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Compelling Nonfiction for Kids: This Title Has a Double Meaning

11/3/2019

 
Picture
Picture
Last week my post "The New Era of Children's Author-Driven Nonfiction" discussed children's nonfiction literature that is finally coming into its own. It had a HUGE response! 
​I was presenting it as something new but, I must confess, nonfiction children's trade books have been noticed for quite a long time.  Who, exactly, has discovered these wonderful books?  First, the creators of standardized tests.  They excerpt our writing for reading comprehension passages.   Second, educators of kids with learning challenges and the gifted.  My question is:  if these books are used by educators at each end of the learning spectrum, what are the great masses of "average or normal" kids in between compelled to read in school?  
  • Textbooks with worksheets, study questions, and quizzes​
  • Schoolbooks with worksheets, study questions and quizzes.
I put an illustration  above from Wikimedia commons to show you what these books look like.  Compare it to the picture I used last week.  (It's not far; scroll down.)

How come this is happening?
  • If we're going to give standardized tests to compete with the way kids perform in other parts of the world, we have to standardize education, right?
  • In order to standardize education we have to make it teacher proof.  We have to assume that teachers can't be trusted to seek out their own study materials to fit curricula.  We've stopped giving them creative autonomy. (Ask a public school teacher, " So, how's that working for you, lately?")

What happens when you give kids a taste of writing that is compelling, (not compelled)?  Let's experiment and find out.  

(Drum roll) Presenting the Nonfiction Minute --Short, self-contained essays written by award-winning children's book authors with an audio file so that the more challenged readers have access to content.  Make them multi-media by including art and video as appropriate plus information about the author so students can get books at the library by an author whose Minute has whetted their appetite for more.  

What are the results?
Five  million page views and counting.  Lots of letters and comments from teachers and students.  We've added a Transfer to Teaching for each Minute (T2Ts), giving suggestions for using the material with students. (Don't know if any real kids actually went to the library, maybe someone can fill me in.)

March is Standardized Test Month. It creates so much anxiety that teachers are given instructions on how to preserve test answer-sheets with vomit on them.  We hear our Minutes are used for test prep. That was not our intention.  






Andrea Warren
11/3/2019 05:19:05 pm

Test answer sheets with vomit on them? It's time for change!

Andrea Warren

Jan Adkins link
12/3/2019 09:54:52 am

Five million hits. And counting. Think for just a moment about what a gigantic audience that is, and what enthusiasm it represents.

Is it enthusiasm? Yes, patently. But is it also desperation? Students and teachers often recoil at the concrete wall of state-mandated textbook education linked to standardized tests. Let us out of this yawn-fest! Our Nonfiction Minutes are peepholes into the textured, free-wheeling, unpredictable, beguiling real world beyond PC textbooks and workbooks written by the governor's dead uncle. When students and teachers find us, they keep coming back.

I'm NOT speaking for the NM, and I'm NOT an "official voice" for our program. But it seems plain that our quaking U.S. economy is great for speculators and terrible for working people. Federal budget cuts everywhere. Education is an endangered species, diminished and nibbled at every corner. It's one of the most vulnerable budget items, because the corporate lobbyists behind politics don't particularly want an educated, analytical, questioning crop of young people. What we can see of the government's intentions indicates a flight away from public schools for well-off parents – vouchers for private schools and cuts for public schools. A part of this abandonment is the hammering, teacher-deadening pace of mandated testing trying to even the playing field like AstroTurf.

We sometimes feel like the cavalry, riding to the rescue of curious minds. Not just student minds! We want to rescue teachers, as well. We want to put the gee-whiz back in classrooms and introduce the quirky real world to bored kids and teachers. Though we'd like to think of ourselves as heroes, we're just curious learners, like our audience, and we're nibbling away in our own subversive way to bring the sparkly bits to class days.

Would it surprise you to learn that NF authors receive bags of money for their Nonfiction Minutes? It would surprise us, too, because all of the Minutes enjoying five million hits have been unpaid. They're gratis investments in learning from some exceptionally smart, obsessively curious, surprisingly stylish authors. We're building something big and revolutionary. Bring on standardized testing, education cuts, Goliath and the dragons; we've got curiosity and five million minutes of gee-whiz on our side!

Vicki Cobb link
12/3/2019 12:28:19 pm

Thanks, Adkins for your voluble and generous support. Readers, please note what Adkins brings to the party! Humor, a great vocabulary,
prior knowledge, clear thinking, surprising imagery, and a definite voice that is different from mine. It is a perfect example of how to learn from many voices.

Peggy Thomas
16/3/2019 02:17:44 pm

Love this! Thanks Vicki


Comments are closed.

     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

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iNK Think Tank, Inc. is a nonprofit with the mission of using nonfiction children's literature in classrooms

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