Show Up for Young Readers with Diverse Texts in Classroom Libraries
Facilitated by Stephanie Hampton
Classroom Libraries Training 2020
Hello!
Besides being an educator, I am…
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Hello, nice to meet you!
I am…
Woman (she/her), Wife, Italian, Dog Mom, Sister, Friend, Daughter, Blogger, Writer/Poet, Bullet Journal Fan, Hair Bun, House-Fixer Enthusiast, Introvert, Reader, Lover of Sci-Fi and Crime Shows, Yogi, Born and Raised in Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Promise Graduate, Bronco and Spartan,Bachelors and Masters, and more
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Pax by Sara PennyPacker
I am also a book!
A book I see myself in is...
Opening Scene: The first scene in this book is heartbreaking! We meet Peter and his fox, Pax. He has had Pax since he was a kit, and now he has to release him into the wild because his father is going to war. The car drives off...and everyone is crying.
Favorite Quote: “So which is it? You going back for your home or for your pet? They're the same thing, Peter said, the answer sudden and sure, although a surprise to him.”
What I Loved About This Book: Peter and Pax are on the same journey, but it rotates perspectives. We get to understand heartache on both sides-from Peter’s point of view and Pax’s point of view. You learn a lot about the nature of people from this book, and what we are all looking for in life.
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Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop says...
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Mirrors
“When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror...Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us and in that reflection we see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books” -Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, Original Essay 1990
Windows and Sliding Glass Doors
“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange” -Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, Original Essay 1990
“These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author” --Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, Original Essay 1990
Introduce Yourself with a Book!
Intersectionality Mirror Book Warmup
Participant Warm-Up: Choose ONE book that represents a mirror reflection of who you are.
Pull the image of your book up on your chromebook. Get ready to share.
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Introduce Your “Mirror” Book
“And if my body is a temple like my mama say, then it could be possible that my body could be a library” -Jason Reynolds, American Library Association, 2019
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Today’s Outcomes
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Assess your own classroom library.
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Strategize on how to build your classroom library and how to make your classroom library a useful tool for instruction.
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Show up for reading through lesson planning, strategies, instruction, and mindset.
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Questions You May Be Thinking
How do I add more diverse texts to my classroom?
How do I connect diverse texts to my curriculum?
What activities do I already do in the classroom that could benefit from adding diverse texts?
How do I find time to read current, relevant, diverse texts?
How do I “do” CRE in my classroom?
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Join the Classroom
Diverse Classroom Library Training Google Classroom-Elementary and Middle School
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ASSESS YOUR ROOM
Fill Out Your Classroom Library Assessment
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TURN AND TALK
Diverse texts are a tool to access the personal backgrounds and natural connections our students have to our course material.
Questions to ponder:
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My Reflections
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Primary References:
Minor, Cornelius. We Got This.: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be. Heinemann, 2019.
Hammond, Zaretta, and Yvette Jackson. Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. Corwin, a SAGE Company, 2015.
Emdin, Christopher. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood ... and the Rest of Y'all Too Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education. Beacon Pr, 2017.
Mr. Minor says...
On Why Children Learn and Engagement
“Understanding why children choose to learn is one of the first things that I can learn from students. Fortunately for us, children choose to learn for the same intrinsic reasons that adults can choose to learn. I choose to learn something because it...
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Dr. Emdin says...
Dr. Christopher Emdin’s Reality Pedagogy
“When students see themselves in the curriculum, they develop stronger relationships with both their teachers and peers—and with the content as well.” (Emdin, 2016).
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Ms. Hammond says...
On the Science Behind Making Learning Personal
“When the brain encounters information, especially during the act of reading and learning, it’s searching for and making connections to what is personally relevant and meaningful” (vi).
“Cultural relevance is the key to enabling the cognitive processing necessary for learning and imperative for engaging and unleashing intellectual potential for students of color” (vii).
“But for some, culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is simply an engagement strategy designed to motivate racially and culturally diverse students. It seems simplistic to think that students who feel marginalized, academically abandoned, or invisible in the classroom would reengage simply because we mention tribal kinds of Africa or Aztec empires of Mexico in the curriculum or use “call and response” chants to get students pumped up. For some, it is seen as a ‘bag of tricks” with magical properties that don’t allow us to really know how it works. Because it seems so mysterious, many teachers don’t bring the same rigor, consistency, and serious implementation to it as they do with other instructional practices” (3).
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(Data from University of Wisconsin-Madison, published by the School Library Journal)
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(Data from Lee & Low Books, Diversity Baseline Survey 2019 Results)
Walter Dean Myers said...
“Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” by Walter Dean Myers, New York Times, 2014
“Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books? Where are the future white personnel managers going to get their ideas of people of color? Where are the future white loan officers and future white politicians going to get their knowledge of people of color? Where are black children going to get a sense of who they are and what they can be?”
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BUILD YOUR LIBRARY
Book Deserts
Many children—disproportionately children of color—live in book deserts without meaningful access to books in their schools or communities. Differential book access affects the level of education children attain, which has long-term consequences for their health, productivity, and quality of life. The plight of rural and urban book deserts must be addressed before we see significant growth in American school children’s performance on standardized tests. Instead of spending money on things that don’t work, why don’t we spend it on books and do everything we can to get these books into kids’ hands?
DESERTIFICATION BY DONALYN MILLER
POSTED BY DONALYN ON APRIL 9, 2017 IN READING LIVES
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NCTE
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Building a Classroom Library
Where Do I Get Diverse Texts?
