From Booklist online November 2010 (Book Links).
Books and Authors: Nonfiction and the Joy of Learning.
by Vicki Cobb
If you take a leap of faith and use nonfiction literature as your primary reading material, you will instill the joy of learning and reading in your classrooms, and the assessment tests will take care of themselves.
In the world of children’s literature, I write for a stepchild genre—nonfiction. Yes, it’s gaining more awareness these days through awards and blogs, including one I contribute to, INK (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/ But it’s not getting the attention it deserves in most classrooms...
In a seminal study 10 years ago, literacy researcher Nell K. Duke found that first-grade classrooms spent only 3.6 minutes a day reading/listening to expository text material, and this had a deleterious effect on reading in later years. Yet as children go from elementary school to high school, the percentage of nonfiction reading comprehension on assessment tests increases from 50 to 70 percent, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Read more
No comments:
Post a Comment