Paige Jaeger: Nonfiction and the Common Core

Paige Jaeger is leading a group of NESLA pre-conference folks through a discussion of the role of
Nonfiction and Common Core.

Pay attention to assessment so you can show your own efficacy!  Assessment is turning from a way we determine if students know something to a way to show we are doing our work effectively.  A good instructor DOES assess learning.  We need excellent rubrics.

If you do or create anything--make sure you indicate that it comes from the library!  Get credit for what you're doing!

The big picture--where does nonfiction fit in to the Common Core:

SHIFT 1 & 2:

• Close reading and text-based answers
• writing from sources

SHIFT 3 & 4:

• spotlight on vocabulary
• literacy is not just ELA

SHIFT 5 &6:

• building knowledge
• 50% - 50%--reading fiction/nonfiction

GOAL:  College and Career readiness--reading, writing and information literacy is needed

Sleeping kids in your class with no engagement is a waste of tax payer money :)

We need to engage kids in a deep learning experience

New challenges for us:

• how kids search--quick, bouncy, look at a site for a total of 2 minutes to evaluate if it is good/useful
• 3 dimensional reading--reading a screen is not a left-right/up-down experience
• expect high level of excitement to stay engaged
• if you don't give a student a question, they don't know when to stop a search
• good questions mean you need to craft questions that cannot easily be "googled"
• "selfie generation"--needs to be all about them

Half of the Common Core is content and half is delivery

• the delivery change is where the library comes in!!-
• IFORMATION is mentioned 10 times more than TECHNOLOGY in the standards
• Teachers should move from a "covering" content mode to an "uncover and discover" mode:  nonfiction should be at the heart of information delivery
• Research is one of the only types of learning that embraces every shift of the CCSS; lots of short research is useful--research is an ANCHOR STANDARD

Book recommendations:  Practice Perfect by Doug Lemov -- will help you address this as you talk to your teachers about bumping things up

Prescription for the Common Core by Paige Jaeger--organized essential questions

Vocabulary:

• The fastest way to improve vocabulary is READING (Marilyn Jager Rand) and nonfiction has higher level vocabulary
• Librarians who can get students to do more independent reading will prove their worth
• Develop an academic vocabulary -- over a 4th grade level (BIG issue for ELL kids and kids coming from poverty)
• Paige Jaeger has Vocabulary bulletin board ideas on her website

Reading:

• You cannot JUST read a book--the book and reading must serve a purpose--have a question where kids are using evidence from the book to support a claim
• Think about how to draw attention to high-level vocabulary during library read-alouds  (e.g., read Dav Pilkey's Kat Kong and tell kids that there will be 15 amazing new words in this book--create a bookmark list of the words.  Have the kids notice when these words appear in the text and help figure out what they mean)
• As you read a nonfiction text to students, talk about what the key words you could pull out to do further research on that topic
• Help kids practice fluency and use a technology such as audacity to record kids reading with tone and voice; select a book with the right lexile level and one that has content that ties into curriculum (e.g., So You Want to Be President for grade 5 civics)
• Wordless picture books--what is the main idea?  Put it into words.  Have kids write dialog and use great words.

Essential Questions

• Give kids an essential question and then an article that contains information that will help them determine an opinion;  Tell kids that we are going to have an "evidence-based" discussion
• Important role for library is to provide multiple perspectives and help students see multiple points of view--more than one source matters
• Creating an essential question--you want to create an enduring understanding
• A good essential question can help save a lame research question--look at your "find the answer" types of research and think about how you can improve it with a targeted question:
• what can you ask that will compel the students to find an answer
• can you embed a pronoun (we, I, us, you)
• What is the moral of the story/
• If your assignment can be answered on Google, then it is void of higher level thought.

Look at Intel Teach Program for ideas for "country reports" that matter--looking at real world problems--nice website