Literacy Now

In recent years, it seems almost every learning center director or teacher who has invited me to do an author visit has asked the same question—can you help inspire our students to read and write about science?

Perhaps it’s the recent push to incorporate more nonfiction texts (particularly with STEM/NextGen content) in the classroom, or the fact that many of my books are about science topics. Maybe it’s because I have an engineering degree and worked on rockets and car brakes before becoming an author. Whatever the reason, I’m happy when schools ask me to discuss science because I love sharing my geeky passion with students and performing my popular “trained ketchup packet” experiment.

Although my presentations create science enthusiasm on the day of my visit, or maybe even that entire week, I wanted to provide teachers with an engaging project that would inspire students to continue pursuing science after I head home. I asked a group of teachers what science subjects seem to interest their students most, and a clear winner quickly surfaced—inventions and inventors. Then I researched the benefits of independent, student-driven projects (the smashing idea behind Genius Hour) and discussed project ideas with teachers and students. In the end, I came up with the "Inventor’s Project."

What I like about this assignment is that students select their own subject (an inventor or invention) and the method they want to use to share their project: a written assignment, a drawing/design project with a brief narrative, or a hands-on building project with brief narrative.

A few teachers have given the Inventor Project a test run and kindly shared some helpful feedback. Several educators reported the last two options—drawing/design and hands-on building—were popular with their visual and kinesthetic learners. Schools with their own Makerspaces (also called FabLabs) were particularly enthused about the “building” option. Without further ado, I present the Inventor’s Project.

1. Invite students to research various inventors using books, reliable Internet sources, or both (see following list below), or provide the class with a curated collection of level-appropriate books on different inventors or a list of inventors from which they should choose.

2. Ask students to select an inventor they admire, want to learn more about, or both.

3. Invite students to select their own "Inventor Project" from the following options:

• Write a nonfiction narrative that shares the childhood experiences, struggles, and accomplishments of your inventor. The accomplishments will, of course, include inventions.

• Write a nonfiction narrative which shares one invention your inventor created, including why he or she decided to make it, what the invention does, and if or how it has changed the world.

• Imagine you are the inventor you’ve selected. Think about a new invention you would like to create and make a drawing of your invention. Put the invention’s name at the top of your drawing and label the main parts of your invention. In the lower right corner of the drawing, include a paragraph that describes what your invention does. 

• Imagine you are the inventor you’ve selected. Build a simple invention that you have designed (something that doesn’t already exist) from materials you find in your home, garage, basement, or outside in nature. (Note: The invention you build may be a model of a larger invention that would actually work.) Write a paragraph which includes the name of your invention, what your invention does, and why you decided to create it.

Students could be invited to display their projects on a bulletin board or table or share their projects with the class through short oral presentations (2 or 3 minutes each). Share a few presentations each day of one week to create an "Inventor Week" celebration.

Internet Inventor Lists

• List of Famous Inventors

• List of Women Inventors

• List of African American Inventors

• List of Toy Inventors

• PBS List of Forgotten Inventors

• Videos About Inventors

• Inventors Hall of Fame

Suzanne Slade is the award-winning author of more than 100 children’s books. Her latest picture book, The Inventor’s Secret, shares the fascinating journeys of two famous inventors, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and has been called “the perfect title to kick off a Genius Hour program.” The book’s Activity Guide includes student science projects and fun science games. You can find more teacher resources on her webpage. Ms. Slade would love to receive your feedback or suggestions on the Inventor Project. Or, even better, send photos of your students’ projects and she’ll share them on her website!

The following is the full version of an essay Brandon Dixon wrote when applying for the Gates Millennium Scholarship—which he was awarded. An abbreviated version appeared in the September/October 2015 issue of Literacy Today.

For some reason, my classmates do not believe me when I answer the question, “how did you get smart?” by pointing to the long list of books I have read since I began devouring them sometime around second grade. They give me incredulous glances and sneer at the concept of “simple reading” being the key to academic success. It truly is a shame they do not believe me, because after truly examining my intellectual growth throughout the past 12 years, I accredit more than 50 % of my knowledge to what I gleaned while reading a book.  

