Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday - The ALA 2014 Edition

Normally on the first Wednesday of the month, I do a post about new nonfiction releases.  However, this week, I am pre-empting my normal post to share about the Common Core IRL: In Real Libraries presentation that I was a part of at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Las Vegas this past weekend.

In preparing for the presentation, I had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in different places around the country.  This was a phenomenal learning opportunity. 

On Sunday, June 29th, in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, we shared the information and our experiences working with students with our audience.  There were some great questions at the end of the session, and we are hoping to create future Common Core IRL: In Real Library posts in ways that will respond to questions.

If you are interested in checking out the presentation slides, the slideshare of our presentation is below (click the image).  Please share this with friends and colleagues who may be interested. 

Mary Ann Scheuer posted a portion of the introduction on her blog post, here.

Thank you to these amazing professionals, who I am thrilled to also count as my friends.

Mary Ann Scheuer, School Librarian, Emerson Elementary School (California) -

greatkidbooks.blogspot.com

Louise Capizzo, Youth Service Librarian, Scarborough Public Library (Maine) -

nonfictiondetectives.com

Cathy Potter, School Librarian, Falmouth Elementary School (Maine) -

nonfictiondetectives.com

A special thanks to the following publishers for donating books for a special giveaway at the end of our presentation.

Boyds Mills Press

Candlewick

Capstone

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

National Geographic Kids

Don't forget to link up your nonfiction reviews below:

ALA Annual Conference

The American Library Association's Annual Conference is in Las Vegas this year. I have arrived, and unpacked, and already gotten a bit lost. However, I am eager to see friends, talk about books, and more. I may not be blogging much over the next few days, but I will be tweeting (#alaac14).  And if you are here for the conference, stop by room S228 at the Convention Center on Sunday (June 29th) morning for the session I am doing with Mary Ann Scheuer, Cathy Potter, and Louise Cappizo. 

Common Core IRL: Life in Colonial America (Primary Sources)

This month, my librarian buddies and I are focusing on another installment of our Common Core IRL series.  I have truly enjoyed putting these posts together and collaborating with my fellow educator/librarian/bloggers.

Normally, as part of this series, I concentrate on students in the primary grades and how teachers can adapt a topic to younger students, and what books might be effective while integrating with the

Common Core State Standards

.  Imagine my surprise when I really could not find the right informational text books for student in Kindergarten to Second grade. What I was able to find was often culturally insensitive and particularly portrayed Native Americans in a negative light.

What can a teacher or librarian do if they are unable to find books about a topic? Aside for letting publishers know that we need more books for a particular topic, we can also focus on other sources of information.  One area that the CCSS stresses is the use of primary sources. Here are a few to explore: 

If you have not discovered the Library of Congress

website for educators

, you need to check it out and plan to spend some time exploring the features and materials available for educators.

One section to check out is the section for Teaching

Using Primary Sources

.

• Using Primary Sources
• Why Use Primary Sources
• Citing Primary Sources
• Copyright and Primary Sources
• Finding Primary Sources
• Teacher's Guide and Analysis Tool

When you have finished exploring the section on Primary Sources, click on any of the Primary Source Sets to explore actual materials.  Since this month's Common Core IRL is on Colonial America, I went to the section on Jamestown.

Jamestown Primary Sources

From there you can check out the

Teacher's Guide

for Jamestown.

Another section that relates directly to our topic this month is

Colonial Settlement (1492-1763)

, which of course then led me to a link to

PBS's Colonial House

.

As you can see, there is a wealth of resources that you can utilize in creating lessons or exploring life in Colonial America including images, video, and more.

Once you have explored the Library of Congress site, you may want to head over to the

Smithsonian's Educator site

.

One feature on the Smithsonian site is a drop down menu that allows you to indicate a standard, grade and subject as related to the Common Core State Standards.  You can enter in a curricular area and grade level and it will pull up the standards and resources related to that topic and grade.

You can also search by topic.  When I searched for

Colonial America

, I was able to locate Elementary School

Lesson Plans

,

Primary Source Materials

, and

High School DBQ's

.

Other Sources to Explore

:

Digital History

Website

America's Story from America's Library

Website

The Newberry/Chicago's Independent Research Library

Though there are many more websites to explore, I wanted to just give you a taste of what is out there.

Check out these great posts this week for more Colonial Resources

:

• The Nonfiction Detectives - Comparing perspectives (grades 4-6)
• Great Kid Books - Life in Colonial America (grades 3-5)
• Kid Lit Frenzy - Primary sources (grades 4-6)
• The Show Me Librarian - Historical fiction (grades 1-6)
• Great Kid Book: Digital resources (grades 4-6)

Thank you to Mary Ann Scheuer at

Great Kid Books

, Amy Koester at

The Show Me Librarian

, and Cathy Potter and Louise Capizzo at

The Nonfiction Detectives

for all of their work to pull the various resources together.  I am honored to collaborate with such a great team of librarians. 

Common Core IRL: Baseball Edition

Though we have not posted for awhile in our Common Core: IRL, we have re-grouped and have a few posts coming up in the near future.  Check out the wonderful explanation post over on Great Kid Books about nonfiction and reading choice.

From Great Kid Books (Mary Ann Scheuer)

:

This week, our intrepid group of

Common Core IRL

literacy experts are going to bat for readers -- coming up with great baseball books to recommend for kids. We will focus on nonfiction for kids to read along the reading spectrum, from beginning readers to advanced middle grade readers. We will include books to read aloud to children, because it's essential to read engaging, interesting nonfiction aloud to our children.

Here's our batting line-up for

Common Core IRL: In Real Libraries

:

• read aloud picture books (grades K-3) -- Kid Lit Frenzy (Wednesday)
• middle grade readers (grades 3-4) -- Great Kid Books (Wednesday)
• older middle grade readers (grades 5-6) -- The Nonfiction Detectives (Thursday)
• beginning readers (grades K-2) -- The Show Me Librarian (Thursday)

___________________________

For more ideas about children's picture books on baseball, please check out my post from

February 28, 2013

for a list of my favorite picture books about baseball.

___________________________

Since March, I have been working with a number of 1st grade classes and a second grade class on reading comprehension, and writing.  It has been an interesting experience and has given me much to think about.  Click

here

to read all of the standards for

Reading Informational Text

for first grade.

As part of this project, I have been using a number of picture books to help students begin to ask and answer questions about key details (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.1) and retell key details of a text (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.2).

Author and illustrator, Matt Tavares is a big fan of baseball and has written a number of picture books about baseball or baseball players.  For the purpose of this post, I am going to focus on two of his wonderful picture book biographies about two icons of America's favorite past-time. 

Becoming Babe Ruth

by Matt Tavares (Candlewick, 2013)

There Goes Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived

by Matt Tavares (Candlewick, 2012)

Book Trailer for There Goes Ted Williams

:

Both of these books are engaging, make excellent read alouds, and provide background information about these players that some may not know.

In addition to having students ask and answer questions and retell key details from the books, you can also have students focus on identifying similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.9).  Since the books are by the same author/illustrator, and written in similar style, it allows students to more easily make comparisons and identify differences.

Finally, you can assist young readers in learning about a few text features by looking at the author's note at the end of the book and the additional resources, timeline and other information provided (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.1.5).  This begins to lay the ground work for primary grade students in learning that informational text typically has features not present in fictional text. Students also begin to understand that these features have names, a purpose and a function which prepares them for more complex informational text with an increasing number of text features.   (Note: A good source of biographies with well utilized text features would be through

National Geographic

.)

With the proper introduction to informational text and the use of engaging material, you will hit one out of the park with your students.