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teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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to my wonderful husband john who has taught me so much about life and love and schooled me in the wisdom of change credits page 140 from chameleon chameleon by joy cowley photographs by nic bishop photographs copyright © 2005 by nic bishop reprinted by permission of scholastic inc every effort has been made to find the authors and publishers of previously published material in this book and to obtain permission to use it scholastic inc grants teachers permission to photocopy the reproducible pages from this book for classroom use only no other part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without written permission of the publisher for information regarding permission write to scholastic inc 557 broadway new york ny 10012 editor raymond coutu cover design by jorge j namerow interior design by holly grundon interior photos by vicki benson castagna copy editor shelley griffin isbn 13 978-0-439-51782-9 isbn 10 0-439-51782-6 copyright © 2007 by vicki benson castagna all rights reserved published by scholastic inc printed in the u.s.a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 40 12 11 10 09 08 07 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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contents introduction and acknowledgments 4 chapter 1 information literacy for an information generation 7 chapter 2 creating understanding with nonfiction laying a theoretical foundation 18 chapter 3 teaching for understanding an overview of cognitive strategy instruction 34 chapter 4 predicting to access information 52 chapter 5 evaluating text for literal understanding 77 chapter 6 evaluating text for critical understanding 112 chapter 7 evaluating text for conceptual understanding .155 chapter 8 transforming classroom practice lessons from the field 204 appendix 214 professional references cited 218 children s books cited 222 index 223 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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introduction and acknowledgments i t is good to have an end to journey toward but it is the journey that matters in the end ursula k leguin he travel brochures are stacked on my kitchen counter and my favorite travel web sites have been bookmarked on my laptop my husband john and i are planning a trip to ischia a small island off the coast of naples italy from which john s grandfather emigrated many years ago to become an american citizen as we get ready for our journey we have read about italy and have talked and listened to others who have made the trip we want to know about the experiences of those who have lived or journeyed there we will plan our own trip but under the guidance of other travelers and that is the intention of this book to provide you with the guidance for making your own professional journey when you picked up this book i am sure that you had a destination in mind perhaps you are looking for guidance about how to more effectively teach using nonfiction or how to implement strategy instruction in your classroom or how to help students meet increased demands for reading writing and thinking in today s world as those who shared their insights and wisdom about italy with us i share with you what i have learned about teaching informational literacy in the primary grades whether you are about to embark on this professional journey for the first time or you re already on it i hope you find my guidance helpful throughout this book you will meet several fellow t teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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travelers with whom i have had the opportunity and privilege of working and to whom i am indebted for sharing their experiences i share their thoughts and experiences with you for a journey is always easier and more enriching with someone who has traveled the path before you will step into the classroom of beth laine a talented former first-grade teacher at mandeville elementary school right outside new orleans who has won several awards and is now an administrator at the school beth was brave enough to allow me to set up a video camera in her classroom and record hours days and weeks of her journey we talked reflected analyzed and adjusted working with her was an amazing experience as i m sure you will agree after meeting her students through the stories that i share throughout the book you will also get a glimpse of the journeys of some of the other teachers at mandeville elementary teachers who participated in my research project on nonfiction strategy instruction which began in 2000 over two years they allowed me to enter their classrooms their teaching and their thinking to figure out how to support teachers as they help students create understanding with nonfiction text other travelers include teachers who took graduate classes that i taught at southeastern louisiana university throughout the book you will find their reflections they shared honestly and openly as they walked along the path sometimes unsure of new territory often scared to take the risk but excited by their students responses and encouraged by their achievements i thank them for their willingness to take those risks to reflect and to share you will also meet children from classrooms scattered throughout the country these children allowed me to come in and be their temporary teacher they also took risks usually in front of many permanent teachers while being captured on videotape these children taught me so much they taught me how much scaffolding language support and explicit instruction is necessary for real growth in reading and writing informational text they also taught me much firsthand about the information generation of kids that we are all teaching and their teachers taught me about supporting professional development and about risk taking trying something new while still meeting stiff state and district demands i draw most frequently from my current staff-development work outside houston texas with the humble independent school district the class scenarios with me as the teacher are mostly taken from experiences within that district there are the travelers who you won t meet in the book but who were definitely at my side during my writing journey one was my patient and supportive editor ray coutu what an incredible editor and friend he helped me take all my thinking my knowledge about theory and research my classroom experiences and the teaching ideas that have teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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been bouncing around in my head over the years and craft them into a book that i hope will be useful and practical for you fellow educator carrice cummins began the journey with me many years ago together we