For the record, I do not read textbooks, or encyclopedias, or dictionaries. I am a lover of fiction, and a purveyor of fantasy, and I have recently taken to dubbing myself a “dabbler” in science fiction. More often than not, I am reading about things that have never happened in all of humanity’s history. I read about things taken right out of the vivid imagination of the author, stuff that wouldn’t hold up against the harsh, fact-based reality of the world. I have not learned a myriad of specific, physical skills from reading, because very few writers go into excruciating detail when describing simple processes like changing a tire, or knotting a tie. But I have acquired a few specific skills that have acted as gateways into the world of other knowledge I have obtained. 

Curiosity.  

The answer lies between a book’s pages. More often than not, I have no idea what some writers are talking about. There are authors (like Donna Tartt) who manage to employ beautiful strings of advanced vocabulary throughout their novels. I know a lot of words, but I am not a walking human dictionary, nor can I automatically derive the hidden connotations of every word that I come across. In order to be an avid reader and actually get something out of it, I had to acquire the skill of relentless curiosity in the very beginning. With it, the world became open. Topics and themes that would normally soar over my head became things that pinged my attention and sent me scrambling to the Internet to discover the meaning. When I heard of new scientific theories, I would barrage the budding scientists in my life with endless questions to better understand exactly what the authors would talk about.  

And while I have found knowledge in many other places besides books, literature has been the one constant “school” in my life. I never have to ask for permission to enter the pages of a novel and discover something new about the world around me. I have learned more about the human condition and the manner in which humanity carries itself through reading than any introductory psychology course at my high school could have taught me.

I have connected to a central hub of sorts through literature—the depository where authors dump fragments of their personal experiences and observations of the people around them. Because of literature, I have developed not only curiosity, but the keen ability to understand and to empathize with the people around me. There are very few emotions that I have not experienced transitively through the conduit of a novel, and because of that vast internalized understanding of human emotions, I have been able to expand upon my interpersonal skills.  

Because of reading, and because of literature, I have developed a host of intangible skills, things I cannot demonstrate with my body, only with my character. Leadership, although it has been undoubtedly tempered by experiences at school, grew out of my love affair with tales of heroism in novels. It was a skill that I revered, and one I truly wanted to emulate. Reading tales of people leading their teams, their units, and their families throughout life gave me perspective on leadership before I even had the chance to actively practice it. It is perhaps because I got to watch (or rather, read) various styles of leadership in action at a young age that I was able to jump so readily into leadership as a teenager.

Perhaps the most important intangible skill I derived from my ravenous reading exploits is my sense of morality. Good and evil sit in the center of every good story. Sometimes it is obvious which side is which. The good guys often brandish gleaming swords of righteousness and are from the beginning of the story slated against the proverbial “dark witch.” But there are also stories where good is indistinguishable from bad, where the bad guys wear the same smiles as the good guys; where each side is motivated by something that they believe to be inherently “good.”

More than anything, these novels have taught me about the multiplicity of morality—how ambiguous and overall ill-fitting the terms “good” and “evil” are. In the world, there is no definite right and wrong because everyone looks at the world from a different perspective. Reading so many stories that have accentuated this fact has given me the cognizance necessary to understand the intrinsic motivations behind people’s actions, and also develop my own understanding of what is and is not “moral.”  

In many ways, the true Renaissance man is not he who studies the physical crafts in school, or learns them through apprenticeship. Knowledge of the deeper, more everlasting kind can be learned simply from picking up a book and appreciating it for the lessons within. I have not physically experienced a lot of things in my life, but my mind has been places my body has never been—learned things that my hands will never understand. Foraging through the pages of the many novels I have read through, life has been my way of obtaining knowledge and I value the intangible skills I have developed more than I do any tangible skills I have learned elsewhere.  

Brandon Dixon is a recent graduate of Girard College, a 1–12 boarding school in Philadelphia, PA, and is now a freshman at Harvard, in Cambridge, MA.

Develop a love of reading.

Nurture your reading identity.

Connect personally and deeply with characters and stories.

All these are phrases I have found myself proclaiming to students as a literacy specialist. Understanding the critical importance of devoting time to reading for pleasure, I always charged myself with helping all students see themselves as readers. Equally, as an educator, I always understood the power that modeling can have on learning. However, it was in this area that I found I was not leading by example. This is my story of how I rediscovered my reading identity through friendship, connection, and a lifelong love of reading.

