Engaging Nonfiction

1. Engaging Nonfiction Katherine Schulten The New York Times Learning Network http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com Georgia Scurletis The Visual Thesaurus http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ http://www.vocabulary.com/

2. Warm-Up: With those around you, take a look at the set of five images that are paper-clipped together. All of these images come from The New York Times, and were found by searching the site using only one word. What do you think that word might be? http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

3. Match the image or text to the headline: Article | Suzanne Collins's War Stories for Kids DVD Review | It’s Overlords vs. Lower Depths in a Future City Essay | Teenage Wastelands Video Game Review | Grand Theft Auto Takes On New York Op-Ed|'Hunger Games' Parenting http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

4. How many did you get right? 1. Suzanne Collins’s War Stories for Kids 2. Teenage Wastelands 3. Grand Theft Auto Takes on New York 4. ‘Hunger Games’ Parenting 5. It’s Overlords vs. Lower Depths in a Future City

5. The NY Times as a Source for Nonfiction and “Informational Text” • The Common Core Standards demand a much greater emphasis on reading nonfiction and “informational” texts. • They also ask that students “integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually.” • Almost everything The Times publishes every day is “informational text” in “diverse formats” including articles, essays, graphics, photos, videos, reviews, podcasts, etc. • To see, try Times search on the word “dystopian”

6. “Room for Debate,” Student Opinion and Argument Another Common Core emphasis: Argument Room for Debate is a Times blog that takes on controversial issues in the news and in our culture. 5-7 experts write short, accessible pieces on topics like “Why are dystopian novels so popular now?” On the Learning Network, we invite students to engage in discussion via a daily Student Opinion question. Here are the 163 questions we asked this school year. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebatehttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/category/student-opinion/

7. Text Complexity (College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading, #10) “As identified by Williamson (2006), citing a 350-point Lexile gap between 12th-grade texts and those used in college, the grade-level bands themselves have been realigned to absorb this gap beginning in grades 2 and 3.” (see NGA & CCSSO) --Text Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading (Fisher, Fry, Lapp) http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

8. How is Text Complexity measured? Readability formulas are usually based on these five variables: sentence length number of different hard words number of personal pronouns percentage of unique words number of prepositional phrases http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

9. A Metacognitive Approach to Text Complexity “Feeling Gamed” : 10.0 on Flesch-Kincaid Task: Think about what you just learned about readability and apply it to the Room for Debate passage “Feeling Gamed” by Jay Parini. Based on the variables commonly used in various readability formulas, find the most complex sentence in the text. (http://www.interventioncentral.org/tools/reading-fluency-passage-generator) http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

10. Close Reading Strategy Task: Annotate Parini’s complex sentence (12.0 on Flesch-Kincaid) Replace each pronoun with its antecedent. Replace each “hard” word with an easier synonym. Underline and explain any symbols or metaphorical language. Reread the sentence with changes. Sum it up in fewer than ten words. http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

11. The Visual Thesaurus VocabGrabber iste12.visualthesaurus.com Username: iste@gmail.com Password: password What words did you circle in the sentence? Criteria for “grabbing” and ranking words? What makes a word hard? Saving a word list and exploring word maps. http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

12. Final Reflection How will you include more "informational text" in your curriculum, and makeit accessible and engaging for your students? How can digital resources likeNYTimes.com, the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com help you accomplish those goals? http://www.visualthesaurus.comhttp://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

13. Related LearningNetworkResources 163 Questions to Write or Talk About The Times and the Common Core Standards: Reading Strategies for ‘Informational Text’ Constructing Arguments: ‘Room for Debate’ and the Common Core Standards Dark Materials: Reflecting on Dystopian Themes in Young Adult Literature The Odds Ever in Your Favor: Ideas and Resources for Teaching ‘The Hunger Games’ Our Third Annual Summer Reading Contest http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com

14. Speaker Contact Info Katherine Schulten Editor, The New York Times Learning Network 620 8th Avenue, 9th Floor New York, NY 10018 schulten@nytimes.com http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com Twitter: @kschulten / @nytimeslearning Georgia Scurletis  Visual Thesaurus, Director of Curriculum Development155 Spring Street  |  New York, NY 10012p.888-278-8600 x 228  |  f.212-285-8999gscurletis@thinkmap.comhttp://www.vocabulary.com http://www.visualthesaurus.com Twitter: @visualthesaurus