Exploratorium 2012: Von Drasek, Lisa

Table #12  The Irma Black and The Cook Prize: Children’ Choice Awards:  Children’s Picture Books in the Language Arts Program and The Common Core

 

Audience:       Elementary  

 

Presenter:       Lisa Von Drasek

                        Bank Street College of Education

                        610 West 112^th street

New York, New York, 11201                          

Library Web site_ http://bankstreet.edu/library/

E-mail _ lisav@bankstreet.edu

                   

Description, Goals, Intended Outcomes: 

The Irma S. and James H. Black Award is given annually to a book that exemplifies excellence in text and illustration together. The four finalists have been chosen by 3rd and 4th graders from a semifinalist list selected by a committee of educators. The winner receives a gold seal and the other three finalists become honor books with a silver seal.

 

Below are some guidelines to assist you through the process of recreating the vetting process in the library. None of the suggestions and sample questions are required, but are meant to give you an idea of how to structure the conversations. This year almost 10,000 children from all over the United States participated in this curriculum.

The Cook Prize is the only national children's choice award honoring the best science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) picture book for children.

 

Process to Develop and Implement this Project:

Before implementing the Irma Black curriculum, spend time examining previous award winners and discussing the criteria for excellence with the student. Create a checklist to refer to when beginning the picture books study.

Register by email to Kristin Freda, kfreda@bankstreet.edu   For curriculum guidance visit Irma Black Award: Book Discussion Guide.

Budget:

Plan for $65.00 for the four picture books. Order through the Bank Street Bookstore by calling 1-800-724-1486 or email books@bankstreet.edu. A complete set of the four titles can be pre-ordered and shipped when  available for $65.00 plus $5.00 shipping ($70.00 total). No tax will be charged for books shipped to schools and libraries. Just order the ISB 2012 Award books. A large school might want multiple sets. They are also available from major distributors and other book stores.

 

Timeline:

Plan at least five to ten minutes to read aloud each title. Plan to have five to ten minutes for discussion. This will include examining the pictures more closely or hearing the language of the text again. Best practice would be to hear the books again and again over four weeks and engage the children in reading response activities.

1. Six week time frame from the beginning of March to the second week in April.
2. Note that you may have to account for Spring break somewhere in the middle.
3. Votes are due to the Bank Street College secure site  on April 6, 2012
4. How do I get the silver and gold seals?

 

Registered participants may send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to:

Attn: Irma Black Award
Bank Street College of Education Library
610 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

Additional stickers can be ordered for $0.50 a piece from the Bank Street Bookstore.

 

Examples of reader response activities:

Campaign posters, creating advertising, a wiki discussion, graphing votes, mapping the stories, create original covers reflecting the themes and art, creating art in the style or media of the award books, small group discussions, readers theater from the text,  4th and 5th graders can read aloud the award books to younger buddy students, 4th, 5th and 6th graders can create their own picture books for reading aloud as an extension of the study and creating an opportunity for public speaking as students advocate for their favorites.

 

Cook Prize (STEM) award extensions.

Intertextual connections in informational texts.

Fact-checking information- what do we know? How do we know it?

Critical evaluations skills

Currency, Authority and Accuracy.

 Fact Checking the text, evaluation of content and illustration, comparative value, and comprehension.

Evidence of Outcomes, Possible Adaptations, Lessons Learned:

Benefits of Reading Aloud to Children:  In 1985, the National Academy of Education issued a report based on two years of analysis of more than ten thousand research projects conducted in the previous quarter of a century. 

Below are some of the key findings:

1.      "The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for the eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children."

2.      "It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades."

3.      Kiefer, B (1995): The potential of picture books:  From visual literacy to aesthetic understanding

• Picture books as visual context to provide writing and reading skills
• Picture books for visual literacy skills
• To observe details
• To infer and perceive
• To identify symbols, shaper, and colors
• To generalize information

 

Common Core State Standard(s) addressed:

Students read a true balance of informational and literary texts. Elementary school classrooms are, therefore, places where students access the world – science, social studies, the arts and literature – through text. At least 50% of what students read is informational.