In February, as I was approaching my birthday and setting goals for the year, I suddenly realized I had lost touch with my connection to books. Though I was constantly reading educational research for my doctorate program and buying every professional development book I could to help me learn and grow as an educator, I was no longer the read-for-fun-and-enjoyment reader I had been years before. As a literacy specialist, this went against everything I knew of the importance of reading for enjoyment. So I decided at that moment I wanted to reunite with my dormant reading identity.

Energized by my mission to find great new titles, I woke up on a Saturday morning and sent out a simple tweet asking for any good book recommendations. Soon after, my friend on Twitter, Sean Gaillard, a high school principal and former English teacher, responded with a suggestion. Within the hour, fellow educators Lena Marie Rockwood and Connie Rockow also joined the conversation. Soon we were taking our conversation on books to a group direct message. By that afternoon, though we were states away from one another, we each were at our own local bookstores, messaging together with sheer excitement and joy. Four people who had never met were connected and inspired around the topic of books. Our passion was ignited!

We likened our conversation to a discussion over a virtual cup of coffee. After preparing our lists of must-read books, we decided we would challenge one another to read at least 15 minutes per day and would do a “status check” on Twitter on Sunday evenings. To make it simple, we created the chat hashtag #Read4Fun. We were set! We had our challenge, our book picks, and a date of March 1 to “meet” for the first time. This date, as it soon occurred to us, couldn’t have been more fitting, as it was World Book Day, Read Across America Day, and Dr. Seuss’s birthday! What happened next was pure “Connected Educator Magic!”

Over the week, as we were gathering our books, we had other educators express interest in joining us. When we finally got to our first chat on Sunday, we were amazed—we had hundreds of educators join in, and, within 15 minutes, we were the #1 trending topic! We had educators from all over the world joining us, and, in what felt like a moment, we went from being an inspired group to a truly ignited global community.

Over the months, extraordinary things have continued to happen with our group; it truly has been a life-changing experience. What we found was that teachers, a group who selflessly gives of themselves and constantly encourages children to find a love of reading, had often neglected to make time for themselves. Together as a #Read4Fun community of connected educators, we realized it wasn’t about having time, it was about making time!

This adventure has brought such positivity to a truly deserving group of educators, and we look forward to continuing our journey with #Read4Fun and with books this school year!

All educators are invited to join the #Read4Fun movement and share in our mission to connect with books and reading. Please visit our website for more information. The #Read4Fun “reading heroes” meet on the first and third Sundays of the month at 7:00 p.m. EDT sharing in conversations surrounding books, literacy, and teaching. Also, check out Shelfie Wednesday, where book picks are shared on Twitter and Periscope.

Jennifer Williams is the cofounder of #Read4Fun. As a literacy specialist, she is inspired by the power of books and stories of connection. Connect with her on Twitter and at the #Read4Fun chat hosted by @read4funchat.

Being literate means being able to connect the dots of learning between what we read, what we hear, and what we see. It is actually about how you create connections so that a student understands something and then once they understand it, they can do something with that knowledge. That’s the most important thing, and that’s the leap from learning something to actually become literate in it.
—Marcie Craig Post, executive director, ILA

Recently, I ran across a children’s picture book that echoes Post’s message. Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk is a delightful book telling the journey of Sam, a mouse who lives in a library. Sam discovers he loves not only reading books, but also writing them. Sam starts to leave his stories in the autobiography section and students stumble upon his creations.

The students begin to wonder who wrote the stories, but Sam realizes he cannot tell the students that he, the author, is a mouse. Sam hatches a plan to show both teachers and students that they all are authors. In essence, he helps students connect the dots of learning between what they read to what they can write.

Each year, I want to do exactly what Sam does: I want to show my students that they all are authors and have the ability to “do something with [their] knowledge,” as Post states. Each year brings challenges; already this year I have back-to-school forms that say I have students who do not favor writing. To be honest, most parents say they would like to see their child grow in the area of writing. Writing often is considered the most difficult of language skills to teach. It is a tall mountain to climb, but I know we all can do it.

