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COMMON KNOWLEDGE™ The Newsletter of the Core Knowledge® Foundation
Volume 18, Number 2, May 2005

Vol. 18 No. 2 2005

After Core Knowledge

Using Picture Books

The 2005
National Conference

Kudos for CK in NYRB

Schools in the News

School to Offer
International Baccalaureate

Discount Offer on Books

Colorado Music
Festival

Teaching About Heroes

K–8 Leadership Institutes

Preschool Professional
Development

New Core Knowledge
Board Member

About Pictures and Reading

Below we present a delightful essay by reading specialist Susan Stern on using picture books in the Core Knowledge classroom. It is important to distinguish at the outset between legitimate, valuable uses, such as those described in Ms. Stern’s article, and uses that are less legitimate or even counterproductive. The goal of a reading program should be, of course, for students to arrive, eventually, at a point at which they can derive sense from text without dependence on crutches like looking at the pictures and then guessing at the meanings of the words. Pictures do play, of course, important roles in many kinds of texts, from books for preschoolers to travelogues and how-to books. A telling photo or well-conceived, well-executed illustration can, indeed, be worth a thousand words. But it is also true that a well-turned phrase, like Yeats’ “She was more beautiful than thy first love,” can be worth a thousand pictures.

Far too many reading programs, today, have elevated the picture — which in most works for older children is properly ancillary to the text itself — into a primary source for “construction” of meaning. Far too often, older students are urged to look away from the text to the pictures to determine what a good reader would readily grasp without the crutch. A text reads, “The setting sun filled the sky with yellow and vermilion,” and the student is urged to look at the picture to figure out what vermilion means instead of being expected to think, “Gee. The sun is setting. At sunset, the sky is reddish. Vermilion must be a kind of red.” Of course, this second kind of guessing — making split-second inferences based on general knowledge and on the context provided by the words themselves — is a kind of thinking that we want to encourage in kids. However, it is best not to overdo instruction on tactical “word solving” with older students. Even better than having the student do such tactical thinking would be to have taught her what vermilion means in a previous context so that when she encountered the word in reading, she would not have to stop and stumble and figure the thing out. Contrary to what most current reading programs teach, pausing to “strategize” over texts, as E. D. Hirsch, Jr., points out in a forthcoming book, is not a sign of skill in reading. Rather, it is a sign of a failure in fluency. Metacognitive “strategizing” adds to the processing load of the reader, argues Dr. Hirsch, and actually impedes, more often than not, fluent comprehension. Distinguished reading researcher P. David Pearson, editor of the Handbook of Reading Research, made a similar point at the most recent national IRA conference when he summarized a day-long institute by saying, “Strategies are what we fall back on when there has been a failure in background knowledge.”

All that said, it’s important to distinguish between use of pictures with preschool or primary school students and use of pictures with students who are older. As everyone knows, picture books can be extremely valuable when used with students who are not yet readers. Pictures can supply background knowledge that students do not yet have, and they can supply clues to the meanings of unfamiliar words. Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that a picture book can be used with a nonreader to train him or her in the characteristics of texts and of narrative. From a picture book, a preschool student can learn that a text unfolds over time, that one looks from left to right, that the pages are ordered one after the other, and so on. The student can also learn from picture books that stories have characters and settings and conflicts, that they unfold over time, that they sometimes contain surprises, that the main character usually learns something, etc. These important characteristics of texts and of narratives can be “learned” by a child from picture books even without the child’s being able, necessarily, to articulate the learning.

Even in classrooms full of students who have already attained some ability in decoding and comprehension, pictures can serve important roles, as long as the pictures are presented by the teacher not as crutches to aid comprehension but rather as subjects of study in themselves or as occasions for teaching general background knowledge of the kind communicated so well, so often, by pictures.

 Dorothea Lange
An image from a "Migrant Mother" photo series. California, 1936
Library of Congress

Consider the famous photograph by Dorothea Lange of a migrant mother with a child on her lap in the back of a pickup truck. Nestled between the mother’s arm and the child is an old glass Coke bottle to which has been added a rubber nipple. This photo tells us what it means to be a mother who must make use of whatever meager means are available to provide her child the basic necessities. The photo is worthy of study, in itself, as a work of art, and it communicates quite as well as does The Grapes of Wrath the human cost of that concatenation of greed and natural disaster that was the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. But we must not teach our students, generally, to look to illustrations as primary sources of meaning. We should teach our students to read texts and pictures in their own right and to understand the properties unique to each medium. With that important caveat, then, we present the following essay by reading specialist Susan Stern on using picture books in the Core Knowledge classroom. The essay shares, we believe, many of the valuable uses to which picture books can be put in our schools, and the accompanying reading list is superb.

