A SHORT TEXT SET AT YOUR FINGERTIPS: PICTURE BOOKS

Written by Julie Wright & Elizabeth Keim

By design, picture books combine the wisdom of the words with the visual power of the illustrations to convey the story.  Beginning with the earliest readers, picture books create building blocks that promote a lifelong love of literacy.  

We love picture books because they can be read multiple times and for multiple reasons. We love to share picture books with students.  Sometimes we read aloud to students for pure pleasure or to showcase fluent reading.  Other times, we use shared reading as a way to dive into a book with students so that we can unpack the story and co-construct meaning together. 

If you liked our Short Texts at Your Fingertips: Picture Books (Fiction), we think you’ll love these ideas about taking one short text about a favorite picture book and expanding it into a short text set.  Just a reminder:  If you don’t have this book at your fingertips, swap it out for one you do have  and imagine other short texts you can pair with it to create a short text set.  

TRY THIS

Step 1

Some children may need some historical background to understand this book.  Consider both the background knowledge the children already have and their developmental age when you introduce this book and texts that support this book in the short text set.

Start by sharing Who Are Your People?, written by Bakari Sellers and illustrated by Reggie Brown.  As you share the book, spend some time talking about the opening page.  Use this excerpt from the book to launch an authentic conversation about the people who have shaped you/us. 

Then, as you read the rest of the book, consider:

• Listening to Who Are Your People? read aloud by the author, Bakari Sellers.

• Leaning into the illustrations (check out Reggie Brown’s website) and references to the figures in the book which includes:

  • Muhammed Ali

  • Maya Angelou

  • Stacey Abrams

  • Martin Luther King, Jr.

  • Harriet Tubman

  • Barack Obama

  • Serena Williams

  • Jackie Robinson

  • Kamala Harris

  • John Lewis

• Talking about the proverb in the book that says, “it takes a village to raise a child.”

• Discussing the call to action at the end of the book that reads, “So what will you dream, and how will you change the world?”

Step 2

Sharing this picture book can lead to other reading, writing, and talking opportunities, especially when you curate a short text set that includes picture books and other short text types like the example below.  Take a look.

Use this short text set during whole group shared reading, with small groups or give students individual opportunities to read the texts to learn more about civil rights, Black heroes and resistance stories.  

In addition, you could:

• Share historical information about McCrory’s Five & Dime lunch counter that prohibited African Americans to eat a hot lunch while dining in and those who resisted these policies.

• Ask students to pick one (or more) of the people found in the book, Black Heroes: A Black History Book for Kids: 51 Inspiring People from Ancient Africa to Modern-Day U.S.A. to read and study.  Each two-page spread includes a quote, an informational piece and illustrations → all short texts within a short text!

• Visit Bryant Terry’s website and learn more about his food, stories and activism.

• Invite your students to answer the question “Who are your people?”for  themselves

  • Depending upon their age and experience many children will start with their family members.  

  • Next, you may want to ask questions and provide resources to encourage going beyond immediate family and thinking about the less personal influences in their lives.

• Check out Social Justice Books for other curated booklists! 

GOING DEEP & WIDE

Looking for more titles and short text types that add to and expand your text set?  Check out these titles:

STAY TUNED!

More about short texts and short text sets coming soon!

RtI Reboot: Asset-Based Approaches to Support ALL Learners

Are your RtI processes focused on students’ assets or deficits?  Is the data you use to make important instructional decisions multi-faceted?  Are you nimble in your approaches and responses to meeting students’ needs?  Curriculum directors, principals, instructional coaches, specialists, and teachers -- please join me as we ask and answer these important questions, and more, when designing instructional responses to support all learners. 

Please share this with others in your network. I hope to see you across the miles!

Register HERE!

What's Our Response?

I’m really excited to announce the release of my new book, What’s Our Response? Creating Systems and Structures to Support ALL Learners! To order, click the image below or use THIS LINK. A BIG thank you to FIRST Educational Resources for the collaboration, support and publication of this book. To order multiple copies of thE book at a discounted price, please send an email to info@firsteducation-us.com.

In education time is never on our side. Too much time is being spent in meetings to discuss students’ deficits and not enough time harnessing their assets. Students come to school each day with individual and collective wants and needs, and it’s our job to harness who and where they are. The RtI process doesn’t have to be a machine model approach with an over-reliance on short sided skill and drill; it can be a dynamic, flexible, in-the-moment response focused on good instruction. This book explores how to keep students at the center of decision-making so that the focus is fidelity to our students instead of fidelity to content, curriculum or program by addressing 5 Problems of Practice with RtI which include:

• We need to break out of the RtI box.

• We need to honor and increase teacher autonomy and agency.

• We need child study teams focused on students’ assets.

• We need to increase students’ thinking and doing time.

• We need good instruction because that makes the best interventions.

This book is filled with dozens of ready-to-use, solution-oriented tools to create asset-based responses that support ALL learners!