Writers can be motivated by talking with authors. Discussions can be arranged through Skype in the Classroom. Over the last two years, I’ve invited authors such as Jane Kohuth and Max Kornell and asked them to highlight the writing process as a guide for students as they made their way through the journey. Jane and Max were great resources who drew attention to obstacles and high points. My students referred to their feelings using the same experiences Max or Jane shared. The great advantage here is that Skype is free to use.

When planning, I plan backward. I look at my intended genre or topic and find authors who match. After finding an author, I reach out to him or her to see if he or she is available to talk with my students. Once confirmed, I allow for a week or two to prepare. My preparation includes using read-alouds of that author’s books to promote a more natural discussion.

Of course, I plant question stems such as the following:

• What would you ask the author about this book?
• If you could change one thing in the book what would it be and why?
• If you could add anything to this book what would you add?  

As students share their responses, I write them down frantically so when we get to talk with the author, we will have a bank of questions and responses.

To generate excitement, I have a countdown and talk up the event. I post it on social media and tag the author and publisher to encourage others and to let the author know we are ready. I am also promoting and engaging students about what is to come. When the day arrives, I do a quick walk-through of what will happen. I remind students of their question stems and responses so when the author opens the floor for questions, my students are ready.

For those who cannot use Skype, turn that challenge into an opportunity to explore other social media platforms. Twitter allows students to connect to a myriad of sources; most authors and publishers have Twitter accounts. I created a class account for us to use to connect successfully with authors and publishers.

What are you waiting for? It is time to connect the dots between authors and students and then “do something with it.”

Allison Hogan is a primer teacher at The Episcopal School of Dallas in Texas where she teaches kindergarten and first grade. She holds a bachelor’s in communications from the University of North Florida and a graduate degree in education from Southern Methodist University, where she specialized in reading and English as a Second Language. She has been recognized as both an Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development Emerging Leader and a National Association of Independent Schools Teacher of the Future. She can be found on Twitter at @AllisonHoganESD or @PrimerESD.

I am sitting next to Meg Cabot eating chicken. The conversation is going well. I’m totally playing it cool, like I have no idea she’s a bestselling author. I even get a little piece of parsley stuck between my teeth, you know, to solidify my “we are just two regular chicks chatting over chicken” routine. She says something about her books, and I say, “Oh, are you a writer?”

She smiles graciously. “Yes, I am.”

“Cool, what do you write about?” I ask, throwing back a swig of tea.

“Oh, princesses,” she says.

“That’s awesome,” I say without missing a beat. “Are they published?”

“Yes,” she says.

“I should totally look those up,” I say and move on to my potatoes.

I could chock my wonderful performance up to the fact that I’m a trained actress, but that would be dishonest. My spot-on “I don’t know you are rich and famous” performance actually comes from the fact that I don’t know she is rich and famous. I guess I should have put two and two together. A man in a tuxedo led me to this reserved table at the front of the banquet hall. I am at the ILA 2015 Conference to receive the ILA Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Award for Young Adult Fiction for Beauty of the Broken, and Meg Cabot is scheduled to speak at this luncheon. So when this beautiful, poised, funny woman sitting beside me introduced herself to me as Meg, I should have said, ”A-ha! This is Meg Cabot, writer of the gazillion dollar-earning Princess Diaries.” But I didn’t. I didn’t because this whole weekend has been overwhelmingly hard to believe, so I seem to be coping by subconsciously deciding not to believe it. I feel like Dorothy transported to Oz, muttering, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” ad nauseam. I think I may be suffering from a mild shock.

It all started when I arrived at the Four Seasons in St. Louis after a two-day road trip from Minneapolis. My publisher, Simon & Schuster, had offered to fly me in for the event, but I wanted to bring my friend Polyxeni, you know, for moral support, so I wouldn’t make an idiot of myself in front of Meg Cabot or anything. Polyxeni is a book buyer for the St. Paul Library System, and from the minute I found out I won the ILA award, she told me it was a big deal. A huge deal. A life-changing deal. So did Simon & Schuster. So did my agent, Andy Ross. I didn’t believe any of them.

“Last year’s winner was Rainbow Rowell,” Polyxeni said slowly over coffee. “Do you get that? Rainbow Rowell?”

I nodded. Sure, I knew who Rainbow Rowell was. Who didn’t? What did that have to do with me?