Robert D. Shepherd
Director of Educational Materials
The Core Knowledge Foundation

Using Picture Books to Enhance
Core Knowledge

by Susan Stern

Reading out loud to children — even in the middle grades and junior high — brings a new dimension to their understanding of history because they can live vicariously through the well-crafted characters of picture books. These historically accurate books are packed with beautiful language, rich vocabulary, and gorgeous illustrations that make history come alive. As a result of the read-aloud experience, bits and pieces of the world and its people blend together to make sense for young scholars as they build strong foundations for future learning.

A new genre of picture books has exploded onto bookstore and library shelves. These books are no longer cute stories about talking animals, but rather high quality illustrated literature about real events and real people that parallel core curriculum topics. The real advantage of reading these books out loud is that subtle nuances and important details become available to all children without regard to levels of skill — to typical readers as well as poor readers and nonreaders, new learners of English, special needs students, and gifted students.

These books can be used to build background knowledge, preview vocabulary, and introduce difficult concepts before reading textbooks about a new subject. They can also be grouped thematically and read as a supplement to an ongoing topic.

The Core Knowledge Sequence for American history, for example, can be enhanced in every grade by using the following protocols when reading to students:

     Pilgrim Cat by Carol Antoinette Peacock
  • Read interactively, stopping occasionally to ask a question, point out an interesting part of the story, explain a word, and connect ideas to previously learned historical events. In Kindergarten, for example, read Pilgrim Cat, which is about a stowaway cat on the Mayflower who is befriended by a young girl.
  • Talk about the hardships they encountered on the long, perilous journey to the New World.
  • Point out words like depart, morsel, perish, wracked, frail, ventured, abundance, and harvest.
  • Ask why Faith's stomach "reeled" and then discuss other definitions of the word reel.
  • Use a map or globe to find America, England, and the Atlantic Ocean. After reading, link this book with Thank You, Sarah! which is about a woman who wrote thousands of letters until Thanksgiving was finally recognized as a national holiday.

The idea of Pilgrims coming to America on ships can be further expanded into the larger theme of freedom. In first grade, read The Village That Vanished to learn about slave traders in Africa and to show how people respond when their freedom is threatened. Enhance the study of immigration by reading The Memory Coat in second grade. In third grade, read Molly Bannaky to teach students about indentured servants. Empathy with the unfortunate lot of the main character can be magnified by linking it to previously read books. Read The Boston Tea Party in fourth grade when students are studying about the colonists’ desire to obtain freedom from England. Connect these topics of freedom with the plight of the Native Americans by reading They Came from the Bronx in fifth grade. Enliven the study of child labor and unions by reading Bobbin Girl in sixth grade, a book about factories in New England. The struggle for women's rights can be made more memorable by reading You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer. In seventh grade, expand a unit on World War II by reading The Unbreakable Code, which is about the Navajo code talkers and Baseball Saved Us, which tells about the internment of the Japanese in the western United States. (A list of picture books by topics and grades is listed below.)

Reading out loud using these quality picture books in this way will help children understand new topics, master content related vocabulary, make connections between historic periods, and build crucial background knowledge, all of which together form the cornerstone of Core Knowledge.

American History Book List

Children can listen to and understand books roughly two years above their current independent reading level. These books can be shared among grade levels. To avoid surprises, always read a book first before reading it to the class.

Kindergarten

First Grade

Second Grade

Third Grade

Fourth Grade

Fifth Grade

Sixth Grade

Seventh Grade

Susan Stern is a reading specialist in the Miller Place School District on Long Island, NY. She teaches workshops and classes on how to use picture books in the classroom. She is co-author of Let's Link Picture Books and Social Studies, to be published in the fall by Humanics Learning. She can be reached at readbetter2000@aol.com

Addendum

Linda Bevilacqua, Director of Early Childhood Education at the Core Knowledge Foundation, also believes in using high quality picture books to build content knowledge starting in the preschool years. Below is the list of history related books that is contained in the Core Knowledge Preschool Sequence.

Preschool

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