I’m currently scheduling consulting for this summer and next school year — both in person and remote options depending on travel restrictions, guidelines, school needs and budgets. Reach out if you’d like to discuss ways I can support your efforts in creating asset-based responses across classrooms and Tiers OR any other professional learning opportunities.

Writing to Make Sense of Our Work in Schools

Over a decade ago, a group of amazing women educators came together to study, define, collaborate, and write about what really matters in education. We spent a year — looking at research, creating sustainable professional learning structures, and naming and practicing our beliefs about learning. The positive implications from that time are deep and wide.

Across our year of study, we each kept a notebook filled with ideas, inquiries, and wonderings. Individually, we made a list of book titles that outlined what mattered most to us. These were books-to-be-written in the years to come. They captured what lived in our heads, hearts and guts and came directly from our years of teaching experiences and our love of education.

While miles separate us today, our work from that year continues to resonate with me. That year shaped me. It nudged me to think differently and it created space for me act bravely. I kept that notebook and continued to add to it. Eventually, the one notebook turned into seven—what fun—and out of those notebooks came writing that has helped me make sense of our work in schools.

I’m excited about some new books that I’ve written and co-written that are coming into the world—each with ties to that first writing crew all those years ago.

Side by Side instructional Coaching: 10 Asset-Based Habits That Spark Collaboration, Risk-Taking, and Growth [Benchmark, 2022]

Audience:  Instructional Coaches, Principals, Curriculum Directors, Department Chairs, Team Leaders [anyone who facilitates learning with and for others]

Gist: Every child deserves a teacher who has a thinking partner.  That’s because our work in schools is too complicated and important to go it alone.  The 10 Habits in this book are designed to create support structures for everyone and led by everyone—administrators, instructional coaches, department chairs, team leaders, grade level colleagues.  The key ingredient is working together in asset-based ways to build capacity across the learning community.  Whether you already have a well-established coaching program or you are trying to build support from the ground up, this book will give you lots of practical ideas, tips, tools, how-to lists, and protocols to support your efforts.  Although this book has a literacy focus, the 10 Habits are transferable to all content areas.

This book unpacks these 10 Habits:

1. Develop Relationships

2. Communicate Plans

3. Define Beliefs

4. Design Goals

5. Co-plan

6. Co-teach

7. Create Tracks

8. Reflect

9. Build Capacity

10. Prioritize Across the Year

BUY THE BOOK HERE!

What’s Our Response? Creating Systems & Structures to Support ALL Learners [FIRST Educational Resources, 2021]

Audience: Classroom Teachers, Intervention Specialists, Instructional Coaches, Administrators

Gist: In education time is never on our side.  Too much time is being spent in meetings to discuss students’ deficits and not enough time harnessing their assets. Students come to school each day with individual and collective wants and needs, and it’s our job to harness who and where they are. The RtI process doesn’t have to be a machine model approach with an over-reliance on short sided skill and drill; it can be a dynamic, flexible, in-the-moment response focused on good instruction.   This book explores how to keep students at the center of decision-making so that the focus is fidelity to our students instead of fidelity to content, curriculum or program by addressing 5 Problems of Practice with RtI which include:

• We need to break out of the RtI box.

• We need to honor and increase teacher autonomy and agency.

• We need child study teams focused on students’ assets.

• We need to increase students' thinking and doing time.

• We need good instruction because that makes the best interventions.

This book will provide dozens of ready-to-use, solution-oriented tools to create asset-based systems and structures so that you are better positioned to create an instructional response that will support all students’ growth.

I’ve been blessed with incredible mentors, thinking partners, and editors. I’m inspired by a current writing group called The Radish Writers. Being a part of a writing tribe is one of the greatest gifts—if you don’t have one….go start one! Gather people who want to write and think and do together. It will inspire you. It will unleash you. It will change you.

BUY THE BOOK HERE!

Short Texts: Mighty Mentors for Readers and Writers

Audience: Classroom Teachers [K-5], Intervention Specialists [K-8], Instructional Coaches, Principals, Curriculum Directors

Gist: Short texts are everywhere, and so are the readers who love them.  In this anthology, learn how to select, plan with, and use short texts to increase reading volume and inspire opportunities for writing.  From novel excerpts to the writing on the back of a cereal box, short texts have so much to teach our students about the form and function of reading and writing in the world. And this amazing resource has so much to teach us about the power of “short” to help readers and writers go the long distance.

What you will find in this book:

• CONSUME, PRODUCE, SHARE, EXTEND—a process for considering what texts we choose to consume, how we mine texts for what matters, whether we want to produce something to share with others, and opportunities to extend our reading and writing

• 30 + short texts spanning non-fiction, fiction, poetry, environmental print and more!

• One-page Planning Templates that help you think through the trickiest parts of each text type and the stickiest ideas 

• Completed Planning Templates to give you a running start of ready-to-go lessons

• Ways to use short texts with all your readers (whole class, small groups, and one-to-one) and across the content areas

• Extensions for using each short text to inspire and inform writing

• Resources and templates for you to start finding and using your own short texts

COMING SOON!