By: Elizabeth Rowland
Highly Quality Literature
Books should be windows for kids to familiarize themselves with other cultures or life experiences and mirrors children can see themselves in.
--Pernille Ripp
Relevance refers to the connection a student can make with a text. When possible, bring real world media-based literature into the classroom, as this creates relevance. Students value a reading task when they recognize the relevance in the task. The value and dedication they feel overpowers any difficulty students may experience.
Complexity refers to the vocabulary, sentence structure, coherence, and organization of a text. Learning to read challenging texts can be painful and exhausting. This can be very discouraging to students, but if we make reading tasks easier, students are less likely to become stronger readings. By having knowledge of text complexity, teachers can design reading experiences that foster motivation.
In my opinion a high quality text is....
Rigorous
Complex
Diverse
Rich in language
Culturally Relevant
Diverse books refer to books that display a variety of people, cultures, perspectives, beliefs, attitudes, and genres. These aspects are essential in engaging students in reading tasks they can relate to.
Rich language includes words, phrases, or sentences that add breadth to students' word bank but most importantly adds depth to students word knowledge. Knowing the role vocabulary knowledge plays in reading comprehension, students need to have a wide and deep understanding of words to feel successful. Rich language also plays a role in the different nuances and meanings that can be perceived from a text.
After learning more about high quality texts, I realized I needed to make a change in how I teach essential reading skills and strategies and that my teaching should require students to think more in-depth. To do this I needed to make a change in the books that I use to teach. Instead of going to the books I have always used, I have looked for books that are high quality, complex, diverse and varying genres. This helps me provide authentic reading experiences that requires students to think deeply about a text. With the changes in the books I use and how I teach reading, I hope to develop the foundation of developing lifelong readers.
WOW Books
The above images are books from my GoodReads bookshelf. We used this site in a course to share exceptional books that we thoroughly enjoyed with our classmates. These were books of different genres, complexity, and concepts. From the WOW books assignment I was able to explore and learn more about books that are high quality texts to use for instruction. This assignment was essential to my compelling question because they allow reluctant readers to experience engaging high quality texts.
When incorporating these books in the classroom, I alway saw an increase in student engagement. Students would even read these stories during their independent reading time after we had read them as a whole class. Reading and having experiences with diverse exceptional texts can help ignite our student's passion for reading!
-
The Classroom Bookshelf (http://www.theclassroombookshelf.com/)
-
Interesting Nonfiction for Kids (I.N.K) (http://inkthinktank.org/)
-
School Library Journal (https://www.slj.com/)
-
The Children's Book Cooperative (https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/)
-
Living Barefoot (https://www.barefootbooks.com/live-barefoot/livingbarefootclub/)
Blogs that Feature High Quality Texts
ILA Standards for Classroom Teachers
-Standard 1: Foundational Knowledge: Candidates demonstrate knowledge of the major theoretical, conceptual, and evidence-based foundations of elementary/intermediate literacy and language and the ways in which they interrelate.
-Standard 2: Curriculum and instruction:Candidates apply foundational knowledge to critically examine elementary/intermediate literacy curricula; design, adapt, implement, and evaluate instructional approaches and materials to provide a coherent and motivating literacy program that addresses both general and discipline-specific literacy processes.
-Standard 4: Diversity and equity: Candidates examine their own culture and beliefs; set high expectations for their students; learn about and appreciate the cultures of their students, families, and communities to inform instruction.
-Standard 5: Learners and the Literacy Environment: Candidates apply knowledge of learner development and learning differences to create a positive, literacy-rich learning environment anchored in digital and print literacies.