52 Short Books for 11-CCR Students: TLDR and What HS Students Are Reading (and NOT)

image: from OpenClips on Pixabay

TLDR: Too Long, Didn't Read.  Scroll down if you want to skip this short read and go directly to The List.

A recently released study by Renaissance Learning finds that HS seniors read on average 5.2 books a year, down from 55.4 in grade 2 and 16.2 in grade 6.  There is also a decline in the number of words contained in the reading, from a high in grade 6 (419,121) to 304,252 in grade 12.

Wait a minute.  Do the math.  The books read by HS students must be longer.  That must explain the decline in the number of books read.

Nope. My quick study of the Top 20 lists for 6th and 12th grades provided in the report suggests that 6th graders are actually reading longer books, on average, than their HS counterparts, who are overwhelmingly reading fiction under 250 pages (must have small print). With the exception of The Hunger Games (which first appears on the grade 5 list, 810L) and another light read titled Safe Haven (830L), the longer texts read are found in the bottom (least read) 10. These include some zingers: Twilight (another light read but 544p 770L), Kite Runner (402p  840L), and Divergent (501p HL700L). Hardly a sterling list in terms of challenge.

Supporting my contention that 12th grade students are selecting books well below what they should be reading is the report's finding that the average ATOS book level (similar to the lexile scale) in grade 12 is 7.1 (one month into 7th grade).  The average ATOS in grade 6 is 5.3, which is not great, but at least it's not embarrassing.

I don't think too much should be made of this report, although it purports to be important (it's important for Renaissance Learning). How many of these titles are assigned and how many are choice independent reading?  The titles are all Accelerated Reader quizzed titles, which certainly directs choice and limits what titles are entered into the data.  The identity of the cohort is unclear; the HS students in the sample may not - probably do not - represent the full top-bottom range of student readers.

On the other hand, today's NPR post Why Aren't Teens Reading Like They Used To? reiterates the Renaissance report's finding that HS students are reading well below the level recommended by CCSS and other standards. It is possible to chalk the Renaissance report up as representative of the American public school student reading population.  OK through 5th grade in terms of fiction reading quality and quantity, but downhill from there.  Too far downhill in the 11-12 grades.

The essays which "pepper" the Renaissance report stress the importance of e-reading in today's classroom, suggesting perhaps that digital texts will spur students to read more.  I believe it is valid that e-reading is engaging and, for readers who use the tools, supportive of deeper reading. But a page-turner is a page-turner and a plod is a plod and long is long and a tool can not change that. What needs to change is access to better reading choices.

If we want our HS students to read more than 5.2 fiction titles a year (I am not mentioning nonfiction because the report finds it amounts to no more than 15% of their reading, despite recommendations to the contrary), we need to consider the fact that, in their/our culture of e-communication and e-research, TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read) is a message HS students send out every day.  By not reading.  By selecting short rather than longer titles.  By selecting easy reads with ATOS reading level 5-6.

This is not helping/challenging/growing our students.  What we need to offer HS students are high quality, high challenge, high engagement short books.

I have spent some time with lexile.com and with good lists over the last few days.  It is possible to mine the classics and good contemporary fiction for excellent short books.  Alas, many of these probably are not in the Accelerated Reader quiz bank.  You may not have read or heard of many of them.  But it's high time HS readers were encouraged to make better reading choices, so gather up as many of these titles as you can.

My arbitrary short book cutoff is 250 pages.  Where possible, lengths are from lexile.com. Amazon.com is the backup.

Here is my list of 52 short fiction books (and one or two nonfiction titles) for 11-12 grade readers, generated by mining lexile.com (for pages and lexile ranges) and other lists.  They are in lexile order, something a bit questionable, but at least this is a consistent measure in line with Common Core standards. More about that later. Only two titles have been carried over from the Renaissance report's grade 12 top 10.  It adds up to one book a week for a year.

Note: We can not really rely on lexiles to determine suitability and challenge. Examples: most of Gary Paulsen measures well over 1100L and ditto with the best of Zindel (e.g. The Undertaker's Gone Bananas measures 1050). Both novelists are great for MS, but with only a few exceptions are not suitable for HS. Ray Bradbury and Steinbeck, on the other hand, score much lower on the lexile scale than this reader would expect and are suitably complex for HS. Of Mice and Men belongs on this list, but since it is often read in grade 9 or 10 anyway, I have omitted it.

