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young adult literature | Making the Common Core Text Exemplars Accessible to Middle GradersBarbara Moss, editor

young adult literature

Making the Common Core Text Exemplars Accessible to

Middle Graders

Teachers and administrators across the country are digging deeply into the new Common Core State

Standards (National Governors’ Asso-ciation, 2010), realigning their present standards to address these rigorous new nationwide benchmarks.

The standards represent a sea change for middle grade teachers in at least two ways; they require 1) that 55% of texts be informational, and 2) that disciplinary literacy be emphasized in social stud-ies, science, mathematics, and technical subjects. Furthermore, the Standards are clearly driving the profession toward more cross-disciplinary teaching. The Common Core Curriculum Maps: English Language Arts Grades 6–8 (Common Core, 2012), for example, contain sample the-matic units that incorporate classic and contem-porary literature, readings on science and social science topics, and texts related to the arts and music. Sample unit titles include Embracing Heritage (grade 6), Science or Fiction, (grade 7), and Dramatically Speaking (grade 8).

While the Common Core State Standards describe the what of curriculum rather than the how, they do offer recommendations for texts that teachers might use in their classrooms. For middle grade teachers, the text exemplars include stories, drama, poetry, and informational texts for English Language Arts; History/Social Sci-ence; and Science, Mathematics, and Technical Subjects (see Appendix B of the Common Core State Standards).

While not required, the titles are ones the

authors of the Standards consider grade-level ap-propriate in terms of length, topic, and difficulty. These recommended trade books can often do what textbooks cannot—they offer depth instead of breadth and perspectives that may be excluded from textbooks. These texts also expose students to different genres and forms, all of which are potential sources of knowledge. While many are frequently taught classics familiar to English teachers, others are less familiar. Exemplars for grades 6–8 include historical fiction titles like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor, 1976) and po-ems like Frost’s The Road Not Taken (1920), along with less familiar texts like John Adams’s Letter on Thomas Jefferson (1776) or Jon Katz’s Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho (2000).

Teacher responses to the text exemplars are often, “But these are so hard! How can our students read these books?” Carol Jago argues that these texts create an important challenge for young readers: “In our effort to provide stu-dents with readings that they can relate to, we sometimes end up teaching works that students can read on their own [instead] of teaching more worthwhile texts that they most certainly need as-sistance negotiating. . . . Classroom texts should pose intellectual challenges for readers and invite them to stretch and grow” (Common Core, p. viii–ix, 2012). She correctly notes that students will need teacher assistance in negotiating these texts; in particular, they will need help in devel-oping both the background knowledge and vo-cabulary expertise requisite for both text explicit and implicit comprehension.

Savvy teachers recognize that nothing is more important to student comprehension of

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content than the knowledge they already have about a topic (Marzano, 2004). This knowledge is the foundation for all future learning and pro-vides “hooks” on which students can hang new learning about a topic. However, middle grad-ers may have less well-developed schema for different topics because they have fewer experi-ences than adults, come from different cultures, or lack exposure to key concepts or vocabulary. Some students now entering middle school may have spent little school time on social studies or science during elementary school (National In-stitute of Child Health, 2005), which could con-tribute to their lack of background knowledge for these areas.

The role of the teacher is not to give students background knowledge about a topic, but to en-gage students in intentional, purposeful reading experiences that contribute to their reservoir of knowledge. One key way to create these experi-ences for such challenging text exemplars is to group related texts on a topic. Grouping texts thematically helps students to:

• seehowinformationisconnected,

• viewinformationfromdifferentlenses,

• experienceavarietyofgenres,

• developdomainknowledgecriticaltocom-prehension development (Hirsch, 2006), and

• gainrepeatedexposurestoacademicvo-cabulary.

