10 Criteria for Choosing Diverse Texts for Your Classroom

Jason Reynolds in his keynote at the ALA Annual Convention this past summer talked about how we are all walking libraries. I loved this metaphor because it provided an image as to how each person is made up of a collection of their identities, experiences, and memories. We are all databases in motion. While many websites, blogs, and social media accounts are contributing to the call for the presence of more diverse texts, the work is still in progress. This comparison only clarified the position to mandate more diverse texts in classrooms and in the publishing industry overall because we have to honor the collective and individual experiences in our schools. Our main libraries, our classroom libraries, read aloud choices, and book talks all need to be purposeful and selective in voice, author, and representation. Because the goal, in the end, is to honor diverse voices as part of our daily and yearly norm.

When speaking about diverse texts, it is important to remember diverse to whom? The School Library Journal summarized the updates to the widely known infographic regarding diversity in children’s books. These infographics remind us that while progress has been made, there is still work to do in the field of education and in publishing. As teachers, we are reminded that diverse texts are a way to access comprehension and unlock engagement in our students because students see themselves in our curriculums. The concepts of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors are more than analogies; they are points of access to be humans with our students. Cornelius Minor in We Got This.: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be reminds teachers that the very act of using diverse texts is engaging to our students because we are including them in the content and the strategies in our rooms. He also reminds us that “teaching without this kind of engagement is not teaching at all. it is colonization (28). Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students also reminds us “Instead, I want you to think of culturally responsive teaching as a mindset, a way of thinking about and organizing instruction to allow for great flexibility in teaching” (5). The use of diverse texts in our schools is a mindset and necessity- not a strategy.

The 15 Diverse Picture Books I Plan on Reading Aloud in My Middle School Classroom to Kick Off the School Year!

For many years, I lived in the school of thought that my middle-school students wouldn’t want to read picture books. As with many things in teaching, we don’t know until we know. I love reading aloud to my students, and naturally, they love it because reading aloud goes back to a time when they loved reading as young children. As I could spend a lengthy bit of time here on this post about the apparent lack of love of reading that my sixth-graders come into my classroom with every fall, I will l quote Pernille Ripp from #NerdCampMI: “My goal is to make them dislike reading less.” Reading aloud to my students starts to work on this mission. The power of the read-aloud is equivalent to the power of the book talk. When kids hear stories and your recommendations for stories enough, they start to listen. Colby Sharp, a 5th-grade teacher in Parma, Mi, said this past week, “This year the picture book read aloud is as close to normal as anything we are doing in my classroom. The energy in the room is electric and I feed off it” (@colbysharp). This post contains 15 books that will spark electricity with words and stories.

If I were in my classroom’s physical space, I would plan to read one picture book aloud to my students each week. Now that I am virtual teaching, I plan at least 3-4 picture book read-alouds a week. One of my reflections from the 2018-2019 school year was that I loved how I felt solid with my growth in my independent reading program and my mentor text work, but I felt like I needed to be a driving force behind building empathy and compassion through both of these works. Empathy and reading were my two goals for 2019-2020, and they remain my two priorities in online learning. Reading aloud helps build not only a reading community but empathy and compassion in the form of community listening.

Show Up for Young Readers with Diverse Texts in Classroom Libraries

Recently, I got the privilege of talking to a group of educators in Kalamazoo, MI about diverse texts in classroom libraries. The district had worked at providing small libraries of 25-50 books to elementary teachers, and the goal was to move this initiative to middle schools. I am always a fan of giving books to teachers; it possibly is the best resource we can give all of our classrooms. However, the training I was asked to give was intended to be more than what to do with these books, it was more so how to grow your own library and then show up for reading with your students. Books are simply materials or objects if we don’t show students how to use them. Thus, the term “show up” surfaced in a lot of my preparatory work for this training. Tricia Ebarvia in her blog post, “How do we show up?” cites a moment of epiphany when a fellow teacher stated: “Your racial consciousness determines how you show up” -Tony Hudson, an Equity Transformational Specialist from the Pacific Education Group (PEG). In addition to our racial consciousness and discussing the inclusion of voices, how does our consciousness as a reader determine how we present ourselves to students?

The training’s theme was really focusing on the idea of the teacher as a reader. Equipped with the mindset that the teachers in the room may or may not identify as readers themselves and they may or may not have a classroom library, I began to form my goals for the training based on what they do have: a starter set of books, experiences in the classroom that have shaped them as educators and people, and a passion for children and learning evident in their decision to be in the field of education. While naysayers might say that some teachers are not able or willing to change their mindsets, it is with a strong conviction that I know teachers can do better and be better for the students in their classroom that struggle with reading. We all want to help kids, we just need different avenues of the “how.” This post outlines the three objectives covered within training on diverse texts in classroom libraries. It is a calling to assess the materials in our own classrooms, build those materials to create diverse texts #bookflood, and reminders on how we “show up” for reading every single day.

