Diverse Early Literacy Books for Social Studies by Jane M. Gangi

Note: This is a bibliography of early literacy books focused on social studies topics and the description of a way to share texts (Check It Out! Circle) that my friend and colleague Jane M. Gangi created and presented at a education conference a few weeks ago.  Jane's are of expertise is in children's literature. She is the author of numerous articles and three professional books including:

Genocide in Contemporary Children's and Young Adult Literature: Cambodia to Darfur (Children's Literature and Culture)   (Routledge, 2014)
(You can read more about this text here.)


Deepening Literacy Learning: Art and Literature Engagements in K-8 Classrooms (Teaching-Learning Indigenous, Intercultural Worldviews) 



Encountering Children's Literature: An Arts Approach. 

Diverse Books for Young Children: Connecting Social Studies and Literacy

Presenter:

Jane M. Gangi: jane.gangi@msmc.edu

Division of Education

Member, Collaborative for Equity in Literacy Learning (CELL)

Hudson Hall, 109D

Mount Saint Mary College

330 Powell Ave

Newburgh, NY 12550

Phone: 845-569-3529

AGENDA

Mirror and Window Books and the Proficient Reader Research

Check It Out Circle: Children’s Literature and the Social Studies. Sibberson and Szymusiak, (2003):

A Check It Out! Circle is another way to support book choice.  We use this activity when we want to highlight a certain author or genre.  If we notice that very few students have read a biography, for example, we will organize a…Circle to introduce them to some biographies that we hope they will choose to read independently. 

Before we begin a …Circle, we collect the same number of books in the genre we are highlighting….as there are students in the class.  Then we have the children sit in a large circle on the floor.  We walk around the circle, give each child a book, and ask them to silently preview the book.  After just a minute, we ring a bell and have the children pass the book to the child on their right.  We continue doing this until every child has had a chance to briefly look at each book.  We limit the amount of time because it gives students just enough time to find something interesting, but not enough time for them to read the books.  As a result, they are often eager to get their hands on the books that particularly interested them.

Following the activity, we usually ask two questions: “Which books did you see that you want to go back to during independent reading time?” and “How did you go about previewing the book in such a short time?” (p. 95)

C3 FRAMEWORK FOR THE SOCIAL STUDIES. Retrieved from http://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/c3/C3-Framework-for-Social-Studies.pdf

Civics: Civic and Political Institutions; Participation and Deliberation; Processes, Rules and Laws

 ¡Si, Se Puede! Yes, We Can! Janitor Strike in L.A by Diana Cohn; Francisco Delgado, illustrator

from The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Feed Families 

Economics: Decision Making; Exchange and Markets; National and Global Economy

1. Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo by Kevin Lewis, illustrated by Daniel Kirk
2. The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Sylvie Daigneault
3. If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People (2^nd ed.) by David J. Smith, illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong
4. The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Feed Families by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore
5. One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes
6. Quinito’s Neighborhood/El vecíndario de Quinito by Ina Cumpiano, illustrated by José Ramírez
7. Seeds of Change by Jen Cullerton Johnson, illustrated by Sonia Lynn Sadler

from How Far Do You Love Me? 

Geography: Spatial Views; Place, Regions and Culture; Population; Global Interconnections

1. Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson
2. Amazing Faces, poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrated by Chris Soentpiet
3. Animal Poems of the Iguazú/Animalario del Iguazú by Francisco Alarcón, illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez
4. Bein’ with You This Way by W. Nikola-Lisa, illustrated by Michael Bryant
5. Celebrate! Connections Among Cultures by Jan Reynolds
6. Efraín of the Sonoran Desert by Amalia Astorga, as told to Gary Paul Nabhan, illustrated by Janet K. Miller
7. A Full Moon Is Rising, poems by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Julia Cairns
8. The Gum Chewing Rattler by Joe Hayes, illustrated by Antonio Castro L.
9. How Far Do You Love Me? by Lulu Delacre
10. Listen to the Desert/Oye al desierto by Pat Mora, illustrated by Francisco X. Mora

from Shi-shi-etko 

11. Shi-shi-etko by Nicola I. Campbell, illustrated by Kim LaFave

12. Talking Walls by Margy Burns Knight, illustrated by Anne Sibley O’Brien

13. Tan to Tamarind, poems by Malathi Michelle Iyengar, illustrated by Jamel Aikb
By Jan Reynolds:

1. Amazon Basin  
2. Down Under
3. Far North
4. Frozen Land
5. Himalaya
6. Mongolia
7. Sahara

 

from Yum!¡MmMm! Qué rico¡ America’s Sproutings 

History: Change, Continuity, and Context; Perspectives; Sources and Evidence; Causation and Argumentation

1. Drumbeat in Our Feet by Patricia A. Keeler and Júlio T. Leitão
2. My Papa Diego and Me: Memories of My Father and His Art/Mi papa Diego y yo/Recuerdos de mi padre y su arte  by Guadalupe Rivera Marín and Diego Rivera
3. Yum!¡MmMm! Qué rico¡ America’s Sproutings by Pat Mora, illustrated by Rafael López

 

Bebop Books Leveled Books: https://www.leeandlow.com/imprints/2

Resources for Children’s and Young Adult Literature: http://cell.msmc.edu/literature/

There are multiple resources for young children at this site.

