Primary Sources: The Perfect Fit for Informational Texts in the Common Core

I've been focusing a lot lately on informational texts as we move towards the Common Core adoption that is pretty much going into full swing next month, and with good reason. The informational text / literature split is very important moving forward, and failure to give it its proper due and focus heavily on it might actually cost you your job a few years down the road, it IS essential.

At the beginning, I focused a lot on resources. Where can I find informational texts? Are there resources out there for how I can use them properly in my classroom? I've already done some posts about this (see: Informational Text Free Digital Resources and The Informational Text Revolution).

Now, I'm starting to think about the connection to other subject areas (another major key in the CCSS). I've always considered myself a social studies teacher. Yes, I'm an elementary school teacher who teaches, and does a pretty darn good job of teaching, all subject areas. BUT, social studies, especially history, has always been my primary passion, and as my instruction in social studies has evolved to the point of students doing multiple research based projects, presentations, and doing some deep, relevant, technology and personally driven learning about history, geography, sociology, and economics, I've thought about how this all fits the CCSS.

I'm going as far as to say that implementing the CCSS in social studies might be the most exciting part of the CCSS adoption for me personally... well, it's actually pretty close between that and the changes it demands of math instruction from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade.

Social studies instruction is already built for informational text. Honestly, I think most of us in the elementary grades might not go deep enough with our instruction, or with student expectations when doing research, but that's not really the point here.

The point here is simple: Primary sources. The more I've been thinking on this subject and studying it, the more I am convinced that 5th grade students can read and analyze primary sources, and it's exciting. Some of the primary examples I've seen of implementing the CCSS in 5th grade involve reading and analyzing the Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, and other great primary sources.

So with that in mind, I'm going to just throw some information and resources out there that I think can benefit all of us. I'll be listing a quick description of each of these multiple links:

These first links are to research articles, and other descriptions of the importance of primary sources within the CCSS:

• Common Core and ELLS: Key Shifts in Language Arts and Literacy : A quick article that lays out the shifts in moving to the Common Core. It very clearly shows how informational texts and primary sources fit within it all.
• Engaging Students With Primary Sources : A quick blog post from a social studies teacher that quotes the CCSS and clearly explains how primary sources fit in the standards and the classroom.
• Guidelines for Using Primary Sources in the Classroom : A pdf document from The National World War II Museum
• Primary Sources: At the Heart of the Common Core Standards : A great quick article on the Library of Congress website that makes it pretty clear how important primary sources are.
• Five Strategies to Infuse Common Core State Standards With Social Studies Instruction : A great little article that really got me thinking about how I'm going to use primary sources in my own classroom.
• Teaching With Primary Sources Journal : That's right, there's a whole journal on this topic. Check out this pdf, it's powerful stuff. 

Finally, I'm going to end with some resources that can be used with students, or can get you thinking more about using primary sources in your classroom:

• Teaching With Documents, Lesson Plans : From the National Archives website, there's some decent lessons here that really help when developing your own lessons. A good place to start.
• Using Primary Sources in the Classroom : A great pdf document from the Library of Congress that lists some great lesson ideas and some examples.
• Primary Sources for the Classroom : A pdf document from the state of Tennessee that might be my favorite of everything I've listed here. There's some stuff I want my students to read and take to heart as they start researching.
• Library of Congress Common Core Teacher Resource Center : If you don't know about this, wake up! This huge listing of resources can't be ignored. I've been referring to it often. It's growing daily, and there are tons upon tons of great things there, not just for primary sources, for ALL the Common Core.
• Evaluating Sources : Another pdf document, this one is helpful and I think your smarter 5th graders could handle without too many problems.

The Informational Text Revolution: CCSS and the Changes We All Face

This blog is already structured around subjects (the easiest way to reach those subjects is by clicking the name of the subject in the logo at the top of the page). These subjects are laid out by the way I teach them in my classroom... correction the way I taught them in my classroom. The incoming Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will surely have an impact on that.

Now, the CCSS doesn't change the fact that in 5th grade I teach American history and geography. CCSS doesn't change the fact that, here in New Mexico, Social Studies is still covered by the New Mexico Standards and Benchmarks (those standards for Social Studies are available HERE).

The CCSS, after all, cover English Language Arts and Mathematics. An article put out by the New York Times on December 13, 2012 titled Fiction of Non-Fiction? Considering the Common Core's Emphasis on Informational Text asked if the focus on informational texts within the CCSS is detrimental to student learning and love of reading. The article also has a great resource, a quick little questionnaire that can be given to students to see how much they read outside of fictional literature (the answer: probably not much). I know that I'm guilty of having certain books I like to read every year (The Castle in the Attic, The Giver, Holes, and The Lightning Thief to name a few). Well, "the CCSS deemphasizes reading as a personal act and emphasizes textual analysis" (Calkins 2012). And before I dig too deep here, I'm going to just say that the CCSS for literature and informational text are the same, so I'm going to leave it at that.