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Grant Writing
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Grant Quick Tips
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Elevator Pitch
I am…
I help…
We do…
So they can...
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Why/Impact
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Project Narration
Asset Framing
Evidence of Success
Sustainability
Replication
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Maintaining a Classroom Library
Colby Sharp’s Classroom Library
5th Grade, Parma, MI
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Organization
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Checkout Systems
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SHOW UP FOR READING
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What do we mean by show up?
Tricia Ebarvia in her blog post, “How do we show up?” cites a moment of epiphany when a fellow teacher stated: “Your racial consciousness determines how you show up” -Tony Hudson, an Equity Transformational Specialist from the Pacific Education Group (PEG).
In addition to our racial consciousness, how does our consciousness as a reader determine how we present ourselves to students?
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Read and Respond
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Tricia Ebarvia says...
”Why Diverse Texts Are Not Enough,” Tricia Ebarvia, JULY 18, 2019
“To be clear, including more diverse voices in our curriculum is an important, necessary step. Our students deserve windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors, to borrow language from scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, that represent the richness of their own lives and the lives of others. But our efforts cannot end there. We must interrogate not just what we teach but how and why.”
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#DisruptTexts
More Than What We Teach
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“As literacy teachers, we have one of the most powerful resources available to fight against hate and bias: We have stories. The stories-and, more important, the counter-stories, the counternarratives-that we choose to share with students are instrumental in helping all our students be seen and heard, appreciated and understood.” -Tricia Ebarvia, “Why Diverse Texts Are Not Enough”
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Story-ify Your Content
Again, why diverse texts?
Ms. Zaretta Hammond On Stories...
“Selective vulnerability is best employed through storytelling. Turns out that storytelling is one of the universal ways people connect and get to know each other around the world. The human brain is hardwired for stories...For example, when we tell stories to others, the brains of the people listening synchronize with the storyteller’s brain. Uri Hasson and his colleagues from Princeton (2010) found that similar brain regions in the prefrontal cortex were activated in both the listener and the storyteller. He calls it “neural coupling,” similar to what mirror neurons do” (80).
“You can scaffold students into the process by providing the key ideas, words, or concepts from a unit and asking them to weave them together in a coherent, cogent narrative. “Story-ifying” will help students work through the four cognitive routines: Identifying similarities and differences, finding relationships, noticing how things fit together whole-to-part in a system, and recognizing point of view” (135).
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Stuck in Content? Insert Stories.
(“One More Really Big Reason to Read Stories to Children,” Psychology Today, 2014)
“Stories are ships on which we sail oceans of imagination”
-Padma Venkatraman, Middle-Grade Author and Oceanographer
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Reading On Purpose
Reading Options
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Other Activities
Other activities:
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Book Talks
“If you ain’t book talkin’, what are you doing?”
Chad Everett
For Everyone by Jason Reynolds
Opening Scene: Jason Reynolds writes a letter-in-verse to the dreamer, the thinker, and the doer. He is quick to say he doesn’t know everything, and he thought he would have made it by now.
Opening Lines: “Dear dreamer, This letter is being written from a place of raw honesty and love but not at all a place of expertise on how to make your dreams come true. I don’t know nothing about that” (3-7).
Favorite Quote:”One thing I am certain of is that this road less traveled has in fact been traveled by more suckers than you think. All of us out here, slumped over wearing weird fake broken smiles, trying to avoid the truth: That we all got road rage” (26-29).
What I Loved About This Book: This book is a four-part mastery of motivation. It hums to you in a way that says keep believing in yourself, and it shines light on places you may not want to look. It is a quick read that I grab for again and again.
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Mentor Texts
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
Book Talks!
Mentor Sentence for Present Participles (Verbs ending in -ING)
PLEASE COPY THIS SENTENCE DOWN IN YOUR NOTEBOOK:
“In the driveway, I am shaking and baking” (Alexander 59).
Today, we will write like Kwame Alexander.
Goal: Use helping verbs as sidekicks to give our sentences some action!
Get ready to choose your verbs. Then write your sentence at the bottom of your handout. Let’s share out!
Mrs. Hampton’s Examples:
In the jungle, I am hiding and finding beautiful flowers.
In the classroom, I am teaching and growing.
In the choir, I am singing my heart out and captivating my audience.
Sentence Frame:
In the _(place)___, I am (verb with -ing)_____________and (verb with -ing)__________.
Verb + -ING List: Choose TWO from the list below!
Sentence Frame: In the _(place)___, I am (verb with -ing)_______and(verb with -ing) __________.
Announcing Finding Loving Shopping
Asking Grabbing Noticing Spilling
Baking Giving Passing Talking
Battling Helping Playing Telling
Bolting Hugging Poking Thinking
Calling Ignoring Promising Wanting
Climbing Imagining Questioning Waving
Competing Jumping Robbing Wishing
Delivering Kicking Running Working
Destroying Leaving Screaming Yelling
YOU ARE AN AUTHOR! Partner Share.
Example: In the jungle, I am hiding and finding beautiful flowers.
TWO CLASSROOM EXAMPLES
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“Using Reading and Writing to Do Math” -Edutopia, 2019
Steps for Problem-Solving
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“Teaching STEM With Hip-Hop: STEM to STEAM” -Dr. Chris Emdin, 2015
Literacy and Classroom Engagement
STOP AND THINK
What strategies did both of these classrooms use to engage their students?
What strategies did both of these classrooms use to teach comprehension?
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Any Questions?
Let’s share.
Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at @hamptonsp@kalamazoopublicschools.net
Social Media: @writingmindset
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