Moreover, many non-Western titles and short story collections have not been lexiled. Surprise! My list is more multicultural than most lists.

The Common Core, by the way, has realigned lexile bands with grade levels to make "stretch" reading the norm. Only the last 2 books on my list fall within the 11-CCR band.  That's absurd. A book does not have to have a lexile over 1200 in order to be great or to be an intellectual challenge for a 16 year old. I stand by all of these short books for 11-CCR.

The List, in lexile order (do you notice a pattern in the titles not lexiled?):

1. Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue - Lester - not lexiled
2. I See You - Shukri - not lexiled (fictional contemporary African country) - a Best Book of 2014, Africa is a Country
3. Every Day is for the Thief - Cole - not lexiled - selected for many Best of 2014 lists (Nigeria)
4. Citizen: An American Lyric - Rankine - not lexiled - America Book Award 2014 shortlist - poems and short pieces
5. The Thunder that Roars - Garda - not lexiled (South Africa, Muslim)
6. How to Escape from a Leper Colony (stories) - Yanique - not lexiled 
7. The Strange Library - Murakami - not lexiled
8. The Dead Lake - Ismailov - not lexiled (trans. from Russian)
9. Family Life - Sharma - not lexiled - India/America - Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review and New York Magazine
10. Things We Found During the Autopsy - Manickavel - not lexiled - South Indian short fiction - a Best Book of 2014, Africa is a Country
11. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood - Satrapi GN380 (Iran) or American Born Chinese - Yang GN580
12. The Metamorphosis - Kafka 670 or The Room - Karlsson - not lexiled - find a great short film of the Kafka here.
13. When the Emperor Was Devine - Otsuka  810
14. Snow Country - Kawabata 820
15. Drown - Diaz 830 (stories, Dominican Republic immigrants)
16. If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home - O'Brien  830 or How To Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America - Laymon - non-lexiled (NF)
17. Slaughterhouse-Five - Vonnegut 850
18. Things Fall Apart - Achebe 890
19. Ceremony - Silko 890  (Laguna Pueblo)
20. Grendel - Gardner 920
21. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith - Keneally - 920
22. The Thing Around Your Neck (stories) - Adichie  920 (estimated) (Africa and United States)
23. Montana 1948 - Watson 940
24. Life and Times of Michael K: A Novel - Coetzee 940
25. The Bluest Eye - Morrison 960
26. July's People - Gordimer 970
27. Being There - Kosinski - 980
28. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids - Oe 1000
29. Nothing - Teller 1000
30. The Pearl - Steinbeck 1010
31. Snapshots: 20th Century Mother-Daughter Fiction - Oates, ed 1020
32. The Secret Agent - Conrad 1030
33. Frankenstein - Shelly  1040 
34. The First Fast Draw - L'Amour 1040
35. Interpreter of Maladies (stories) - Lahiri 1050 (India, United States)
36. The Heart of Darkness - Conrad 1050
37. The Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon 1060
38. The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald 1070
39. The Time Machine - Wells 1070
40. Bridge of San Luis Rey - Wilder 1080 (or perhaps The Scatter Here is Too Great - Tanweer, set in Karachi - not lexiled)
41. The Bad Seed - March 1100
42. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Spark 1120
43. Picnic at Hanging Rock - Lindsay 1140
44. The Bridges of Toko-Ri - Michener 1140
45. My Life in Dog Years - Paulsen 1150  (NF)
46. Animal Farm - Orwell 1170
47. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Haddon 1180
48. Hiroshima - Hersey  1190
49. Ransom - Malouf 1200 (estimated lexile)
50. Forrest Gump - Groom  1210
51. Eighteen Best Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe - Poe 1220
52. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Marquez 1270

It goes without saying that most of these books will require more effort to read than The Hunger Games trilogy. That effort is one of the reasons that readers find Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men and Gatsby turn-offs and Percy Jackson so captivating, and it is probably the real motivation behind TLDR. Educators can give in to this, or they can combat it with titles like those above. One approach builds lists of easy, long, page-turners; the other approach builds better and better-educated readers. Your choice.

