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Caught in the Spell of Words and Paintings
The partnership of author Robert Burleigh and artist Wendell Minor has once again produced a powerful nonfiction picture book. When reading Trapped!: A Whale’s Rescue, I think it’s best to just enjoy...
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Writing Nonfiction for a Purpose
Outside of school, people don’t sit down to write a paragraph or write “at least two sentences” or write an essay that rehashes what everybody already knows. Outside of school, people write for a...
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Feeding Visual Literacy: Close-Up Photographs for Young Children
Wow! That was my first response to the close-up photographs in Butterflies, Ladybugs, and Bees by Aaron Frisch. So interesting! These pictures are amazing. Enough gushing....
View ArticleDitto! Ditto! Ditto! for ELA
Ditto! Ditto! Ditto! for ELA! That’s what went through my mind recently as I read Jordan Ellenberg’s New York Times op-ed piece entitled "Meet the New Common Core."In that piece he wrote...
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A Biography That Invites Us to Learn More: The House That Jane Built
I like nonfiction books with voice. In these books the author talks to readers, urging them to move beyond what is offered in the book and keep learning about the subject. One book that...
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Why Do I Have to Know This?
Anyone who has taught history for any amount of time has undoubtedly bumped up against this question from students: Why do I have to know this? I know I did. American Revolution? Civil War?...
View ArticleMissing In Action
Dear Readers:Sorry to have been away so long -- I had to go through a lengthy, thorough, and successful process to be reappointed at Rutgers, and am now working hard to finish up two books, but still...
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Reading to Spot Continuity and Change
Common Core standards take a general approach to reading comprehension. They focus on big ideas and details, point of view, integrating text and illustration, understanding academic...
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Reading for Perspective: Who Is Telling Me This? Why? I just finished reading two history books for children, narrated not from the author’s perspective, but from the perspective of a...
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News From Teaching Books dot NetI am passing along this email from Nick Glass at Teachingbooks.net -- a site you should know:I'm excited to share that the TeachingBooks.net Author Name Pronunciation...
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Transforming Transportation: Past/Present Parallels
I am so glad to see a new book by Martin W. Sandler. He is a well-established writer of history books for intermediate and middle school readers and with good reason: His books are clearly...
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Paul Fleischman has been making some very interesting use of digital media to extend and expand the ideas in his book Eyes Wide Open. Most recently, he created this Youtube video using the current...
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What If Mind-Gripping Books Were the Center of Curriculum?
I just finished reading M. T. Anderson’s Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. This is truly a mind-gripping book for YAs and adults. Sure, I...
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Celebrating the Voting Rights Act of 1965
While I am not a strong advocate of the “holiday” or “anniversary” curriculum, I must admit that the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has resulted in a fine crop of books—old...
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Family Histories
Remembered family stories are small treasures. They remind us of events that—while not of broad historical significance to the world at large—are important to us individually as part of our...
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Exciting Discoveries Reveal the Nature of Science
The recent discovery of a new species in the human family—Homo naledi—identified by anthropologist Lee Berger and his team of researchers in South Africa reveals how science works. That...
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A History Book for Elementary School Readers with All the Necessary Pieces:...
The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch is an inspiring, well-written, and well-illustrated biography of the accomplishments of an African-American man who was a slave until his teenage years,...
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Letting Jefferson Speak for Himself: A Biography Generously Sprinkled with...
In the recent picture book Thomas Jefferson Grows a Nation, author Peggy Thomas makes liberal use of short “Jefferson” quotations to focus on his keen interest in planting. The language of...
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Key Ideas? Details?: What’s the Difference?
Recently, an elementary school principal lamented to me that she was surprised by test results showing students across the grades were not doing well distinguishing between key ideas and...
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Examining Historical Photographs with Your Head and Your Heart
Reading Dorothea’s Eyes, a picture book biographyby Barb Rosenstock, reminded me of how emotional response seems to have dropped out of the conversation about reading. In our urgency to...
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The Rain Wizard: Scientist or Fraud?
Because I love a good history mystery, I was immediately attracted to Larry Dane Brimner’s latest nonfiction title, The Rain Wizard: The Amazing, Mysterious, True Life of Charles Mallory...
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Reading for Information: Help from a “Guide on the Side”
I hope we see a revived interest in the work of Louise Rosenblatt very soon because her work helps us understand reader response. To put it simply, Rosenblatt explained that our responses...
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Learning Science from an Enthusiastic Scientist: Caitlin O’Connell’s Newest...
I love learning from nonfiction authors who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic—so enthusiastic that they want to share their knowledge with me. They also care about what they are learning....
View ArticleConnecting to Social Studies Curriculum Through Text-Sets: A Sensible Shift
I have long believed that Common Core discussions need to shift from talk about content-free standards to talk about content-rich curriculum that embeds standards. And now this hoped for...
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4th Multicultural Children’s Book Day - Participating and Reviewing
Series Title: All About Clive Author/Illustrator: Jessica SpanyolPublisher: Child's Play Format: Board BookPublication Date:September 2016 Four Titles in the Series A colorful...
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