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At the heart of First Book’s mission to help children in need read, learn and succeed is the distribution of educational content. Breaking down the barriers to accessing books and other information can lift the kids we serve and their communities out of poverty and into bright futures.

When President Obama announced the ConnectED Initiative two years ago, he set an ambitious goal to provide 99 percent of American students with access to next-generation broadband internet in their classrooms and libraries by 2018. And this past April, the President followed up on this commitment with the Open eBook Initiative, a program aimed at creating a world-class digital library and making it available to students aged 4-18 from low-income families.

First Book is proud to partner with the White House to support this bold program that will bring all of America’s classrooms into the digital age. Specifically, First Book will help ensure the eBooks library reaches students in low-income families.

Many of the 180,000 schools and educational programs we serve are already working to transform their districts’ teaching and learning in the digital age. We’re excited to support Open eBooks to reinforce their efforts and take strides to ensure all children have a world of knowledge within reach.

The post How First Book & The White House are Transforming Education Today appeared first on First Book Blog.

2013 GradeReading.NET Summer Reading Lists

I’ve written before about writing a children’s picture book in this 30 Days to a Stronger Picture Book Series and the basics remain true. However, nonfiction picture books are currently getting a fresh look, mostly because of the education reforms known as Common Core. It requires elementary students to read 50% nonfiction, 50% fiction. That percentage of nonfiction rises to 70% in high school, which impacts longer nonfiction. But today, I’ll concentrate on the impact on picture books.

One of the more interesting developments is that educators, publishers and writers are looking at nonfiction in seven new ways.

1. Narrative Nonfiction. The last 25 years has seen the rise of narrative nonfiction, or nonfiction that is told with fiction techniques. Sometimes called creative nonfiction, this genre emphasizes the story embedded in the search for information. Nonfiction writers use scenes, sensory details, and work for a traditional story arc with a problem that is resolved in a climax. This type story has been popular because it readily engages readers.

   Examples of narrative nonfiction picture books:

   • 
     Turtle Tide: The Ways of Sea Turtles This book is one that has you hanging on the edge, waiting to see if any of the 100 sea turtle babies will survive. Fantastic build to a satisfying climax.
   • Wisdom, the Midway Albatross. My own picture book about the oldest known wild bird in the world uses a series of vignettes that climaxes with the Japanese tsunami overrunning Midway Island.
2. Data (Facts First). Let’s face it: some kids just like facts. Browseable books like the Dorling Kindersley books (white background with stunning photos and related facts) are filled with data. It’s rather like flipping through an encyclopedia of a certain topic until you find the information that fascinates you, stopping to read, then flipping on. It’s the Guiness Book of World Records. Just the facts, Ma’am.
3. Expository (Facts Plus). Taking it a step farther are nonfiction books that give facts but connect them in some way. It’s an explanation of some kind, but doesn’t have to have the story. Often in a picture book, the author reaches for a poetic voice, but the intent is still just an explanation. For an example, look at Frogs by Nic Bishop
4. Books in the Disciplinary Thinking or Experts at Work are nonfiction books that ask how scientists and historians ask questions, evaluate research and develop theories. Sometimes these are biographies of a scientist or historian.

   The Scientists in the Field Series from Houghton Mifflin is the perfect example of this type books. See the 2011 Siebert Winner Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World’s Strangest Parrot , written by Sy Montgomery, photographs by Nic Bishop.

5. In Inquiry (Ask and Answer) Books, the author begins mimics the process of scientific discovery by asking a question and then allowing the readers to follow the process of finding the answers.

   The Elephant Scientist is one of the Scientists in the Field Series from Houghton Mifflin, and a 2012 Siebert Honor book. Unlike some of the other book in the series, this one begins with a question: how do elephants hear? Is it possible that they hear sounds through their feet? This leading question is woven throughout the book and indeed, gives it even more of a narrative nonfiction feel. It’s easy to from this book that the subgenres will be hard to tease out. Is this book narrative nonfiction, Experts at Work, or Inquiry? It’s all three. Still, even thinking about it in this way means that we, as writers, have more choices, even when we choose to cross subgenres.

6. Interpretation or Point of View nonfiction titles are not popular right now, but may become a stronger subgenre under the Common Core, as it asks students to do analytical thinking. Here, an author researches a subject in detail, then provides an interpretation of the information. Such books would model what students are required to produce in their own essays.
7. Action Books invite kids do more than sit in a chair and read. Some include activities or experiments, and some are a call to action. They encourage kids to go out and do something that will make a difference in the world.

   I Love Dirt! 52 Activities to Help you and your Kid Discover the Wonders of Nature asks kids and parents get outdoors and do something.

Writing the Nonfiction Picture Book

When you look at a topic—maybe Dads in nature—there are multiple slants you could take on the subject. And now, there are multiple ways to approach the research and writing.

Narrative nonfiction. For this category, there’s no book without a storyline. As you research, you are looking for the story embedded in the details.
Data/Facts. Here, you are looking for solid, reliable, verifiable facts. Of course, you are in any of these categories, but for this category, it is the facts that shine. You will have to organize the book in some way, but the natural divisions in the data will determine the book’s structure.

Expository. Explanations include facts that back up a certain premise or statement. As you research, you are looking for an overarching idea that the facts will explain. Sometimes you’ll start with what needs explanation but sometimes, it will emerge from the research and writing.

