Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
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Get'em  to Read Widely, Help 'em to Read Deeply

10/9/2019

 
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What happens  to behavior when living beings dwell in paradise?   Where everything an individual could possible want is at hand?  Plenty to eat and drink.  It's not too hot, not too cold.  Lethal danger is at a distance.  I saw it for myself when I visited the Masai Mara in Kenya many years ago.  Kenya is on the equator but the Masai plains of Kenya are elevated so the average temperature is 75 degrees every day. There are no seasons. Both night and day are 12 hours long.   Nature provided this part of the world enough space and food and water for the largest land-dwelling mammals to evolve.  For elephants, hippos, water buffaloes,  giraffes life exists in a serene landscape that is interrupted every so often with a scurry of activity when a predator gets hungry.  But for the most part, it is a peaceable kingdom.  Beasts wander through their day, not moving too fast, sleeping when they feel like it.  A Kenyan professor told me that there is little or no incentive for the human population in this environment to become inventive or technological. A subsistence life-style is not difficult.  People who live in the moderate latitudes were motivated to invent ways to make life more comfortable.  That's why those places are the source for innovation and technology.

When I was young, I heard a lecture by Nicholas Negroponte, a futurist and co-founder of what is now the MIT Media Lab.  He described a future where people would never have to leave their homes-- everything they needed could come to them with the push of a button.  (It was before we knew about the click of a mouse).  The only reason to leave home, he stated emphatically, would be to find a mate or get buried. Many skills by which people currently made a living would become obsolete.  The picture he painted horrified me.  But, I reasoned, people would still need to know how to read.  

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That, too, is on the decline.  Note the graph on the left.   Except for the reading of cell phones, which is definitely on the upswing.   Note the  graph on the right.  ​In 2017 the average adult spend 2 hours and 51 minutes per day on a mobile phone. 
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Reading for pleasure, to fill up the day, has been pre-empted by a plethora of entertaining activities that require little else than watching.  It seems as if the human race is devolving into doing the minimum to exist. As per Negroponte's prediction, we are getting fat and lazy.  Negroponte went on to found a movement One Laptop per Child, hoping to reach all children including those who live in the third world.   It failed for a variety of reasons, mainly because his manufactured product was poorly designed. In recent years, Negroponte has shifted focus and now says:  "If you take any world problem, any issue on the planet, the solution to that problem certainly includes education. In education, the roadblock is the laptop."


I'm not sure that's true. I think that the problem in education stems from the lack of reading and thinking regardless of the device.  Reading is the only way to get into the minds of educated people who know how to write well and think clearly.   Learning to read takes practice.  It should not be separated from thinking.  That is why my tribe of award-winning authors of nonfiction for children have created the Nonfiction Minute. . We don't just write a readable essay, we also speak it aloud.  This exposes less fluent readers the magic of content.  The Minutes just happen to be the same length as the reading passages on the standardized tests. But each Minute is a self-contained essay with a beginning, a middle and an end not an excerpt from a larger work taken out of context for the test-taker to struggle with. Our Minutes are not leveled because leveling makes text flat and eliminates voice, the humanity that makes the content come alive.  But the Nonfiction Minute is not enough to produce readers and thinkers.  They need to tackle fuller works.  

For this reason, iNK has opened a bookstore, iNK Books & Media Store.  The categories that the books cover are illustrated above.  Most of our books are interdisciplinary. They are also beautifully illustrated, carefully designed and edited to make them into learning experiences with the real world.  We will be adding books all year.  Pick a topic from the icons above that you're required to teach.  Help your students discover the pleasure of learning from a good book.  Let them build self esteem by doing something that requires effort and perseverance that is also a pleasure.  Let them experience the work of people who have spent a lifetime thinking and perfecting their craft of putting words together to make meaning.  

Otherwise, writers who think and care about educating children will also go the way of the typewriter manufacturers.  

Compelling Nonfiction for Kids: This Title Has a Double Meaning

11/3/2019

 
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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.  






Magic in the Classroom: One Teacher's Guide

12/7/2018

 
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Dr. Pamela Davis
Dr. Pam Davis is a friend of mine and a consummate teacher.  I asked her if she created magic in the classroom and in her blunt straightforward manner she said, "Not really.  I just capture the magic that's there!" So I asked her how that happens and her responses are the basis for this blog.

Is magic in the classroom the norm or not?  "I think magic in the classroom is overlooked and when it's harnessed that's the exception."

How often do you experience magic in your classroom?  "To me teaching and learning are both magical so I experience magic quite often?"

