Kansas and the Common Core

Missing Just One Key Ingredient

You

Let Me Explain

• Me: worked in kids books for 25 years as editor, publisher, author

• Ph.D. in American History

• Passionate love for nonfiction

• Teach in MLIS program at Rutgers

• Common Core training

The Great Paradox

School Librarians in Trouble

• A survey by New Jersey School Boards Association found more than 90 percent of school districts faced staff layoffs in 2010 due to state aid cuts, among them a wide range of district positions including school librarians, considered teachers under state law. There were 1,580 certified school librarians, also known as media specialists, in the state in 2011, down from 1,850 five years ago, according to Mike Yaple, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Principals Don’t Understand

• Barbara Stripling, incoming president of ALA: “Principals don’t understand what a librarian brings to the position that an aide or parent volunteer cannot. If libraries are kept open by volunteers, then they become little more than warehouses.”

A Challenging Time

• Budget cuts

• Effectiveness evaluations

• Internet – “who needs a library?”

• Tablets – “who need a librarian?”

• Challenges and protests – “that book is inappropriate for my child”; “we don’t believe in…”

And Here Comes CC

• New standards

• Higher standards

• Same kids

• Same principals

• Same parents

That Is the Paradox

You Need to

• Be at the center of Knowing the Standards

• Be at the center of Implementing Them

Flash

To Review

• Rationale for CC – you all know, and if you don’t, Kansas has excellent site to help

• Nature of CC – see above

• Specifically -- http://www.achievethecore.org/files/6213/6880/2802/2-pager_update_05.16.13.pdf

3 shifts

1. Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction

2. Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational

3. Regular practice with complex text and its academic language

Three %s

• 50%

• 55%

• 70%

What Does This Mean to You?

1

• Building knowledge

• Content-rich

• Nonfiction

How Do You

Indeed, What Exactly is

• Knowledge?

Is Pluto a Planet?

Did a Comet End the Age of Dinosaurs?

Do You Believe the Pigs’ Story?

Knowledge = No Ledge

• It is not AN answer, it is a process of knowing, a way of finding, and comparing answers

That Is Your Training

• Look back at my examples: down to earliest elementary school story time and up through any every subject, you have the chance to train young people in how to build knowledge.

“Content-Rich”

The OPPOSITE OF

• “Good for reports”

Old Need: Quick, Fast and In a Hurry

• 5 key facts

• Paragraph to paraphrase

• Argument and 3-5 supporting statements

Are the Materials You Select and Share

• Stop signs – here it is, all you need, tied up neatly with a bow

• Or

• Keys to the journey – here are the tools to begin your quest, you will discover the answers in the process of seeking to find them

New Need

• Depth

• Connection

• Links

• Opportunity to extend and expand thinking

Who in the school

• Is trained to identify “content rich” materials?

• Materials that connect?

• Materials that build?

• Materials that require and reward reading and re-reading?

Nonfiction

• Excuse my French

• What the #*!!? Is “nonfiction”?

• What else in life is defined by what it is not?

Is This Right?

• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Who Ever Said

• “Read to enjoy” was different from “read to learn”?

• Nonfiction could not have “character, setting, problem, solution”?

• Nonfiction can be “read in any order”?

• And I just argued that knowledge is not truth, it is a process of seeking truth.

Nonfiction Is Confusion

• Dewey confusion: Poetry, Myth, Plays, Folklore

• Teacher confusion: textbooks; “you have to read a novel”

• Parent confusion: “I didn’t read nonfiction as a child”

Yet

• Nonfiction now central in every grade

• 50, 55, 70, hike

Who In the School

• Knows, should know, or can know what makes for excellence in nonfiction? Which authors? Which books? Which traits in books?

• Traits handout

• How many children’s nonfiction awards can you name? Circulate every list – show the school who knows.

To Accomplish Goal 1

• The very first shift, your skills and knowledge are absolutely central.

• Your skills and knowledge.

You Cannot Be

No

Your Job

Teachers Do Not Need

Teachers Do Need

Remember the %s?

• How can the teachers, the admins, the supervisors even know who is reading what unless you are all talking?

• Begin the conversations• Convene the meetings• Circ the doodle polls• Create the Google Group• Suggest materials• Offer lesson plans (engageny; achievethecore)

Make Sure

• Everyone from the parents to the district superintendent knows who in the school has a great sense of where to find materials that “build knowledge through content-rich nonfiction.”

• Reinforce that with constant updates and new information.

2

• Reading, writing, speaking based on evidence in the text.

Who In the School

• Is trained to identify the sources used in a book, article, database, site, song, movie, manual…?

I Do Not Mean

I Do Mean

• Compare

• Contrast

• Cluster (*More on this in our workshops)

• The great footnote treasure hunt

Why?

• Did the author say this and not that?

• Take this approach and not that?

• Did the author cite this number when that author used this one?

No Source

Clusters Reveal

• Nonfiction as choices

• Choices reveal point of view

• Point of view is evidence selected

• Evidence selected can be dissected

BUT

• This is NOT the same as saying “it is all relative”

• In fact it is the opposite.

Think of Shopping

• When you compare one shirt against another

• Do you say “it is all relative, one shirt is as good as another”?

• Or do you say, “this has these qualities at that price, versus that one which features these advantages at that price”?

Your Job

• GET TO KNOW YOUR NONFICTION

Does

• The book tell you where it gets its information?

• Citation is only step one – does the author tell you what s/he thinks of the source used?

• Does the author describe his/her research journey?

Research Journeys

• Teachingbooks.net

• Author sites

• Author notes

Train Students to Read

• Within, around, beyond what the book claims –

Every Day in Every Way

• They should ask:

• “How Do You Know That?” (make a handout of a “how do you know that” post-it which they can affix to a book)

• Your library should be bursting with prompts to get them challenging, questioning, examining sources

3

• Regular Practice with Complex Text and Its Academic Language

Who In the School

• Knows which books can challenge readers, and reward their effort?

• Interest trumps age – we all know the military fan, the hobbyist, the Jane Austen lover, the math kid who reads adult books

• How can we build that spiral up for every interest, every level, every reader?

You

• Can surround your library with opportunities to discover new words, terms, phrases, definitions?

• Even on the windows

Your Library Should Be

• Ablaze with clusters of materials competing to explain something

• Aflame with words and definitions

• Garlanded with reading ladders bringing students to ever more challenging/rewarding texts

• Alive with Common Core excitement

Kansas and Common CoreNeeds