labored to meet the needs of teachers learning to teach strategies retellings and informational text first in her school district in richland parish then throughout the state of louisiana and then much further afield together we conceived the teaching tool of the go chart developed for informational text in this book thank you for the opportunity to work with you and your teachers through the years and there were my closest travel companions members of my wonderful blended family of seven children and two grandbabies who many times knew that mims was busy writing and shouldn t be disturbed i thank you and i love you two of my children laurie and erin are teachers who have shared much with me you are wonderful teachers but my most important companion has been my husband john he makes the journey worthwhile without him there would be no book he supported encouraged and cooked dinner or ordered out as i drafted and then celebrated with me as i wrote revised and edited down to the last sentence now we make our journey to ischia to all these travelers i say thank you as i was drafting john asked almost daily in his wonderful engineering way how many pages will you write today vicki and i would explain that writing simply is not formulaic i could not tell him a set number of pages it just didn t work that way and neither does teaching and learning teaching is not formulaic this book does not provide pat answers for today s complex educational challenges rather it provides practical teacher-friendly ideas placed within the context of the classroom and based on solid theory and research my hope is that you will use these ideas try them out weed out what doesn t work and establish your own long-term approach to teaching informational literacy for ultimately this is your journey and this book a road map use it to determine how best to meet your district and state expectations create your resources and curriculum and most important reach the information generation students that you teach bon voyage teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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chapter 1 information literacy for an information generation he second graders were intrigued as i read about how and why birds build nests especially weaverbirds they wanted to know why the weaverbird s nest is shaped so oddly and how the bird gets into the nest with the long funnel-shaped entrance so where can we find out i asked the group in unison the class responded the internet ask almost any student these days where to find information on any topic and the internet is usually his or her answer we live in a world of information that is readily accessible rather than go to the library to find information in books we carry libraries on our laptops with the press of a key we can find the location of lithuania the temperature in taiwan or the size of the seychelles in fact children born since the early eighties have been dubbed the net generation tapscott 1999 or as i refer to it the information generation because technology and the information it supplies is a natural part of their daily lives for them finding information on the internet is as simple as tying their shoe they google a telephone number rather than consult a traditional directory they go to a cinema s web site rather than the newspaper to find out movie times they check the internet first for almost any kind of information they seek however growing up with information that is readily available does not ensure that children know what to do with the information once they find it take miles for example a typical third grader with a report to write on the great basin after searching the internet he downloaded information on the great basin and printed it out all 27 pages then he shouted to his mom i m finished access to the information did not ensure learning miles is like so many information generation students who believe locating information is the end itself and not a means to an end little did he realize that he had just begun the process of writing a report miles needed information literacy the ability t teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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to access evaluate and use information effectively information literacy standards for student learning 1998 whether they find facts from the internet a textbook an article or reference books students today need to know how to think about facts and transform them into understanding consider joshua an information-literate first grader after perusing a nonfiction trade book on spiders during recess he burst through the classroom door eager to share all he had learned with me you won t believe what i learned about spiders he exclaimed did you know that spiders do all kinds of cool stuff that you don t think that spiders do some can swim and jump and one can even build a trapdoor i was looking during recess to see what kinds of spiders we got here at school clearly joshua was thinking about the information as he was reading he connected the text to what he already knew about spiders realizing that not all spiders act move and spin webs in the same way he was amazed at how some spiders behave like other animals i wonder if they can swim like a fish do you think they can jump as high as rabbits then he wanted to take his new understanding and apply it by investigating the playground to see what kinds of spiders live there and he was eager to share his understanding joshua is an information generation student who knew how to access evaluate and use information effectively this book is for teachers and administrators who want to help primary students more effectively read the fact-filled texts they encounter daily and write those texts themselves it emphasizes the role that literacy plays in accessing evaluating and using information it helps you apply research-based classroom-proven practices to develop information-literate students suggesting ways for using nonfiction text more frequently and wisely in grades k­3 in this chapter i argue that our students must be information literate to function in today s classroom and today s world from there i show how information literacy applies to our elementary classrooms then i discuss the best methods to teach the information generation in our elementary classrooms particularly k­3 technology and the information generation a s previously stated technology is the way of life for children today my son brandon is a perfect example when i walk into his bedroom i usually find him sitting at his computer instant-messaging friends at the same time he is texting on his cell phone to other friends his ipod peeking from his shirt pocket and his xbox prominently displayed in the background wired into four other game players across the globe i survey the scene and ask with astonishment what are you doing he looks at me and replies my homework mom what does