Young Adult Nonfiction

Gateway to the Common Core

Edited by Judith A. Hayn, Jeffrey S. Kaplan, Amanda L. Nolen, Heather A. Olvey

Not available to order

Publication date:

19 November 2015

Length of book:

155 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781475812985

No matter the location, schools are guided by standards, including Common Core State Standards. This collection of contributions by some of the country’s leading literacy experts offers practical suggestions for implementing young adult literature to meet the demand that standards mandate for focusing on nonfiction in teaching literacy. The challenges to CCSS abound, and teachers who are currently seeking avenues to reach their students no matter what content they teach will find the strategies and suggestions useful. The text advocates using young adult literature to accomplish content area literacy and is intended as a primer for those who are building curriculum.
A compact tool for interdisciplinary curriculum construction, this introduction to Common Core teaching stresses the integration of humanistic themes in a range of classroom endeavors. Editors incorporate aspects of narrative milieu as spurs to thinking, discussion, problem-solving, literacy, and composition. Themes branch out to such mind-expanding concepts as risk-taking and strategizing, the focus of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. . . .Nonfiction works...elucidate graphic design, nutrition and health, forensic medicine, primate and environmental research, and racial and gender equality. By stressing such elements as textual evidence and relevant details, the text builds respect for primary sources and accurate presentation of scientific absolutes and historical cause and effect, as with the Manhattan Project and the expansion of women’s rights during World War II. This is a must-have addition to the young adult professional shelf.