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nonfiction in the classroom
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From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:20:32 -0600
Some thoughts on nonfiction (as I cover a study hall!):
For me, in my work with 7th and 8th graders in English class, it's never a matter of finding just the one right book. There's the book we read together, books I search out to use as resources for the class, and books I read just for my own enlightenment. So, when I teach the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, for example, I have a large collection of nonfiction to draw upon. So, besides learning the story of Frederick Douglass, they seeing the art of Tom Feelings in The Middle Passage, the archaeology of the African burial ground in New York City in Joyce Hansen's and Gary McGowen's Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence, tie in some music through i see the rhythm by Totomi Igus and Michelle Wood, and read actual slave narratives from Julius Lester's To Be A Slave. The various Amistad books are excellent, too, as Monica and others have pointed out. And there are lots of good fictional biographies/picture books such as Deborah Hopkinson's Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt to read aloud, and many novels, books of poetry, etc. We are in the fortunate position to have a dilemma: how to choose from such a wealth of excellent resources. You have to have a balance in your program or else it's too easy to let a project become amorphous and grow beyond what's manageable.
The same is true of any unit. I could easily teach a year-long program about the Holocaust, starting with Elie Wiesel's Night, supported by a huge number of excellent resources. It is both a pleasure and a challenge to try to keep up with even a portion of what is out there in memoirs and novels about the Holocaust, choosing two or three books that best support the project with the particular students I have.
Book Links magazine is a good place to begin in creating projects like these. The bibliographic articles they have done on all sorts of history topics are great resources. This is pretty much how I create a unit in my classes. Start with a good book --novel or nonfiction -- and look for supporting materials, often nonfiction, to provide the context. I'm currently putting together a mini-unit on the 1st amendment. We'll start with Richard Peck's The Last Safe Place On Earth, then read various Ray Bradbury short stories that deal with thought control (along with Vonnegut's
"Harrison Bergeron" and Rodman Philbrick's "The Last Book in the Universe" in Michael Cart's Tomorrowland, and now a novel of the same title) , and go on to The Giver. I'm in the process of deciding on the nonfiction resources to tie in. Kathleen Krull's new book on the Bill of Rights will be one of my guides. And I'll put together a collection of free reading books on the theme. Pat Scales's article a while back in Book Links is what got me started along these lines.
It's all in the name of encouraging the kinds of reading, writing, thinking, and imagining that students of any age might be doing, in the books we read together and in the independent reading students do.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School 211 Ensworth Avenue Nashville, TN 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Fri 17 Nov 2000 12:20:32 PM CST
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:20:32 -0600
Some thoughts on nonfiction (as I cover a study hall!):
For me, in my work with 7th and 8th graders in English class, it's never a matter of finding just the one right book. There's the book we read together, books I search out to use as resources for the class, and books I read just for my own enlightenment. So, when I teach the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, for example, I have a large collection of nonfiction to draw upon. So, besides learning the story of Frederick Douglass, they seeing the art of Tom Feelings in The Middle Passage, the archaeology of the African burial ground in New York City in Joyce Hansen's and Gary McGowen's Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence, tie in some music through i see the rhythm by Totomi Igus and Michelle Wood, and read actual slave narratives from Julius Lester's To Be A Slave. The various Amistad books are excellent, too, as Monica and others have pointed out. And there are lots of good fictional biographies/picture books such as Deborah Hopkinson's Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt to read aloud, and many novels, books of poetry, etc. We are in the fortunate position to have a dilemma: how to choose from such a wealth of excellent resources. You have to have a balance in your program or else it's too easy to let a project become amorphous and grow beyond what's manageable.
The same is true of any unit. I could easily teach a year-long program about the Holocaust, starting with Elie Wiesel's Night, supported by a huge number of excellent resources. It is both a pleasure and a challenge to try to keep up with even a portion of what is out there in memoirs and novels about the Holocaust, choosing two or three books that best support the project with the particular students I have.
Book Links magazine is a good place to begin in creating projects like these. The bibliographic articles they have done on all sorts of history topics are great resources. This is pretty much how I create a unit in my classes. Start with a good book --novel or nonfiction -- and look for supporting materials, often nonfiction, to provide the context. I'm currently putting together a mini-unit on the 1st amendment. We'll start with Richard Peck's The Last Safe Place On Earth, then read various Ray Bradbury short stories that deal with thought control (along with Vonnegut's
"Harrison Bergeron" and Rodman Philbrick's "The Last Book in the Universe" in Michael Cart's Tomorrowland, and now a novel of the same title) , and go on to The Giver. I'm in the process of deciding on the nonfiction resources to tie in. Kathleen Krull's new book on the Bill of Rights will be one of my guides. And I'll put together a collection of free reading books on the theme. Pat Scales's article a while back in Book Links is what got me started along these lines.
It's all in the name of encouraging the kinds of reading, writing, thinking, and imagining that students of any age might be doing, in the books we read together and in the independent reading students do.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School 211 Ensworth Avenue Nashville, TN 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Fri 17 Nov 2000 12:20:32 PM CST
