Dr. Marc Aronson

1. Kansas and the Common
Core
Missing Just One Key Ingredient

2. You

3. Let Me Explain
• Me: worked in kids books for 25 years as
editor, publisher, author
• Ph.D. in American History
• Passionate love for nonfiction
• Teach in MLIS program at Rutgers
• Common Core training

4. The Great Paradox

5. School Librarians in Trouble
• A survey by New Jersey School Boards
Association found more than 90 percent of
school districts faced staff layoffs in 2010 due to
state aid cuts, among them a wide range of
district positions including school librarians,
considered teachers under state law. There
were 1,580 certified school librarians, also
known as media specialists, in the state in 2011,
down from 1,850 five years ago, according to
Mike Yaple, spokesman for the New Jersey
School Boards Association.

6. Principals Don’t Understand
• Barbara Stripling, incoming president of
ALA: “Principals don’t understand what a
librarian brings to the position that an aide
or parent volunteer cannot. If libraries are
kept open by volunteers, then they
become little more than warehouses.”

7. A Challenging Time
• Budget cuts
• Effectiveness evaluations
• Internet – “who needs a library?”
• Tablets – “who need a librarian?”
• Challenges and protests – “that book is
inappropriate for my child”; “we don’t
believe in…”

8. And Here Comes CC
• New standards
• Higher standards
• Same kids
• Same principals
• Same parents

9. That Is the Paradox

10. You Need to
• Be at the center of Knowing the Standards
• Be at the center of Implementing Them

11. Flash

12. To Review
• Rationale for CC – you all know, and if you
don’t, Kansas has excellent site to help
• Nature of CC – see above
• Specifically --
http://www.achievethecore.org/files/6213/6
880/2802/2-pager_update_05.16.13.pdf

13. 3 shifts
1. Building knowledge through content-
rich nonfiction
2. Reading, writing, and speaking
grounded in evidence from text, both
literary and informational
3. Regular practice with complex text and
its academic language

14. Three %s
• 50%
• 55%
• 70%

15. What Does This Mean to You?

16. 1
• Building knowledge
• Content-rich
• Nonfiction

18. How Do You

19. Indeed, What Exactly is
• Knowledge?

20. Is Pluto a Planet?

21. Did a Comet End the Age of
Dinosaurs?

22. Do You Believe the Pigs’ Story?

23. Knowledge = No Ledge
• It is not AN answer, it is a process of
knowing, a way of finding, and comparing
answers

24. That Is Your Training
• Look back at my examples: down to
earliest elementary school story time and
up through any every subject, you have
the chance to train young people in how to
build knowledge.

25. “Content-Rich”

26. The OPPOSITE OF
• “Good for reports”

27. Old Need: Quick, Fast and In a
Hurry
• 5 key facts
• Paragraph to paraphrase
• Argument and 3-5 supporting statements

28. Are the Materials You Select and
Share
• Stop signs – here it is, all you need, tied
up neatly with a bow
• Or
• Keys to the journey – here are the tools to
begin your quest, you will discover the
answers in the process of seeking to find
them

29. New Need
• Depth
• Connection
• Links
• Opportunity to extend and expand thinking

31. Who in the school
• Is trained to identify “content rich”
materials?
• Materials that connect?
• Materials that build?
• Materials that require and reward reading
and re-reading?

32. Nonfiction
• Excuse my French
• What the #*!!? Is “nonfiction”?
• What else in life is defined by what it is
not?

33. Is This Right?

34. • NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

35. Who Ever Said
• “Read to enjoy” was different from “read to
learn”?
• Nonfiction could not have “character,
setting, problem, solution”?
• Nonfiction can be “read in any order”?
• And I just argued that knowledge is not
truth, it is a process of seeking truth.

36. Nonfiction Is Confusion
• Dewey confusion: Poetry, Myth, Plays,
Folklore
• Teacher confusion: textbooks; “you have
to read a novel”
• Parent confusion: “I didn’t read nonfiction
as a child”

37. Yet
• Nonfiction now central in every grade
• 50, 55, 70, hike

39. Who In the School
• Knows, should know, or can know what
makes for excellence in nonfiction? Which
authors? Which books? Which traits in
books?
• Traits handout
• How many children’s nonfiction awards
can you name? Circulate every list – show
the school who knows.

40. To Accomplish Goal 1
• The very first shift, your skills and
knowledge are absolutely central.
• Your skills and knowledge.

41. You Cannot Be

42. No

43. Your Job

44. Teachers Do Not Need

45. Teachers Do Need

46. Remember the %s?
• How can the teachers, the admins, the
supervisors even know who is reading what
unless you are all talking?
• Begin the conversations
• Convene the meetings
• Circ the doodle polls
• Create the Google Group
• Suggest materials
• Offer lesson plans (engageny; achievethecore)

47. Make Sure
• Everyone from the parents to the district
superintendent knows who in the school
has a great sense of where to find
materials that “build knowledge through
content-rich nonfiction.”
• Reinforce that with constant updates and
new information.

48. 2
• Reading, writing, speaking based on
evidence in the text.

50. Who In the School
• Is trained to identify the sources used in a
book, article, database, site, song, movie,
manual…?

51. I Do Not Mean

52. I Do Mean
• Compare
• Contrast
• Cluster (*More on this in our workshops)
• The great footnote treasure hunt

53. Why?
• Did the author say this and not that?
• Take this approach and not that?
• Did the author cite this number when that
author used this one?

54. No Source

55. Clusters Reveal
• Nonfiction as choices
• Choices reveal point of view
• Point of view is evidence selected
• Evidence selected can be dissected

56. BUT
• This is NOT the same as saying “it is all
relative”
• In fact it is the opposite.

57. Think of Shopping
• When you compare one shirt against
another
• Do you say “it is all relative, one shirt is as
good as another”?
• Or do you say, “this has these qualities at
that price, versus that one which features
these advantages at that price”?

58. Your Job
• GET TO KNOW YOUR NONFICTION

59. Does
• The book tell you where it gets its
information?
• Citation is only step one – does the author
tell you what s/he thinks of the source
used?
• Does the author describe his/her research
journey?

60. Research Journeys
• Teachingbooks.net
• Author sites
• Author notes

61. Train Students to Read
• Within, around, beyond what the book
claims –

62. Every Day in Every Way
• They should ask:
• “How Do You Know That?” (make a
handout of a “how do you know that” post-
it which they can affix to a book)
• Your library should be bursting with
prompts to get them challenging,
questioning, examining sources

63. 3
• Regular Practice with Complex Text and
Its Academic Language

65. Who In the School
• Knows which books can challenge
readers, and reward their effort?
• Interest trumps age – we all know the
military fan, the hobbyist, the Jane Austen
lover, the math kid who reads adult books
• How can we build that spiral up for every
interest, every level, every reader?

66. You
• Can surround your library with
opportunities to discover new words,
terms, phrases, definitions?
• Even on the windows

67. Your Library Should Be
• Ablaze with clusters of materials
competing to explain something
• Aflame with words and definitions
• Garlanded with reading ladders bringing
students to ever more
challenging/rewarding texts
• Alive with Common Core excitement

68. Kansas and Common Core
Needs