Diverse Texts Resource List: Listacles with Biographies

This fall I am facilitating a training on using diverse texts across the curriculum to help teach comprehension and raise engagement. While preparing for my training, I spent some time looking into activities that use diverse texts regardless of the assigned content area. The text Strategies That Work, 3rd edition: Teaching Comprehension for Engagement, Understanding, and Building Knowledge, Grades K-8 by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis is a great place to start because we all teach comprehension (we want our students to understand what we are talking about) and we all want engagement (attention and participation in the lesson). This lesson sequence uses a reading strategy that involves making lists into short, informal articles (LIST+ARTICLE=LISTACLE). I personally LOVE listacles and use them in blogging all of the time. However, I have not had my students make these short articles as a way to assess their summarization and synthesis skills. The text set I chose to go along with this activity focuses on biographies and narrative nonfiction. I wanted to include this type of text set because biographies connect to ALL content areas, and students can easily search out aspects of a person’s life or accomplishments as they learn the task. I have been busy reflecting on the areas in my classroom and instruction that need attention in regards to diverse texts and representation, and I definitely have some areas that will get my attention first when I enter my classroom for the fall.

Diverse Texts Resource List: Brainstorming Questions with Princess Books

This fall I am facilitating a training on using diverse texts across the curriculum to help teach comprehension and raise engagement. While preparing for my training, I spent some time looking into activities that use diverse texts regardless of the assigned content area. The text Strategies That Work, 3rd edition: Teaching Comprehension for Engagement, Understanding, and Building Knowledge, Grades K-8 by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis is a great place to start because we all teach comprehension (we want our students to understand what we are talking about) and we all want engagement (attention and participation in the lesson). This lesson sequence uses a current event topic and marries the idea of diverse texts to encourage questioning. Participants will also get a chance to label and categorize questions to lead to further discussion. While I chose a current event topic and this particular text set, this strategy could be applied to a variety of topics or content areas. As teachers, we want our students to question the world around them to become better citizens. The fall is approaching quickly, and I am busy reflecting on the areas in my classroom and instruction that need attention in regards to diverse texts and representation.

Middle-Grade Narrative Writing: Using Mentor Texts to Describe Skin Color

…The same call for inclusivity in the beauty industry is also in the same call for the materials that we put in front of our students. This necessity drives the movements behind #WeNeedDiverseBooks and a call for diverse classroom libraries. We have to make materials available to our students.

I bring up this description of skin tone though as a conversation starter for how skin color is often depicted in works of fiction. If we focus on diverse literature, it is important to look at how characters are being represented on the page. How are our students able to describe themselves? What descriptions do they see while reading? What is included in our weekly read aloud? These questions impact the makers of stories in the publishing industry, and they impact the strategies we are using to teach our children. These questions are necessary to bring up and think about in terms of engaging with my young writers that need to have access to mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors in our classroom.

This post outlines different strategies as they are observed in 16 different middle-grade and young adult works of fiction. I am using mentor texts here to show my young writers that the works of published authors are not only accessible but can be unlocked to show them how to write. This post will give a great starting point to the young writer that desires to describe their character AND also make connections to that character’s background, culture, or identity through the use of skin tone identification.

5 Reflections and 15 Resources to Ignite Your Passion for Diverse Books

This post is inspired by Donalyn Miller after her #NerdTalk at #NerdCampMi on July 8, 2019. She is a warrior and book whisperer for reading in the classroom, but more so, she is also a person who is not afraid to “make good trouble.” She started her #NerdTalk by voicing that she was the teacher who often raised questions to the administration at the end of the staff meeting. While many of her points on reading have helped form the construct of my teaching identity when it comes to reading, I have to be louder about another element that makes up who I am as a teacher. As an advocate for diverse literature in the classroom, it is my duty to be downright rowdy when it comes to putting materials and books in my classroom and in my district’s classrooms. #NerdCamp was a grouping of largely white women, like most of the demographic of the teaching profession, and Donalyn Miller spoke to white educators directly in the call for boisterous and clear advocacy of diverse texts in schools. We all have to be a deafening, strong force when it comes to diverse texts.

30 Diverse Mentor Texts for Young Activists

Where have I been on the blog? Two words: RESEARCH PROJECTS. My Advanced English Sixth Grade group is currently finishing up our Activism Research Unit. We choose topics about problems we are passionate about in the world or want to know more about and we look at the influence of that problem on society. We also work some MLA formatting, in-text citations, and embedding quotations into the works. My General English Sixth Grade group is wrapping up our “change-makers” biographical report unit where they are studying a person of their choice that made a mark on history. Both preps involve students having an option to focus in on their own topic for the research project, and both preps are exploring the idea that people can change things in history and in life. They are learning about activism and how these larger social, political, cultural, and environmental issues influence their day-to-day and can seem daunting to enact any real change. In case you were interested in my Advanced English Packet: Click here for our class research packet. In case you were interested in our General 6 Biography Unit: Click here for our class packet.

30 Middle-Grade Novels to Add to Your Classroom Library NOW!

Give me a bookstore, a library, or a fellow reader’s bookshelf, and I will browse with wild glee. I love books. The sight of a bag full of books simple makes me happy. Reading has been something that has found its way back to me time and time again. Even when life seems too busy or too full of commitments. I always make my way back to reading. Using the 10 criteria that I outlined in a previous post about diverse texts, I wanted to write up a blog post about 30 book recommendations I would make right NOW to any middle school English Language Arts teacher to add these middle-grade fictional texts to their classroom library. I use

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