Experts at Work. This is a fun category because it means you must seek out experts and follow them around. Writer George Plimpton, who recently passed away, if famous for joining the Detroit Lions American football team in order to give his readers the most intimate sense of playing in this team. This type of immersive journalism may be an extreme example of Experts at Work, but it certainly fits the goals. The story here (and it is often a narrative) is about the expert not necessarily about what the expert is studying or doing.

Interpretation or Point of View. In some ways, picture book biographies are an interpretation of a person’s life. Because the space is limited, these biographies can only cover a portion of a person’s life and by necessity become an interpretation. Dizzy, by Jonah Winters, is about Dizzy Gillespie, the famous Be-pop trumpeter. It leaves out many issues of his family and uses literary techniques to create a sense of what be-pop music is like. It’s a definite point of view. When you write this type story, look for what grabs you personally in a story or set of facts; how can you bring that to the forefront? Are these popular? Dizzy got starred reviews in five different review journals.

Action Books. While facts inform the action book category, it’s what the reader does with those facts that matters. In fact, the emotions evoked by the facts are as important as the facts themselves. It turns into a sort of persuasion essay, using facts to back up the need to do something. Look for facts that back up the actions you want readers to take. Build a strong, emotional case for that action.

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By Donald J. Peurach

Education reform is among the great American pastimes. This is activity that plays out continuously in public discourse everywhere from corner bars to capitol buildings, as well as in the day-to-day work of government agencies, university-based project teams, and private organizations. Current wrangling over the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Act will surely throw fuel on the fire.

However, despite decades of education reform, many schools continue to struggle to support high levels of student achievement — especially schools serving large populations of poor and disadvantaged students. This decades-long struggle for deep, lasting, large-scale education reform stands as evidence of the complex problems to be solved and of the complex work of solving them. Yet seeing and confronting that complexity is, itself, no simple matter.

Rather than having a single, root cause, chronically low student achievement is often the product of systems of compounding problems in schools: for example, low expectations for student performance, weak instructional and leadership practice, centuries-old tensions between teachers and school leaders, weak coordination among instructional and non-instructional services for students, and many more.

These systems of interdependent problems require systems of interdependent solutions, implemented over time and improved with experience: simultaneous, coordinated improvements in roles, structures, cultures, technologies, and practices. Indeed, over the past twenty years, some of the most remarkable instances of large-scale school improvement in the U.S. have come from reformers pursing exactly that strategy: for example, Success for All and America’s Choice, two non-governmental organizations that have demonstrated success establishing state-sized networks of schools that use school-wide designs to improve practice and achievement.

The problem, then, is that many in the U.S. are unable to see education reform as complicated. This is, in part, because sorting out and making sense of complexity is very hard, and something that very few people have much preparation or experience in doing.

But it is also because Americans have very little patience with complexity. Our is a black-and-white, red-and-blue, PowerPoint-and-sound bite world in which politicians, the media, and even reformers advance silver bullet solutions to public education’s most complex problems — both because they believe in such solutions and because so many in the general population are open to them. These silver bullet solutions run the gamut: improved curricula, new instructional models, smaller schools and classes, professional learning communities, teacher leadership, value-added teacher evaluations, and many more.

Yet when silver bullet solutions are overwhelmed by systemic dysfunction, many are much quicker to deride the system of U.S. public education for not conforming to their methods of solving its problems than they are to adapt their problem solving methods to its complexity.

We have seen instances of reformers bucking this trend.  For example, in current debates over the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, the U.S. senate is considering “whole school reform” and the “restart” strategies for the nation’s lowest performing schools.  In contrast to targeted interventions, both would support partnerships between schools, districts, and external providers with a record of success either re-engineering existing schools or creating new schools.  However, political support for such initiatives has often been short lived, in part because policy expectations for rapid success are at odds with the time needed for such partnerships to emerge and mature.

Until more people are willing and able to see and confront complexity in public education, then we will continue to struggle to do the work of large-scale education reform any better than we have in the

A teacher wants to teach. I mean, why else would you take a @#$%^& salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really love to do it? — Matt Damon

Lots of people have been sending us links to the video of actor Matt Damon defending teachers. Damon was at the Save Our Schools rally in Washington D.C. this weekend with his mother, a teacher, and was interviewed by a video crew from Reason, a libertarian magazine and website.

In the clip, Damon gets quite testy with the spokeswoman and cameraman. (Warning: In this case “testy” also includes some adult language, so please don’t watch this clip if that offends you, or if you are with young children.)

When you watch the entire video, it’s pretty clear that the woman from Reason isn’t interested in telling the stories of teachers and why they came to Washington D.C. for the rally. Instead, she seems interested in presenting teachers in an unflattering light, and making simplistic statements about complex issues like tenure and education reform.

That’s why we’re pleased to see so many people forwarding this video, and talking about it on Twitter and Facebook – overwhelmingly in support of Damon’s comments.

It’s not that he said something brilliant or insightful. It’s that he’s defending school teachers, and we’re glad to see that’s something that resonates with so many people.

What do you think? Let us know, on this blog post or on our Facebook page.

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Mark R. Warren is Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University. He is a sociologist and has published widely on community organizing and on efforts to build alliances across race and class to revitalize urban communities, reform public education and expand democracy. Warren is the author of Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice and you can read his previous OUPblog post on racism here.

In the videos below, he discusses his book, race relations in schools, and activism.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Want to see more videos? Visit OUPblog on YouTube.