For Teachers

From the Classroom – Building Knowledge with Text Sets

By on December 23, 2024   /   For Teachers, From the Classroom  

Welcome to one of our newest features – From the Classroom – sharing tips and tricks for integrating a love of middle grade books and authors into your classroom. This month we are looking at using text sets to build knowledge.

What are Text Sets?

A text set is a collection of sources that support a common theme, issue, or topic. This can include fiction of all types (books, short stories, picture books, etc.), non-fiction titles, poetry, images, newspaper articles, songs, interviews, and other primary and secondary sources. The goal is to move from a textbook or one text only classroom to a multi-text classroom where the focus becomes studying concepts more in-depth to help build knowledge rather than the content of just one text. This always reminds me of the “if you liked this book, you would enjoy reading this book” lists and infographics you might see at the library or online, but instead the goal is to be deliberate about helping our students become mini-experts on a topic!

Mary Ann Cappiello and Erika Thulin Dawes recommend the following steps to build text sets:

  • Start with the content – What do the students need to know/what concept do you need to teach? It’s great to have a middle grade text serve as your anchor for the text set.
  • Build the text set – Find all sorts of material that will support the concept you will be teaching.
  • Organize the texts – What will you read first? Second? At the same time? Why?
  • Responding to the Text  – What will you have the students do before/during/after reading?

A great place to start is with your standards to figure out what topics or concepts to teach and what students should know and be able to do with these topics and concepts.

Sample Text Sets

Below are a fiction and a non-fiction text set for any middle grade classroom.

Fiction

Studying fictional characters in class? Why not change it up and study villains instead of the usual boring, goody two-shoes heroes! Think of all the conversations you could have about villain character motivations, villain character’s impacting the plot, irony, and more. You could probably build a villain text set around anything, but since it’s the holiday season, I thought a great picture book tie-in would be How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Use that in conjunction with a clip of Scar’s song “Be prepared” from the Lion King and examine the lyrics, specifically. Finally, read any great middle grade novel with a great villain (I chose Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer), and you have a high-interest text set about villains!

cover of How the grinch stole christmas by Dr. Suess

 

cover of artemis fowl by eoin colfer

Non-Fiction

I recently picked up Dan Sasuweh Jone’s latest Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Boarding Schools. What’s great about middle grade non-fiction books is they come complete with a well-researched bibliography which are perfect for creating text sets. Taking from this bibliography, a great text set could include reading portions if not all of the book, examining a picture of a student before and after they entered a school, and reading a newspaper article about the federal government’s response.

cover of Stealing little moon by Dan Sasuweh Jones

Main Text

picture of Hastiin To-Haali before he entered school and then tom torlino after being in schol

Picture of Hastiin To-Haali before entering school and as Tom Torlino after being in school

picture of chemawa cemetery in Oregon

Article: Interior Department leaders decry traumatic legacy of federal boarding schools for Native American children by Rob Manning

Don’t forget to check out the National Park Service’s amazing article for teaching ideas (complete with standards, objectives, and activities) about this topic!

Bonus: Need help with students who might not be reading at grade level? Check out the Middle School TopicReads at TextProject.org

Where to Start?

Take a look at some of the many books recommended here on the Mixed Up Files and then start finding other texts, resources, poetry, images, and primary and secondary sources to support your topic and standards.

In the comments, share your favorite text sets you already use in the classroom or are thinking about using in the future!

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Diversity in MG Lit #50 December 2024

By on December 18, 2024   /   Articles, Diversity, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers  
Friends, I started writing these Diversity in MG Lit posts six years ago in the fall of 2018. Today marks my 50th post. I wanted to reflect on how far we’ve come and where we might best spend our energy in support of diverse books in the future.
The Cooperative Children’s Book Center has been carefully and exhaustively compiling data on the racial and cultural composition of children’s book characters and children’s book authors and illustrators. Their data shows broad and consistent advances in the number of children’s books both by diverse creators and about diverse characters. The improvement has been particularly strong for Black, Asian, and Latine creators and characters. Each of those categories include more than 10% of the children’s books studied. Indigenous American, Pacific Islander and Arab titles saw a doubling over the last six years though the overall numbers are lower than 10%.
Equally encouraging is the recognition diverse titles receive.  Taking the window of 2018-2024, all the National Book Award winners but one were diverse. And in the ten years before that (2007-2017) six of the ten winners were Black, Indigenous, or Asian.
The American Library Association has many book awards meant to elevate diverse books and their creators. But if we only look at the Newbery Award which does not make race or ethnicity of the author a qualification, all but one of the Newbery medals from 2018 to 2024 went to diverse authors–86%. Each Newbery committee can select as many as 5 honor books in a year. There were 26 honor books and 77% of them went to diverse authors.
This is all very encouraging and has come about due to the efforts of groups like We Need Diverse Books which formed to address this issue in 2014. It’s worth remembering that teachers, librarians, and independent booksellers have been pushing for greater diversity for many decades before social media brought the issue to wider attention.
We have much to celebrate as we complete the circle of another year. And yet there has been a dramatic rise in book banning and virtually all of it targets books for young readers by diverse creators and about the diverse experience. The LGBT+ experience has been a particular target of book banning.
Many anticipate that these bans will increase as the Trump administration takes office. Some states, most recently New Jersey, have passed laws to prevent book bans. Local action does seem to be the most effective deterrent. Book banning is broadly unpopular even among conservatives. And most book banning attempts ultimately fail, though not without causing disruption and heart ache. For my part I plan to pay close attention to my local school board and encourage my state representatives to enact anti-book ban legislation.
I have a far bigger concern than the bans though. Most diverse books are bought by teachers for their in-class collection or by librarians for school and public libraries. The children who need diverse books the most rely almost entirely on these free access opportunities. However, school and library funding has been decreasing for years. The most diverse communities have little or no access to an independent bookstore leaving them only the smaller inventory at big box stores. For example, I work at a medium-sized indy in Portland. Our middle grade section holds hundreds of individual MG titles. By contrast the local Target typically has no more than 30 MG book choices.
In some ways because book bans are emotionally-laden events, they distract from a far more dangerous agenda. Project 2025 would destroy public education as we know it.  Among many objectives, it calls for the elimination of Title 1 funding and Head Start programs. Those programs make literacy possible for millions of low income and mostly diverse children. If those children never learn to read, it will not matter how many diverse books we create for them.
So although I will gladly continue to trumpet the arrival of new diverse books for middle grade readers, the lion’s share of my attention will go toward protecting public education and public libraries for all children. Our teachers and librarians and all of our children have never needed our support more.
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Creative Ways to Keep Kids Reading During the Holidays