Publishers of Multicultural Books:

Lee & Low Books: https://www.leeandlow.com/

Cinco Puntos: http://www.cincopuntos.com/

Groundwood Books: http://groundwoodbooks.com/

Reference

Sibberson, F & Szymusiak, K.  (2003).  Still learning to read: Teaching students in grades 3-6.  Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Critical Differences in Effective Primary Grade Classrooms

My company, Blueprints for Learning, currently has early literacy projects in more than a dozen inner city schools in the northeast (US). One critical difference I find in effective primary grade classrooms is that these classrooms have been established by their teachers for learner independence.  

These rooms hum with meaningful learning.

At these schools and in these classrooms, children learn well and independently (no waiting for the teacher) due to:

• daily and known routines that are developmentally appropriate, 
• appropriate and available materials, 
• managed choice of tasks and texts ,
• sustained opportunities for critical feedback from teacher, peers, and in connected classrooms--a wider audience

In exemplary classrooms, teachers are also leveraging the power of connected learning and their learners are using handheld devices to connect with others, produce and consume texts in order to develop foundational literacy skills, dispositions, and strategies.

We are finding that a critical first step is to design and enact learning spaces where independence can be realized.

10 Essential Early Literacy Videos

What Are We Learning Today?: Setting Goals to Improve Student Learning

Interactive Writing in Kindergarten: Sharing the Pen to Promote Engagement

Interactive Writing

Literacy Centers: Promoting Literacy Independence in Kindergarten

Sand Table and Flannel Board: Contexts for Retelling Stories

The Drama Center: Building Oral Language and More (The Little Red

Hen Makes a Pizza)

Favorite Read Alouds in Kindergarten: Strategies for Fiction and Nonfiction Books

Interactive Word Wall: Spelling High Frequency Words in First and Second Grade 

Reading and Writing Stories: "Say Something" about Comprehension Strategies

Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in Second Grade   

Thinking about Young Learners and iPads

Last week I was modeling a specific type of early literacy lesson with two young children who are entering second grade and whose letter identification skills are quite poor.  Neither can identify by sound, word or name most of the letters. For one child the lesson resonated and she made steady improvement exiting reading a very early text with one-to-one matching and identifying and writing letters.  For the other child, she continued to struggle throughout the lesson and demonstrated what appeared to be an inability to actually write many letters even with a model in front of her and to have confusion about letter direction.  For example, one task she did was to put together a name puzzle.  The name was her own and she had an envelope that had her name on it as a reference if needed.  She did put all of the letters in correct order, but half were upside down.  When I had her check, she was able to correct the direction issues by checking her work against the model.

This is a 20-minute lesson that asks children to:

1. match a handful of magnetic letters to an alphabet card
2. rearrange a name puzzle
3. sort pictures by initial sound (two sounds are used)
4. look through a very early reader and tell what is happening on each page, chorally read the text, and then try reading it on their own with my support
5. participate in a brief interactive writing task and help to write a sentence related to the letter, sound, and book tasks

After the lesson, the principal and teacher who were observing and I discussed what we thought might be happening and what next steps to take. As we were talking I remembered that I had an iPad with me and loaded on it were two apps that are excellent for letter tracing and connecting letters and sounds. Although the child yawned mightily throughout the earlier lesson, I wondered how she might fare doing similar tasks but doing them on an iPad.

Screenshot from Alphabet Tracing app.

I asked the child if she would be interested in trying letter tracing on an iPad. She had never seen an iPad before (nor had any of the children in the classroom), but she was eager to try. I opened Alphabet Tracing, a free app, and showed her how it worked, which took less than a minute. She began to trace letters not paying attention to the guide as she worked.  I showed her letter formation (directionality to start) and pointed out the train that showed which way to trace on the guide letter.  She noticed it but did not pay attention to it.

After several letters she hit the back key and returned the beginning of the alphabet.  This time, I could see that she was watching the train to see what direction she should move her finger.  She was able to trace more than half of the letters by checking the reference and then copying it.  What felt significant is that she worked independently for about 15 minutes and was very successful. When she next looked up, I asked her if she would like to try a different letter tracing app that would ask her to say the sound of the letter as she traced and the letter name.  She said yes and I opened Intro to Letters (Montessori). In using this app, she learned that she needed to closely approximate the outline of the letter in order to be successful.  She quickly acclimated and was saying the letter sound, name and tracing it like a pro. She worked steadily for another 15 minutes completely focused on the tasks and met with much success.

I had a letter tracing book (upper and lowercase alphabet & picture) with me and asked her if she would like me to leave it so she could practice tracing using the book.  She said she would.

I am still thinking about the lesson, her response to it and her subsequent work using an iPad.  I am not sure what to make of all of it, really.  I will see her again this coming week and look forward to seeing what next occurs. Will keep you posted.