When it comes to all these informational texts, as I said previously in the post titled Informational Text Free Digital Resources: Gearing up for the Common Core, it's not a matter of many of us going in a direction with literacy that we've never gone before, it's just a more mindful approach to the usage of some strategically chosen texts, and for students to not only be exposed to various texts, but to know their interests and steer them towards informational texts that pique their interests. Also, we have to be mindful of the fact that there is a different between reading for a fact hunt and reading to gain understanding and comprehension of an idea.

BUT, this doesn't mean that informational text reading just becomes about student interest and leave it at that. The research shows that students need to be reading for 90 minutes per day optimally, and that is actual holding a book in their hands reading time (Allington 2005). That's a lot. I usually give my students 25-35 minutes per day of individual reading, and the vast VAST majority of that reading is fiction based literature.

In the coming weeks, I will be laying out how to get started in the reading and writing classrooms (or at least how I will start), including how to assess student readiness and reading levels quickly and efficiently, and how to teach thematically (using The Lightning Thief and teaching Greek Mythology simultaneously for example). I will also be revisiting my units for Social Studies and Science, and focusing them on informational text and writing based approaches. It should be a fun time, but in the end, I feel that it will better prepare me (and anyone who finds these resources and uses them) for what lies ahead.

So stick around, bookmark my page, and come back soon. I'm already getting everything lined up, I just don't like to post things until they're finished. Look for more tomorrow!


WORKS CITED:

Allington, Richard, 2005. What Really Matters for Struggling Readers: Designing Research Based Programs, 2d ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Calkins, Lucy, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman, 2012. Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Informational Text Free Digitial Resources: Gearing up for the Common Core

It's time for Common Core (CCSS) all over the United States, and I for one couldn't be happier. I believe these standards will demand more of students and teachers. The standards will demand a thorough, rigorous, culturally relevant, and college preparatory based education from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. If the standards are taken to heart, if teachers buy in and work to the maximum of their abilities, I have little doubt that education in the United States will not only be the strongest in the world in about 10 years, but will be the strongest educational system the world has seen. No, I'm not just a CCSS fanboy, I was skeptical just like many others, but the more I read, the more I experience, and the more I train both myself and others, the more excited I am to see what my students are capable of, and how hard and how far I can push them.

In the area of literacy, the CCSS moves classrooms into the world of informational reading and writing. In fact, by the 4th grade, students should be reading 50/50, 50% literature and 50% informational. It also demands that informational text goes deeper than just reading for fact finding. I'm guilty of this, I have too often used informational texts as nothing more than a fact hunt to use in research posters or projects, etc. But that's changing, we have to start going deeper.

This post specifically targets informational text resources that are freely available out there. For me personally, I'm able to call upon a teacher resource room with hundreds of informational texts at my school, and an online resource file of informational texts through the Pearson SuccessNet website (something that came with my districts reading adoption a few weeks back). Those two things are definitely not free and if you don't have them, you're probably not getting them anytime soon. So what to do?

Here is a list of some resources out there to get you some informational texts to your students. All you really need here is a computer, BUT, if you'd like to view these on a tablet, or have them in pdf format, that's pretty easy to accomplish (I prefer using pdfs on iPads because students can annotate them within a note taking app, and pdf documents have more of a traditional text "feel" to them.

I will be focusing on the ins and outs of the CCSS and how informational texts fit in the classroom here in the near future, but for today, let's stick to resources, because it's so much easier to jump on board when you know you have something to back you up. So here we go:

• This first link is to a free, browser based web page to pdf converter. It takes the center frame of a web page and saves it in a high quality pdf. I use this when I want students to read something from, for example, the Scholastic for Kids page, and don't want them sifting through text in the midst of side bars and links. Web 2 Pdf. Bookmark it!
• A listing of some good places to start gathering resources, in a post titled Online Sources for Informational Text at a blog called "Hello Literacy." Ignore the link to the web to pdf converter on their page called joliprint, as it is no longer in service.
• While I'm linking to some online listings (of which there are literally thousands upon thousands), there's also this page from the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards website on Informational Text Resources. There's also this post at Eye on Education. Both should give more than a few resources that you'll want to bookmark.
• At the beginning of the second page of this pdf document is multiple links to small readers on the Scholastic website, and they're really pretty good (and already in the correct format). 
• If you're not aware of The Reading and Writing Project, familiarize yourself. They are the group that did Pathways to the Common Core, a great book that's been like a CCSS literacy bible for me personally. On their site, they keep a listing of information texts called Digital Nonfiction Text Sets.