This is, of course, just one solution to our national non-reading dilemma. There are others:

• If you really want students to be stretched, assign books and articles about fiction and authors.  That's the best place for students to meet those higher lexile texts.  Some might find these essays lead them to great novels.
• Allow/encourage your students to read multi-culturally and diversely.
• Celebrate the humanities as well as STEM.
• Write and read.  Introduce students to living writers and their works.
• Encourage collaborative reading in 11-12 grades.  What?  This means groups encouraged to read like a book club reads.  
• Invest in great audio books for your students. Time well spent.
• PBL: Oral histories of the reading memories of parents and seniors; Twitter reading selfies and campaigns.

Want to add a book or an idea?  Write a comment or email me directly.

Think Critically About: Aligned to the Common Core

What does Aligned to the CCSS mean?  Those of us who work/worked hard on backward design, curriculum mapping, or other serious school-wide alignment of ELA writing skills, core texts (sometimes), and reading assessments (eg: expectations) to local or state standards are/were already aligning.

Many of those lessons, units and activities mesh very well with the CCSS.  Many don't.

What you will find when you investigate units, programs, lessons, curricula that are billed as aligned to the CCSS is either itemized CCSS standards attached to republished lessons or activities OR activities/lessons/units generated to support specific CCSS lines [I like the word lines because that is really what they are].

The CCSS is not a curriculum. At any level. School curricula and packaged/purchased curricula can therefore not be aligned to it.

So please doubt and evaluate the credibility and value of any advertisement for CCSS Aligned curricular content.

Purchase or download IDEAS, not curriculum.  Better yet, create your own.  This is how we do an end run around the common.  And yes, creating your own curriculum, using your own texts, is fully supported by the CCSS.

The CCSS Dilemma: Comment #2 on the CCSS for ELA

student artwork used with permission

Comment #2  [see also Comment #1: Don't Buy the Split and my companion post Two Literate Responses to the Common Core]

"New standards do not require new methods, just new takes on old methods.  A little technology helps as well, but is not required." 

The CCSS for ELA (well, not really for ELA are they?) add one thing to the reading curricula, k-12, that I celebrate: rigor.  We can measure this in lexiles, the grade level equivalents of which have jumped up almost two grade levels.  We can measure this by reading assessment indices.  Or we can measure it in terms of classics that have been in the curriculum for as long as any successful ELA/English teacher can remember plus new-classic and contemporary texts that deserve the label "literary."  It comes down to the same list.  We are talking about rigorous text.

By this I mean: print text that is not "just right," friendly, safe, transparent, or easily recognizable.   For the most part, these are what we used to call literature and now call literary fiction texts. Students often label rigorous fiction "boring books."  They have been dropped from many classrooms because "students don't read them."  They don't appear in literary circles or book groups because they are not "a best fit" for the measured reading level.  They have been replaced by books that are not rigorous - readable, but not rigorous.  Worst case scenario - they have been replaced by "literary" nonfiction that approaches the same themes.  

In better words than mine, Scott G.F. Bailey describes rigorous fiction texts in And there are sword fights: 

"I'm going to claim that the works in question aren't "boring," so much as they are in some way difficult. What's difficult about the works in question is merely that reading and understanding them requires an active reader who is willing to pay attention and examine the ideas put forth in the works, to be willing to work within narratives that differ formally from other narratives they've read, to read books that might defy their expectations as readers. In other words, the difficulty is that there is work--action--required of the reader, rather than passive reading. This can be, for readers not used to the activity, fatiguing, and I claim that particular fatigue is often mistaken for boredom. (This does not rule out the soporific effects of some books.)"   

Which brings us to The CCSS Dilemma: How to lead/teach students to read rigorous text at the grade level proficiency standard (do well on the test) if they will not, or can not, read the rigorous texts?  

ELA teachers, you need to meet this question head on.  I ask you:

• Have you recently read a legal document, a prospectus, a grant proposal, an R&D report, a scientific journal, an explanation of turbodrive or Medicare Part B, an action plan, a credit report, a terms of service agreement?  Would you say this is easy reading?  

• Have you read from the Printz, Booker, National Book Award, or Best Books of 2012 list?  Would you read Proust? If you have, would you say this is easy reading?  