 

Speaking and Listening

The standards require that students be able to gain, evaluate, and present increasingly-complex information,

ideas, and evidence through listening and speaking as well as through a wide range of media.

An important focus of the speaking and listening standards is purposeful speaking and listening in

various academic settings—including one-on-one, small-group, and whole-classroom. Formal presentations

are one important way such communication occurs, but so are the more informal discussions that

take place as students collaborate to answer questions, build understanding, and solve problems.

 

Critical thinking skills

1. Knowledge: Can the children recall elements of the story?
2. Comprehension: Do they understand the story. The different styles of art and media?
3. Application: Can the children express their thoughts about the four titles?
4. Analysis: Are the children able to support their statements using content from the text or pictures? Are the students able to generalize about these titles and compare to other titles in their knowledge base?
5. Synthesis: Can they make connections about these titles to others? Can they compare content?
6. Evaluation: Do the children understand the criteria for excellence? Do the children understand what makes a "best book"? Do they have an opinion about which book is "the best" to them?

 

Students will

1. develop grade-appropriate listening skills as they listen to the four award finalists,
2. be able to recognize elements of a picture book for discussion. Cover, end-papers, pages, and spine. Words and art as well as who creates the words and pictures,
3.  be able to evaluate the words and story of the four award finalists,
4.  be able to express their opinions verbally,
5. be able to discern artistic style and medium such as cartoonish or realistic, and water color or collage,
6.  be able to synthesize information and form a conclusion.

 

Assessments:

 

1. The Irma Black Awards generated significant enthusiasm among third graders.  Several features were responsible for this:
• The child-generated focus
• The competitive process
• The high quality of book selection
2. The majority of children’s responses in all three formats – oral, written and in pairs orally – were analytic in nature, confirming Sipe’s research.
• The children were active participants in the text, responding most frequently to plot, character, settings, illustrations, and humor.
3. The children also made many intertextual (text to text) and personal (text to self) responses during the read alouds.
4. The use of a common text created a deep sense of community and generated  many communal responses.
• For example, the whole class gasped together when they came to an illustration across two pages of a pig’s nostrils.
5. The excitement around the context created a common focus of listening actively to each read aloud.
• A child’s vote was at stake with every book.
6. This process improves vocabulary and comprehension
7. This process increased writing quality when children were asked to write in response to each of the books.

 

Resources Used:

Kiefer, B. (1995). The potential of picture books: From visual literacy to aesthetic understanding.  Englewood Cliff, NJ:  Prentice-Hill.
A well-known theoretical study of the picture book genre through multiple lenses, including verbal and visual literacy, as well as artistic response.

Kieff, J. (2003). Revisiting the read-aloud. Childhood Education, 80(1), 28L-28N.
A concise call to arms about the benefits of reading aloud to elementary school children in an era of time constraints in the classroom.

Rosenblatt, L. (1982).  The literary transaction: Evocation and response. Theory into Practice, 21(4), 268-277.
The leading voice of “reader-response” criticism summarizes her main body work and     differentiates several different aspects of what she calls a “reading event.”

Sipe. L. (2000). The construction of literary understanding by first and second graders in oral response to picture storybook read-alouds. Reading Research Quarterly, 35(2), 252-275.
 A classroom teacher and a professor of graduate education perform descriptive, qualitative research in a classroom of 27 kids. They analyze and code the responses of children who have been read 300 picture books over the course of a single school year.

Sipe, L. (2008). Storytime: Young children’s literary understanding in the classroom.  New York, NY: Teachers College.
A graduate education professor outlines a theoretical model, with five key categories, of how young children understand and respond to picture books.

Trelease, J. (2006). The read-aloud handbook. New York, NY: Penguin.
The seventh edition of a classic handbook for teachers, parents and children that extols the benefits of reading aloud.   Best known for its booklists.