“Her book is being made into a Pixar movie now! This award changes the career trajectory of everyone who wins it!” Polyxeni enthused.

I wondered why she was being so pushy. And why was she using big words like “trajectory”? Did she think I was a scientist or something? Show off. Suffice it to say, out of self-preservation, I decided to miss the point. I think it was because I had been a struggling artist for so many decades, the thought of all that changing seemed impossible to me. I didn’t want to get my hopes up only to find them dashed. It was easier not to believe.

We arrived in St. Louis looking just about like people who have been driving and eating Pringles for two days should look, which is to say, dead shmexy. I knew Simon & Schuster was going to be putting me up at the Four Seasons, but I didn’t know what that meant. I guessed Four Seasons was sort of like Holiday Inn—nice, clean, probably no roaches in the showers. When we walked through the doors, I thought four things:

1. Now I know what the phrase “smells like money” means.
2. Maybe I should have put on a fresh T-shirt, one without the Jaws emblem.
3. Is everything here made out of actual marble, or is that pen faux marble?
4. I hope that minivan-sized chandelier doesn’t fall on my head.

After checking in, Polyxeni and I stepped onto the elevator. “Why do you have to put your key in?” she whispered.
“To keep the riffraff out,” I said. “Which is weird, because until now, I was the riffraff.”
We laughed and rode the elevator to the 15th floor where a beautiful woman was waiting for us with our luggage (a very stained polka-dotted roll-along and an army green duffel bag). She showed us around our room, making sure to point out the television hidden in the bathroom mirror, just in case we wanted to watch Seinfeld reruns while we were freshening up, after which she offered to bring up bath salts and bubble bath, should we decide to take advantage of the amenities. She pointed at the marble encased tub, as if we could miss it. The bathtub was roughly the size of the Aegean Sea. I suddenly understood why rich people so often drowned in their bathtubs. I asked Polyxeni if she had brought our life jackets. She hadn’t. We decided to take our chances with the drowning and said yes to the bath salts.

After the woman left, Polyxeni and I glanced around our room in awe, commenting on the St. Louis Arch glinting in the sun just outside our window. Then we flopped on the giant bed at its center.

“It feels like a cloud!” Polyxeni giggled. She was right. It did. I was pretty sure we’d been transported to heaven. We bumbled around for a bit, smelling shampoos and tasting pillow mints and acting like a scene from The Beverly Hillbillies.

That night, Polyxeni and I went to the hotel restaurant for a celebratory dinner. Our waitress was a lovely girl. She seemed to know who I was. As she poured my champagne, she called me Ms. Waters with a sort of reverence I am not used to. Sometimes, my community college students would say my name that way at the end of a semester, when they deserved an “F” and wanted a “C”. But this felt sincere. During the course of dinner, every waiter in the restaurant came to meet me. They brought me a little dessert plate that had “Congratulations” written on it in chocolate. Polyxeni assured me that she hadn’t told them about my award. That’s when I started to think that maybe, just maybe, Polyxeni and Simon & Schuster and my agent hadn’t been lying when they said this award was a big deal.

The next day’s events were even more surreal. I had a signing at 1 pm. Beauty of the Broken was released almost a year ago. I have pretty much been on book tour since then. I am not new to signings. I have signed books all over the USA, in coffee shops and bookstores and libraries and schools. What I have learned about book signings is that they are very unpredictable things. Sometimes, 50 people show up (if you are signing in your hometown). Sometimes, two people show up, and you take them out for wine and Chinese food because you are embarrassed they bothered to show up when no one else did. So I warned Polyxeni at lunch. “Don’t expect much from the signing. I’m not sure people will show up.”

“Oh, they’ll show up. Trust me,” she said. Poor Polyxeni. She just didn’t understand the nuances of the publishing business.

Or maybe she did. The second I sat down to sign, a line formed. A long line. It stretched out of sight. People gushed as I signed their books.

“You’re my daughter’s favorite author. I can’t believe I get to meet you!”

“Make it out to my wife! She’s your biggest fan!”

“Can I get a picture with you?”