My guess is that you, a college educated adult, have been fatigued by much of this text. You may not have finished it.  With so much comfortable, easy reading available to you, it is easy to close the page, file it away and forget about it, and seek a summary (if necessary) from another reader.  Not reading is an option, but does it get you anywhere? Does it gain you anything new?

You are no different in this respect from many of your students.  Yet if you were to read such text frequently, you would get better at it.  Reading exercise shares this with body exercise.  It is NOT only true of "just right" reading that practice makes better.  That is a myth that has overtaken much of ELA curriculum in the last 7 or so years.  Rigorous texts, fiction (especially) and literary nonfiction, belong in the ELA curriculum at all grade levels.  Teachers who are daunted by them need to get over it.

So here are some concrete ideas, most of which you have probably heard or read before. New standards do not require new methods, just new takes on old methods.  A little technology helps as well, but is not required.  

• Clue students in to the difficulty of their reading.  Talk with each about what makes the text rigorous.  This is where testing data can be your ally, along with knowledge of the reader as a person.  

• Differentiate by reading down and up the standards as necessary and by being sensitive in terms of reading "activities." Less able readers should read as many rigorous texts below grade level as possible (short is good), increasing complexity and length as the child is ready.  I  have had students grow as much as two years this way. More able readers should be turned loose to read.  GoodReads or similar online social reading network is very helpful here, but daunting and often embarrassing for the less able readers.  

• Differentiate by content.  I have found that many frustrated, bored, or "lower level" (by assessment) readers make great strides when they are reading a challenging text that is a fit in terms of genre and point of view.  Many middle schoolers, for example, prefer to read an "adult-centered" text because their lives and responsibilities are already more adult than we would like to think.  Other students continue to love the "child hero," "child adventure," or the "child problem" genre.  Take the time to talk about life with each student - before reading.  I found it helpful to begin each year with literary nonfiction in the form of memoir - short essays like "Death of a Pig" for example, or chapters from a longer texts like Bad Boy, The Things They Carried, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  These are avenues not just for reading-to-standard, but for you learning about students and students learning about themselves.  

• Cover the UR classics (Alice, Wizard of Oz, Arabian Nights, fairy tales, etc.) before grade 7.  Surprise!  many of these lexile over 1000, so be aware of their rigor!  Because you are reading more for story (patterns, stock characters, symbolic settings, core themes) with these texts, you can spend more time with vocabulary and related writing.  It is important to make the books fun so that they will be memorable.

• Reading partners - not groups, but trusted and liked partners in the same class with whom a student can discuss hard text.  I use my husband now, but have also used my teaching peers or a book group pal.  The partner can be an iPartner (email, chat, wiki, blog, etc.), but there is nothing like the immediacy of oral f2f sharing.  I have been lucky about half of the time to be able to build trust groups of 3-5 around a shared text, but when this does not work, reading becomes a waste of time, literally.  And this is not pair-reading, by the way.  Sometimes the partner will have to be you (:  )

• Read with media support - in many posts (and in my Classics in the Classroom Scoop.It) I make a case for graphical, video, audio and performance interpretations of classical and difficult texts.  Making these presentations is one way to meet CCSS standards.  Viewing them, experiencing them, is a powerful way to gain an appreciation and understanding of rigorous print text. This is also, by the way, the only rationale I can accept for read-alouds after grade 5.

• Don't read the entire text. OMG !  A rigorous text is a complex story with complex, diverse characters, settings, moods, tones, symbols... The strongest readers, and often the fastest readers, will complete the whole text.  For others, a smattering, experienced fully and closely, will do.  Check out Moby Dick in Pictures or The Graphic Canon (any volume will do) if you want to see the power of careful selection.  The advantage of this, of course, is that selections are what students will be asked to respond to on tests.  Having students select the passages for their peers to read is also always successful.

• Don't over-teach the text.  Reading questions, vocabulary lists, plot lines, character charts, Cornell notes, trifold organizers... all of these interrupt the reading of any text.  Remind yourself of best practices that might well be reexamined for the Common Core by reading this post from Julie Adams: What Makes a Teacher Effective...  I could not disagree more. For the most part, instead of engaging students, these practices disengage.  Let the kids read.  We used to teach one novel during each quarter of the year - overkill!  and boring to all.  I despair when I read requests for "lessons and activities" to accompany a classic text.  Throw them out, stop sharing.  Schmoop.com is about as complex as most readers will ever need, and students can access it on their own.  Your job is build in students appreciation, understanding, and facility and the ability to communicate these to others (orally, digitally, in writing).  Many a bad poster, bad video and boring presentation result for student failure to actively engage in a text.