By on November 11, 2024   /   For Parents, For Teachers  
Happy Holidays

The holidays are a busy time of the year, and we often forget to do the things that we love the most–like reading. Here are some fun ways to promote reading during these busy weeks. You can send these suggestions home with your students or do this with your own family. You can start anytime, but I find Thanksgiving break through New Year’s Day always works well.

Embrace The Joy of a Read Aloud

book with headphones on it

Listen to an audiobook on all those drives while you are out working on your holiday to-do list. Or while baking in the kitchen together or while wrapping presents, crafting, etc. You could also have somone in your family read out loud. Someone could be the designated reader, or you could take turns. All of my kids ages 4-15 love listening to books read out loud! You could also have books that you read every holiday. Many years we take turns reading A Christmas Carol out loud. My husband teases me that I always fall asleep, but its really only sometimes and he does have such a soothing reading voice lol, and most importantly it doesn’t change the memory I have of the moments.

 

Holiday Count Down

stack of wrapped books

You can choose how many days you are going to count down. Wrap a book for each day, and either take turns opening the packages or have enough books for everyone to open their own each night. Many people do this with holiday picture books, but you can also select a book that is the right reading level for the recipient. And no need to break the bank here. You can get used books or library books (assuming you can check them out for the duration of the countdown). My family has a stack of Christmas books that we pull out each year and we buy one new one every year to add to the pile. The kids enjoy unwrapping one each night and they know certain books are certain sizes so they have fun trying to unwrap a desired book or find the new one. I am of the opinion that you are never too old to enjoy a good picture book. Just like the above suggestion, no one is ever too old to listen to someone read a book out loud.

 

 

Read the book/Watch the Movie

Read a book together and then watch the movie together. This is one of my family’s favorites. There is always extra motivation to participate when kids know that they get to do a movie night after you finish the book. I do have to tease one of my reluctant readers that they don’t have to listen to me read, but they don’t get to watch the movie with us if they don’t.

Host a Read-A-Thon

family reading together Get everyone together for a read-a-thon. We started this tradition a couple of years ago on my birthday. Everyone gets a new book, and we read and eat, read and eat, read and eat. Everyone in the family loves this! Even my reluctant reader looks forward to these events, although it certainly helps that his new book is always a desired graphic novel.

 

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Remember the words of the song, “there will be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories…” Ask your kids to come up with their own scary story. Then sit around in a cozy setting, maybe with the lights dimmed by the light of a glowing fire (or one on the TV if you don’t have a fireplace). Scary stories are often a great way to appeal to reluctant readers. A couple months ago I was interviewing author M.R. Fournet and she was talking about her experience writing middle grade horror. She talked about how so many kids love a good scary story and that they often invent their own just as scary as anything published authors are coming up with. If they don’t want to write their own there are so many great scary stories out there. I remember sitting around at recess taking turns reading Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark when I was a kid. There was a similar book released this year called The Haunted States of America.

Give the Gift of a Graphic Novel

As much as kids love receiving and reading graphic novels, they also find joy in writing them as well. Suggest that they create a graphic novel of their own and gift it to a sibling, friend or parent. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy. My son has a spiral notebook in which he is always drawing boxes to sketch and write his own graphic novels. You could even print out pages of blank boxes and get a simple inexpensive binding done for them after they create the words and images.

Learn About Other Holidays Through Books

When we think of winter holidays we often think of Christmas and Hanukkah, but there are so many more out there to explore. You could learn about Kwanzaa, Diwali, Chinese New Year, etc. There are fun fiction books, like Let It Glow by Marissa Meyer and Joanne Levy, and there are nonfiction books, like A Kids Book About Diwal by Chhavi Arya Bhargava. You can find more bookish ideas in From the Mixed Up Files blog post Holidays are For Books

Reading Challenges

Many kids love the joy of a challenge or competition. Make a game out of reading and see who can get the most in each category. You could have a winner for each category or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places for categories done as a large group, like at school. Prizes can be as simple as bragging rights, certificates, little treats, bookmarks, etc.

Holiday Reading ChallengeHoliday Reading Challenge printable

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