Artwork by Sarah S. Brannen ©2017
Every Wednesday I join Alyson Beecher from kidlitfrenzy and other
kidlit bloggers to share wonderful nonfiction picture books.
The intention of today's blog post is to give professionals that work in the
education field new nonfiction reading material and ideas to use
education field new nonfiction reading material and ideas to use
with students to promote a love of reading nonfiction materials.
This year I decided to try NCTE's Mock Orbis Pictus as a way for students to read and critique nonfiction picture books. I wrote about our decision to try this here and shared the how and our list of books here.
I can't tell you the number of times I was stopped in the hallway by young readers who wanted to tell me their thinking about one of our nonfiction picture books. This definitely showed me that nonfiction reading has a needed and regular place in our read alouds.
Yesterday our students voted on their favorites. They could vote for the book they felt should win the award, one they felt should win an honor and a recommended title. These are the same categories the actual Orbis Pictus Committee uses. Their votes were weighted to help us see a clear winner. I love seeing what nonfiction made an impact with readers. Out of our five winners, four were picture book biographies and our winner was expository nonfiction. Two of the picture books featured athletes, one featured revolutionary girls and one featured explorers. If you talk to our students, they had clear feelings as to why certain books should win and while we used the Orbis Pictus criteria when discussing these books, for eight to ten year olds, it's still which book they enjoyed the most.
Without further ado, here's our selections:
Meadowview School's Mock Orbis Pictus Recommended Books:
Shaking Things Up
by Susan Hood
Girl Running
by Annette Bay Pimentel
Meadowview School's Mock Orbis Pictus Honor Books:
Otis and Will Discover the Deep
by Barb Rosenstock
Game Changers
by Lesa Cline-Ransome
Meadowview School's Mock Orbis Pictus Award winner:
Cute as an Axolotl
by Jess Keating
We're looking forward to hearing what the real committee selects at Saturday's NCTE Awards Luncheon!
Wonderful books chosen. I loved those first two winners, still need to read Otis and Will and Game Changers. It is great that the students are becoming familiar with these types of books, the people and events that inspired the stories. Enjoy your time at NCTE Michele!
ReplyDeleteThanks to you and your young judges!
ReplyDeleteLove this! Our winner was Otis and Will, with Game Changers as a runner up!
ReplyDelete