• Require some form of "marginalia" response of all readers (I would not do this for purely choice reading done mostly outside of class).  Pre and post-reading discussions and journaling are helpful if you follow the 5-minute rule (each student must read/discuss for 5 minutes... - and grade this 0 or 1 every class), but providing texts that can be annotated (with a pen, post-its, or digitally) is the most useful preparation for analysis and the most helpful overall rigorous-reading skill for college.  Students need to know that responding is a expectation for much school-based reading. Let the kids design their own short-hand for annotation (adult models are often not sensible or palatable for kids). Some kids have an almost photographic memory for the passages that grab them and need only to "turn the page down". Some kids take  in-text notes. Some kids like copious paper notes. Some kids do best with highlighting.  Some kids like symbolic marginalia, other like words, others make lists and indexes (on paper, in the back of the book, using digital tools...).  Give them space to explore - but require active responses.  Provide basic categories if necessary.  

• Build appreciation and skills for reading a specific text before beginning it, not while it is being read!  For example:

• Multiple narrators can flip a  upper elementary or MS reader sideways the first time - do dramatic exercises until all students understand what it means to have multiple narrators (including omniscience, of course) - this ties in nicely with a creative/interpretive writing piece (iJournalism, I-essay)

• Complex sentence structures will lose readers until they get the hang of reading the author's rhythms.  Begin with random sentences for students (again in pairs perhaps) to simplify and restate, to read aloud (recorded readings if possible), to talk about (punctuation, perhaps other grammar), use good audio recordings and (if available) textually accurate video 

• Shakespeare and other dramas are vastly more teachable if they are acted (yes, memorized) and viewed (acting by professionals)

• Cover any necessary historical /biographical background before reading - don't let it interrupt the narrative!   If possible, take advantage of literate informational text and media to address some of those other pesky standards.

• Reading a truly daunting author (e.g. Bradbury, Faulkner, Hawthorne, Joyce)?  Use a story instead of a novel.  Readers who are intrigued will read more on their own.  Your lesson materials will still be useful, by and large.  Read, for example, Gabriel García Márquez's "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings."   

• Accept the fact that hard text is hard work.  It will be hard work for you too.  If you fall back on pat lesson plans gleaned from the net, you will fail and so will your students.

• Steer students to texts that you like and appreciate.  
• Expand the options.  This means accessing more than is available in the classroom library you may have inherited. Use eBooks, use digital freebies, borrow, swap...  
• Remind yourself and your leadership of this:  You are NOT teaching college students.  Don't accept the fact that you have to pretend you are.

This will probably be my last long comment on CCSS for ELA, at least until testing begins.  This is a challenge for ELA teachers, a sort of gauntlet thrown down. Whether or not you agree with the CCSS, the reading bar has got to be raised.  A throw-back task?  Partly. But as the teacher leaves the front of the room, as digital tools are embedded in the reading experience, it is a task that is eminently more doable than it was just 10 years ago.  

Don't Buy the Split: #1 Comment on the Common Core for ELA Teachers

student sketch, used with permission

Comment #1:

ELA and reading teachers who find it painful to put aside literary texts (either classic or contemporary literary or even just YA fan-fiction) in favor of informational texts:

• I am tired of reading about compromises you have made to CCSS trainers.
• I am tired of reading requests for lessons and parallel informational texts.
• I am tired of reading requests for ideas for good research paper topics.

ELA teachers: You need to energize.  The CCSS do not, at any level, say you have to do this.  Go to your principals and literacy leaders.  Have a dialogue about what it means that: "The Standards set requirements not only for English language arts (ELA) but also for literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Just as students must learn to read, write, speak, listen, and use language effectively in a variety of content areas, so too must the Standards specify the literacy skills and understandings required for college and career readiness in multiple disciplines. Literacy standards for grade 6 and above are predicated on teachers of ELA, history/social studies, science, and technical subjects using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language in their respective fields."

