition—and studied them as works of art. I was drawn to their immediacy, how they placed me in a scene as no other photographs ever had.

Most of all, though, I was drawn to the way they let me peek into another way of life in another part of the world. I would pore over the photographs and wonder what it would be like to be that kid in front of me—the one tending cattle in Africa, or walking barefoot through a rainforest, or eating seal blubber in the frozen North.

Long before I ever thought of being a writer, I recognized the value of a good photograph.

Years later, after a stint in the Peace Corps, I began writing children’s books. I wanted to write about kids around the world—kids like the ones I’d seen in those photographs long ago. I was really excited when my first book about global awareness, A Cool Drink of Water, was accepted by National Geographic Children’s Books. I knew the photographs would be superb.

My love-affair with National Geographic photographs came full circle on a school visit in Norman, Oklahoma. The librarian there had asked children to choose a photograph in A Cool Drink of Water and imagine they were that person—collecting rainwater as it dripped from a roof in Nepal, or pulling down on a water pump handle in Thailand, or drinking from a melting glacier in the Canadian Rockies.

The kids in Oklahoma let the photographs take them to another part of the world. They imagined, and they wrote.

One boy imagined being a boy in Nepal, listening to the sound of the water dripping off the roof into his water jug. A girl imagined being a little girl in Thailand, so short she had to jump up to reach the pump handle and pull it down—and how good it would feel to stick her head under the pump and wet her hair on a hot day. A boy imagined hiking through the Rockies in Canada and realizing how precious water is to people around the world.

A good photograph had reached each of those kids—and made their world just a little bit bigger.

Presenting Our Brand-New INK Brainchild!

The I.N.K. bloggers, past and present, are pleased to announce the launch of our new website: INK Think Tank: Nonfiction Authors in Your Classroom. The main feature of this website is a FREE, searchable database of hundreds of in-print books all written by the 22 award-winning I.N.K. authors. Now you can find lists of books for all grade levels covering content mandated by National Education Standards and your state curriculum. Instead of feeding kids material from bland, uninteresting books, we offer a cornucopia of delicious, appetizing titles guaranteed to nourish both reading and learning. No single book can be all things to all students, but the LISTS of books generated by our database will come close. We believe that if kids learn through these high-interest, well-researched books that have been vetted for accuracy, they will perform better on the required assessment tests. We have included, on our new website, a page of references and studies that support our position. Now you can have fun playing with our database. For teachers, it’s designed to give you peace-of-mind that you’re fulfilling the requirements of your school district while you’re rediscovering the joy of teaching. For parents and librarians, it will provide you with a quick reference to pull books from shelves that tie in with children’s interests and classroom content.
We built our database from the ground up. The books were analyzed for it by those who know them best, their authors. Like any new idea in today’s technological world, our database is still a work in progress. We expect it to grow and change, depending on feedback from you, our users. We will be adding books of new author/bloggers to give you increased breadth of subject areas. And, of course, we will be adding our new books as they are published. We want to know how you search so the database can be as user friendly as possible. There are links on our website for you to contact us with your suggestions. You can also email us at: thoughts@inkthinktank.com


In addition to our books, we authors are also an under-utilized resource for classrooms. So, through the Ink Think Tank website, we are making ourselves available to teachers. You can see our encapsulated author profiles on our INK Thinkers page. We are an amazing group! There is probably no corner of the globe that one of us hasn’t visited. Without exception, we are all life-long learners. We are not afraid to admit when we don’t know something. Indeed, not-knowing is a welcome opportunity to learn something new. Now we want to inject our enthusiasm for learning into your classroom. We have included our email addresses and links to our websites. Many of us are available for school visits and professional development. We will also answer questions related to our books. (BTW, the word “author” means “source.”)

This month our blogs will be devoted to creative ways our books can be used in classrooms. We want to excite you to the possibilities!

The internet has spawned behemoth websites that seem to require a Ph.D to navigate. There is so much information and so much choice! The INK Think Tank is a boutique. We’re small so the choice is not limitless. The selection is made for you. For many, that may come as a relief! On the other hand, as a group we are quite powerful. We are prepared to work as teams to help you and your district. We offer guidance and professional development unique to the worlds of both publishing and education. The launch of the INK Think Tank: Nonfiction Authors in Your Classroom website is just the beginning. Contact us. Let us help you empower your students so that they love to learn!