I handled all of this with the grace and dignity of a seasoned author, which is to say, I didn’t throw up on anyone. After 20 minutes, we had to end the signing, not because the line had dwindled, but because we ran out of books. I don’t know how many books we had to start with, but I can tell you we had bunches. Bunches and bunches. I walked away dazed. Again, it occurred to me that this award might actually mean something. Could it be that my career was really going to change?

That night, Simon & Schuster hosted a “family dinner,” which meant that they brought a handful of really cool marketing people and authors together in a posh restaurant and fed them amazing food. (Full disclosure: I had never been invited to a Simon & Schuster family dinner before.) It was beautiful. I ordered steak and three glasses of champagne because I could. (I noticed another author ordered four neat whiskeys, so I figured I was OK.) After we were well into the main course, Candice, the extraordinary library and marketing person who had organized the event, suggested we go around the table and introduce ourselves. We did. Everyone said his or her name, the title of his or her latest book, and the name of his or her editor. When my turn came, I said just those things. Candice looked at me expectantly. “Don’t you have something else to tell them?” she asked. What was she talking about? I looked at her blankly.

“Your award?” she prodded. “I think we can tell them even though it’s a secret. No one will say anything.”

My award? It was a big enough deal that I could say it to this room full of important people and expect them to be impressed? “Well, Beauty of the Broken won the ILA Book Award for Young Adult Fiction,” I said, feeling almost sheepish, expecting everyone to nod politely and go back to nibbling cheeses. I probably will never forget that moment as long as I live. The expressions on the faces at the table changed. They were impressed. Amazed, even. Everyone clapped and congratulated me.

“Thank you,” I said, learning to love the attention.

And then, a bunch of naked guys rode by the window on bikes and stole my thunder. No, I’m not making this up. There was a nude bike rally in St. Louis that night, and it happened to pass the restaurant where we were eating. Everyone forgot my award, ran to the window, and started shrieking, “Oh, my god! Did you see his—?” (Side note: If you ever want to be cured of the demon of lust, watch a naked bike rally.) Which made me go, “Ok, now I get it! This is a dream!” But it wasn’t a dream. I don’t think. Maybe it was. Maybe I just hadn’t woken up yet.

The next day, I accepted my award shortly after I realized who Meg Cabot was. “Oh, my god! You’re that Meg!” I said, looking at the giant screen behind us, onto which was projected a God-sized picture of Meg, along with photos of her zillion best-selling novels.

“Yes,” she laughed.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I feel so dumb.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I get tired of that other stuff anyway.”

I don’t know if I will ever be Meg Cabot. I don’t know if I will ever get enough of this “other stuff” to get tired of it. Right now, two days after coming home from the ILA Conference, I’m still blown away that any of that “other stuff” is coming my way at all. Already, people care about Beauty of the Broken in a way they never have. People I don’t know are tweeting about me. I’ve already been asked to speak at a major conference. Facebook, the litmus test of all that is good and likable in this world, tells me that people like me way more than they did two weeks ago. And this is just the beginning.

After the banquet, I attended a panel where a brilliant professor taught people how to teach Beauty of the Broken in the classroom. I looked down at the worksheet she handed me, taking in phrases like “feminist critique” and “Marxist analysis” in relation to my characters. Stay with me here: Those weird little figments of my imagination are now going to be used to torture high school and college students everywhere. Someday, a few months from now, a year from now, some poor NYU freshman will be popping NoDoz, analyzing the socioeconomic implications of Iggy’s quilt. “Why do you think the author used Iggy’s quilt so often in the text?” some well-meaning teacher will ask, and the student will write an essay about this, a terrible essay, an essay that mixes up “you’re” and “your” and postulates that Iggy’s quilt is a symbol of the various facets of bourgeois oppression in the 21st century.

And I will be sitting at home saying, “Ha, suckers! The author used Iggy’s quilt so much because she knew she needed to write a few physical details to help readers visualize the scene, and she was way too hopped up on caffeine to think of anything fresh, so she referenced the dumb blanket again!”

Maybe I shouldn’t write that down. Maybe I should just pretend I meant all the profound things students will someday say I meant. Thanks to ILA, I am a serious writer. But the transition is hard.

After all, up until now, I was the riffraff.

Tawni Waters won the ILA 2015 Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Award for Young Adult Fiction for Beauty of the Broken. This was reposted with permission from the Andy Ross Literary Agency’s blog.