Therefore - you must convince leadership that as soon as subject-specific education begins in your district (the CC assumes this is grade 6, but it is not always) the 50-50 or 30-70 rule applies to ALL reading done by a student in a grade level.

If ELA teachers were to teach only literary texts, the other subject areas could easily cover 70% of the reading - the informational part.

Teachers - you need to be proactive about meeting with subject teachers.  You need to get them to take on the role of teachers of the informational texts their disciplines require.  Add this reading to the whole reading pie at each grade level.

It may well be, probably should be, that you will include some literary nonfiction (creative nonfiction) and some informational texts (background readings, images, media) in each of your units. Great!  Many students, especially reluctant boy readers, respond better to fiction and other literary texts if they have a very concrete frame of reference.  Doing that is nothing new.

But don't give up the texts that have proven to make life-long readers of our children simply to satisfy a misunderstood standard.

PS: PBS Teacherline has some excellent, inexpensive, short(er) "teach reading" courses to for science and history teachers.  Maine has similar offerings in the state university system. Check to see what is out there!  You can also find basic basic, oft-repeated informational reading strategies in many reliable places online and also (OMG) in many good books.  Avoid talking with them about lit circles, though!

Two Literate Responses to the Common Core ELA

brain pickings

Fiction - Creative Nonfiction - Literary Nonfiction - Informational Text.  I am talking here about print text, not about genre or content or paper v. digital publication.  In a k12 environment of interactive digital text, audio text, visual texts and audio-visual texts, in a k12 environment of the supremacy of engagement, in a k12 environment where "fun lessons" are more sought after than challenging or deep-understanding lessons, in a k12 environment increasingly integrated with mobile digital tools, in a k12 environment increasingly pressured (despite the previous list) to approach text with analysis and rigor, what is a teacher to do?

I find confusion everywhere.  It is a fact that hard texts are not as much fun as easy or just right texts.  Should this change the curricular content of the ELA classroom?  On the one hand, it seems a student-centered thing to do.  On the other hand, the Common Core lays out a rigorous reading platform that does not seem much in step with lit circles and choice reading - much less with differentiation.

ELA teachers who wrestle with this at any level would do well take a deep breath and think about reading.  Do the prevalence of internet and digital texts mean that the nature of how we read must change?  There is a lot of talk about this, but not, I believe, much new pedagogy beyond that centering on the reading of informational text.  A lot of talk, a lot of commentary, most of which revolves around engagement, social media and attention span, but not much new pedagogy.

How we read text is not changing and will not change.  The options for non-text and extended-text reading are growing and changing.  That is a good thing.  But it does not mean that plain old reading of text - or the publication of just plain text - needs to change.

I think all ELA teachers should read the two articles below.  Both make the case for reading as a powerful and personal sense-making, creation-making...what?  Exercise. Mechanism. Tool.  Pleasure.  No matter.  What matters is that k12 kids become adult readers of text.  That is a goal of the Common Core, after all.

• How We Will Read: Maria Popova - only one post in a series of interviews called How We Will Read (you can quickly access all of the posts here). Steven Johnson asks the same questions of each interviewee.  I suggest you read this post deeply then browse through others, following one question across several responders.
• How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read - brain pickings - this is a literate review by Maria Popova of a book by Pierre Bayard.  

Read these articles for insights into how reading is done, encouraged, offered and approached in your classroom. Creating pleasure for a k12 child is often not about bells and whistles, but about attitude.

A dividend for the teacher who undertakes my exercise is this: it is an exercise in comparing texts and following threads.  Something we better know how to do because we expect our students to do the same.

Frustration is Good: The True Meaning of the CCSS

The secret is out: the true meaning of the CCSS is not challenges, problems, raised expectations, or gap-closing.  It is not creativity.  It is FRUSTRATION.

Why? Because we now know that frustration is the key to creativity.  Brain Pickings' Maria Popova has made the idea accessible. 

And creativity, especially creative questioning, is essential to learning (see previous post), which is essential to testing well, and which, hand-in-hand with collaborative problem-solving, will close the skills and learning gap.

Educating our children to have creative, problem-solving minds so that they will become creative, problem-solving college and career ready pre-adults, so that they will eventually lead a creative, problem-solving high-achieving nation, is the goal of the CCSS. 

So it makes total sense to me that frustration is, cleverly and purposefully, at the very essence of the common core.