The following examples illustrate how teach-ers can group texts in ways that scaffold student understanding of text exemplars by using more accessible texts as supports. By pairing easier texts with challenging ones, teachers stimulate curiosity, help students anticipate text content, and provide exposure to unfamiliar technical terms. These easier books can “prime the pump” for students, helping them anticipate and men-tally prepare for the content of difficult texts. These groupings can involve pairing picture-books with text exemplars, using text sets to build background, and grouping and “laddering” text exemplars by difficulty.

Elizabeth Partridge’s excellent work, This Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie (2002) is a text exemplar for middle graders. From this book, students learn about how Guthrie used music to give voice to the oppressed during the Depression and are of-ten surprised to learn that the familiar song in the title was not simply an anthem to America, but also a protest song. For students to under-stand the life and times of Woody Guthrie, they must understand the world in which he lived. They need background knowledge related to the Dust Bowl, California during the Great Depres-sion, and the plight of those who fled Oklahoma. Teachers might begin student study of the period through a gallery walk of primary source photo-graphs from the Partridge text, asking them to reflect on what they see in the many poignant photos. From this introduction, students can consider what life was like during this time.

The study of a group of historical fiction texts set during the Great Depression provides an excellent opportunity to build schema. Lit-erature circles or book clubs centered around Esperanza Rising (Ryan, 2000), Bud, Not Buddy (Curtis,1999), A Jar of Dreams (Uchida, 1981), and Out of the Dust (Hesse, 1997), or the graphic novel Storm in the Barn (Phelan, 2009) let stu-dents explore the experiences of Hispanics, Af-rican Americans, Japanese Americans, and poor Whites during this era. By jigsawing these titles, students can also share what they learn about so-cial and economic issues of the time, music, gov-ernment programs, and concepts like protests, strikes, and the New Deal, all of which are crucial to comprehending the Partridge text. Following the reading of the Partridge text, students can ad-dress RL Standard 7.0 (compare and contrast a fictional portrayal of a time, place, or character and a historical account of the same period) by comparing one of the historical fiction titles with the text exemplar through a multimedia presen-tation or an essay.

Another excellent text exemplar is the Nar-rative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An Ameri-can Slave, Written by Himself (Douglass, 1845), a

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young adult literature | Making the Common Core Text Exemplars Accessible to Middle Graders

memoir that combines a compelling portrait of American slavery with a powerful antislavery ar-gument. While today’s students are familiar with the horrors of slavery through film and other media portrayals, they may lack appreciation for how revolutionary the book was when published in 1845. Laws against teaching slaves to read and write, deeply held views about the intellectual inferiority of blacks, and beliefs that slaves were contented and happy are unfamiliar concepts to today’s students.

The picturebook Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass (Cline-Ransome & Ransome, 2012) pairs perfectly with the text exemplar, portraying the central role that lit-eracy played in Douglass’s life. It recounts how his owner’s wife illicitly taught him to read and the dangers associated with this act. It empha-sizes the power that words held for Douglass and the critical role they played in his evolution from slavery to freedom. The book ends with a cliff-hanger, briefly detailing his first failed attempt to escape the South by writing a pass that would secure his passage to Baltimore. Because it fol-lows the outlines of the text exemplar but stops at a strategic point, it will spark student curiosity about Douglass’s ultimate fate as a slave and mo-tivate reading of the target text.

For teachers who want to expand into a unit on slavery or the Civil War, additional topical text exemplars in different genres include Vir-ginia Hamilton’s haunting The People Could Fly: The Picture Book (2004), a classic retelling of an African American folktale in which slaves elude their masters by taking flight, and Ann Petry’s Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad (1955).

Russell Freedman’s (2012) Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: An American Friendship can provide a bridge to exploration of Lincoln’s life and presidency. Another exemplar text, O Captain, My Captain, Walt Whitman’s (1900) plaintive metaphorical poem about the assas-sination of Lincoln, engages students in further study of the period through a new genre. After reading these texts, students can evaluate them in

small groups, identify the most powerful of the texts they read, and cite evidence to support their opinions (RL 6.9: Compare and contrast texts in different forms and genres in terms of their ap-proaches to similar themes and topics).