What do you do to make this magic happen?  "First, I prepare by deciding how to share myself through the material. For example, I have a natural sense of humor and I love to read and listen to music.  If I can find a way to share any of my passions with my students through the mandated content, that's the first step in inviting them into a safe learning space.  So when I teach social studies to 6th grade, the kids need to learn about the term, the "golden age." I introduce them to Jill Scott who wrote a song called "Living Life Like It's Golden," which I believe represents a golden age in popular music.  Then I invite them to debate the properties of a golden age in history by comparing my generation's music to theirs.  This leads to discussions all kinds of golden ages and gives the students ownership of the term." 

What do you look for in the material you use to connect to your students?  "I have to look for outside material to supplement the mediocre required texts, which gives kids facts but doesn't inspire interest. I can say honestly, that in order to connect to my students and have them connect to each other and eventually connect to the material, I have to be some kind of voice--an author's voice, a musician's voice, an artist's voice that transcends diversities and keys into common humanity." 

How have you used the Nonfiction Minute?  "When we were learning about the Medieval Period in history, I used the Nonfiction Minute called "Gong Farmers."  I then posted the  link on my class page with the warning, "Read at your own risk.  This is disgusting.  I don't want to talk about it."Of course, most of them read it but then I had them lead a small group discussion about some of the pros and cons of the feudal system from the peasants' perspective.  And several children brought up the idea of a gong-farmer and explicitly explained what the job entailed while I barely contained my composure."  

Pam, you are an exemplar of what I call the "artist teacher."  How do you get away with it? "I get criticized by administrators and sometimes other teachers.  But parents and students give me consistently high ratings, so I persevere.  I get some encouragement from my work outside the classroom.   I teach teachers. I evaluate content and even provide really fun robotics to kids facing family trauma.  I've never seen teaching as anything but an opportunity to share magic.”
 

If you are a teacher who has never experienced magic in the classroom, you must first know yourself and be fully and confidently self-expressed.  Next you must be constantly on the lookout for excellent content material created by others who are also fully  and confidently secure in their form of self-expression. Shared humanity is at the heart of it all.

Nonfiction Minutes: Stepping Stones to Achieving Excellence

6/6/2018

 
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Excellence.  There is no shortage of exemplars.  They are athletes, entertainers, entrepreneurs, activists, academics, writers.  We shower them with accolades and many are rewarded with large sums of money.  We call them heroes.  Children can name their favorites.  But to a child, and to teenagers, and even young adults these superstars may as well live on another planet.  What is the journey to this pinnacle?  Champions come from all walks of life.  And many individuals, who are born to wealth and privilege, fall by the wayside.  Excellence also shows up in less publicly aggrandized activities.   There are short order cooks, teachers, social workers, wait-staff, knitters, who are stand-outs in their less glamorous worlds.

I started iNK Think Tank because I wanted to highlight excellent nonfiction writing for children.  Our genre has been a stepchild in children’s literature.    For the most part, the nonfiction children read in public schools is from standardized material that “covers” curriculum subjects.   ELA classes have a long tradition of teaching classics.  There is so much to be mined from their excellence that they need a teacher to help students get more from a book than just the words.  Why not expose children to excellence in nonfiction writing where the author’s passion for content shines through the language?

Achieving excellence can be learned.  We get there though a concept called “successive approximations.”  As educators we recognize and reinforce behavior that is in the direction we want our students to go.  Then we have them repeat the process but raise the bar a little higher for the outcomes.  It isn’t a linear path.  Failure is an intrinsic part of the process.  Think how many times the champion figure skater or hockey player must have fallen on the ice in their journeys to the Olympics.  The most important requisite knowledge is that it is hard-won.  But at some point,individuals gets hooked.  They see themselves improving.  They understand the kind of work they must produce consistently to graduate from one level to another.  They certainly understand it if they play video games and get really good at them.  Note that test grades are not necessarily a part of the learning process and sometimes can kill it before it takes hold. 

When it comes to academics the primary skills are literacy-related as defined in the Common Core Standards as listening, speaking, reading, and writing.  The problem, as I see it, is that the standards come divorced from content, particularly content that may be of interest to students.  If motivation is the key to learning and, let’s say, one kid is fanatically interested in some arcane subject matter, like wolf spiders in Australia, academic skills can be acquired in the process of learning about that subject.  Yet all too often, we rush children through the learning ropes without considering the built-in motivations that come with each individual. 

This is the concept behind the Nonfiction Minute.  Children are being introduced to a diversity of topics, written by a diversity of  authors who have achieved excellence in their writing from a diversity of pathways.  Literacy skills are likely to be acquired much more rapidly if they must be used in pursuit of knowledge that fascinates a child.  They can be the key to starting their own academic journey into content that resonates with them.
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Karen Sterling’s brilliant Transfers to Teaching (T2T) helps them on the way to higher learning and academic achievement.  


II hope you understand how we are trying to get to the heart and soul of the learning process that has been hijacked by too many misguided cooks in the education pot.

     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

Contact

vicki@inkthinktank.org
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