• Students will be frustrated in kindergarten because they can not reach the end-of-year literacy goals for emergent reading;
• Students of all ages will be frustrated by facing every day the fact that they are further behind those who are "ready";
• Students of all ages will be frustrated because they can not fluently read and demonstrate understanding of the grade-appropriate literary and information texts put before them in ELA, science and social studies;
• Students in grades above 2 will be frustrated because writing and re-writing and re-writing yet another persuasive or evidence-based essay is so damned boring;
• Students in all grades will be frustrated because reading, writing and thinking creatively about the really interesting stuff is not happening;
• Students in all grades will be frustrated because new mobile and digital tools are used to look for answers to essential questions that are essentially adult questions;
• Students of all ages will be frustrated by the pace and willy nilly disconnect at which units come and go;
• Students in all grades will be frustrated by highly choreographed group work;
• Teachers of all grades will be frustrated by managing all of the above without promised and necessary economic or leadership support, knowing that their evaluations hinge on student testing;
• Everyone in every school building will be frustrated by reading glowing articles about small test score increases elsewhere.

But remember - frustration is good.  This is what the CCSS is all about. 

The problem is, we are at our most creative in the take-a-deep-breath-and-relax after frustration and failure phase.  We are at our most creative when we have, as a result of frustration, made time for nothing else but being creative. 

All we have to do is to make time during the educational day of every child to so that he can reap the benefits of all of that frustration.  Recess, lunch, art classes, bathrooms with lounges and endless hall-passes to access high quality bubblers and social seating arrangements, large well-lit rooms equipped for creative construction and open-ended learning play (open early and late every day):  Bring them on - support student creativity. 

We have to make time during the day for every teacher to reap the benefits of all that frustration.  Lunch, socialization breaks, bathrooms with lounges and access  to high quality bottled water and social seating arrangements, large well-lit classrooms equipped for creative construction and open-ended exploration (staffed by others early and late every day):  Bring them on - support teacher creativity.

So stop griping about the CCSS and focus instead on what has to happen to schools in order to make the standards work for all.  

Teaching Infographics - Teaching Reading

infographics classi

#1 I have to critically think in college, but your tests don’t teach me that. (20 things students want the nation to know about education)

When I was in the edtech world, a major check-point on my peer rating system was appreciation of Edwin Tufte's infographics tetralogy (Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Beautiful Evidence).  If I saw his texts on an office shelf, I was immediately hooked by that office holder. If an edtech teacher knew of Tufte's short text The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching out Corrupts Within (which demonstrates that a poor PPt presentation failed to prevent the Columbia disaster), I knew that this educator knew her stuff. These are brilliant studies of visual information across global time and place.

Not being a particularly visual learner, I knew immediately when I met Tufte's 1st book that I had much to learn. 

No, our students should not be thrown to Tufte.  But they must be thrown to his legacy. When what I taught was called Literacy, I always included a discrete infographics unit. I also included infographics in pre and post reading activities for informational text - sometimes even for fiction text (historical and international fiction, for example).

I am a fan of embedding visual text into reading standards. 

What is an infographic?  Wikipedia has the definition used by every how-to I have found: "graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly."  

Infographics belong in ELA as texts because they require that students (quotes are from CCSS ELA Reading 6-12):

• Identify text structures and their purposes
• Read for detail - "Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it" 
• "Determine central ideas or themes of a text"
• "Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text"
• "Summarize the key supporting details and ideas"
• "Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words"
• "Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence"
• Think critically
• Ask questions
• Identify purpose and audience
• Problem-solve

I mined the net for a short video on "How to read an infographic" -  but there does not seem to be one.  This is the perfect flipped assignment for ELA. In fact, as discrete instruction goes, it is one of very few flipped lessons that will be successful or useful in an ELA classroom.

So I made my own flip-lesson video called Reading Infographics.  Find it on YouTube or look at it below.  One thing you might do with students is have them use the YouTube Annotate function to interact with the lesson and with each other.  I have embedded many activities/exercises into the resource than can be used this way or assigned for HW or classwork.

In the Middle School classroom, I made a Concept Wall containing the key concepts and vocabulary from this video.

[new:  Visual.ly is a terrific source for infographics.  It is not in the video.]

If you want a copy of the original Keynote, contact me.