The Common Core text exemplars include informational texts focused on often-neglected content areas like art, architecture, and technol-ogy. Careful laddering of different text exem-plars can build students’ cumulative background knowledge about these topics. By starting with easy text exemplars and gradually moving to more challenging ones, teachers can scaffold stu-dent understanding of new concepts.

Greenberg and Jordan’s (2001) Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist introduces background related to painting and explores concepts related to color and form and artistic movements like Im-pressionism. David Macaulay’s (1973) Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction, a historically accurate rendering of the building of an imaginary medi-eval Gothic cathedral, contributes to knowledge of architecture, design, and construction. The Building of Manhattan (Mackay, 1987) details the building of Manhattan over time, both above and underground. Taken together, these three books prepare students for reading the text exemplar A Short Walk around the Pyramids and through the World of Art (Isaacson,1993). This sophisticated treatment of varied forms of visual art, includ-ing painting, sculpture, and architecture, em-phasizes the connections between these different art forms. Students can select an artist from the book, analyze the language used to describe each one, and read additional resource materials about the artist and the artist’s style. This can culminate in the writing of an informative text that explores the artist’s life and body of work (Common Core, pp. 164–165; Standard W8.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information throughout the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content).

The Common Core text exemplars repre-sent a rich resource for teachers committed to creating classroom learning experiences that al-

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low students to explore life’s essential questions through a multiplicity of texts. By effectively sup-porting students as they engage with these texts, teachers can ensure their successful mastery of the Common Core Standards and the develop-ment of literacy skills that will last a lifetime.

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Zall (Ed.), Adams on Adams (pp. 68–70). Lexing-ton, KY: University Press of Kentucky. (Original work published 1776)

Cline-Ransome, L., & Ransome, J. (2012). Words set me free: The story of a young Frederick Douglass. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

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Curtis, C. P. (1999). Bud, not Buddy. New York, NY: Random House.

Douglass, F. (1845). Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. Boston, MA.

Douglass, F., & Davis, A. Y. (2010). Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave written by himself: A new critical edition. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.

Freedman, R. (2012). Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The story behind an American friendship. New York, NY: Clarion.

Frost, R. (1920). The road not taken. In Mountain interval (pp. 9–10). Charleston, SC: Forgotten Books.

Greenburg, J., & Jordan, S. (2001). Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an artist New York, NY: Delacorte.

Hamilton, V. (2004). The people could fly: The picture book. New York, NY: Knopf.

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Isaacson, P. M. (1993). A short walk around the pyra-mids and through the world of art. New York, NY: Random House.

Katz, J. (2000). Geeks: How two lost boys rode the Inter-net out of Idaho. New York, NY: Villard.

Macaulay, D. (1973). Cathedral: The story of its con-struction. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Mackay, D. (1987). The building of Manhattan. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Marzano, R. (2004). Building background knowledge for academic achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards for the English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Washington, DC: Author.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Devel-opment Early Childhood Care Research Network. (2005). A day in the third grade: A large scale study of class quality and teacher and student be-havior. Elementary School Journal, 105, 305–323.

Nelson, K. (2011). Heart and soul: The story of America and African Americans. New York, NY: Balzer & Bray.

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Petry, A. (1955). Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the underground railroad. New York, NY: Crowell.

Phelan, M. (2009). The storm in the barn. Somerville, MA: Candlewick.

Ryan, P. M. (2000). Esperanza rising. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Taylor, M. D. (1976). Roll of thunder, hear my cry. New York, NY: Puffin.

Uchida, Y. (1981). A jar of dreams. New York, NY: Aladdin.

Whitman, W. (1996). O captain, my captain. In Whit-man: Poetry and prose (Library of America, p. 467). New York, NY: Penguin. (Original work published 1900)

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