it look like and sure enough there on the desk is his teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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open algebra book notebook and pencil by growing up digital brandon has learned to multitask the new studies about this generation assure me that he really is capable of doing his homework while doing all the other things at the same time prensky 2001b roberts foehr rideout brodie 2005 tapscott 1999 however richard wurman warns that technology overload can also lead to information anxiety the sheer amount of information we confront on a daily basis is more than most people confronted in an entire lifetime just over 100 years ago in fact there has been more information produced in the past 30 years than in the previous 5,000 information is being produced at such a rapid rate that this information supply is expected to double about every two years wurman liefer sume whitehouse 2000 it is the availability and accessibility to so much information that has created new expectations for literacy that impact our schools and classrooms information literacy is a survival skill in the information age instead of drowning in the abundance of information that floods their lives information literate people know how to access evaluate and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision whether the information they select comes from a computer a book a government agency a film or any number of other possible resources information and literacy ealing with information is essential in today s world hammer 1997 senge et al 2000 presidential wurman et al 2000 to be successfully employed committee report on today we must know how to determine the information information literacy we need how to find it and how to apply it to achieve 1989 our goals we must decide what to do with the information and how to share that information with others the twenty-first-century workplace demands information-literate employees braunger lewis 1997 hammer 1997 senge et al 2000 tapscott 1999 in the last century reading and writing about facts was deemed sufficient in this century we must also think critically about facts to create understanding based on them this requires a new kind of literacy a different way of comprehending and using information d teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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numerous reports recommendations and standards at the national and state levels underscore the importance of thinking about understanding and using written information effectively they point in the direction of information literacy asking if our students are prepared the national assessment of education progress naep is a today s literacy expectations demand higher levels of government agency that thinking about text monitors education at the national level it outlines literacy expectations that emphasize the importance of inferential and critical thinking to develop understanding of text while thinking about the text reading framework for the 2003 national assessment of educational progress 2003 the national reading panel report of the national reading panel 2000 defined comprehension a critical aspect of literacy as creating understanding with cognitive processes requiring intentional thinking citing the literacy dictionary s harris hodges 1995 definition intentional thinking during which meaning is constructed through interactions between text and reader the 2003 report from the national commission on writing reflects the demands of the new literacy too it states that the majority of elementary students writing nationwide reflected thinking at the literal level and needed to go beyond that educational reform must be expanded to include ideas the ability of students to think reason and communicate the neglected r 2003 writing facts is no longer sufficient writing must reflect thinking about the information to provide our students with access to all this information without the necessary skills for handling it is like throwing students out to sea without a life preserver we cannot continue teaching students to read and write information at the literal levels as we did in the last century and expect them to know how to think critically and create understanding we are assessing a new literacy today information literacy for an information generation 10 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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information literacy in primary classrooms why promote information literacy in the primary grades shouldn t that be left to the upper-grade teachers in the early grades we teach students to learn to read and then in the upper grades they usually teach them to read to learn right wrong in today s classroom students are expected to know how to create understanding from nonfiction at proficient levels by fourth grade reading framework 2003 these expectations require students to evaluate information beyond the fact level to consider the relationships of concepts inside the text and outside the text to think about the information at a conceptual level and to put that thinking into writing students must be able to access national evaluate and use the information standards for however less than 25 percent of our fourthinformation grade students nationwide were reading at proficient literacy levels according to our latest naep reports 2005 it standard one is in grades k­3 that the groundwork must be laid for the student who is understanding how nonfiction works information literate our job is to teach our primary students how accesses information to read and that includes reading information efficiently and and perhaps we can use more of our large blocks effectively of literacy-instruction time to develop the thinking required of information literacy standard two the information literacy standards for the student who student learning 1998 are a road map that i use in is information classrooms to guide instruction they are national literate evaluates goals established by the american association of information critically school librarians and the association for educational and competently communications and technology in this section i give an overview of each standard as interpreted standard three for the primary classroom then in the following the student who is chapters i share strategies to develop the thinking information literate skills that help students meet these standards uses information accurately and creatively 11 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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standard one the student who is information literate accesses information efficiently and effectively there has been a growing interest in nonfiction in the elementary classrooms in the last few years schools are ordering more nonfiction book companies are publishing nonfiction for emergent readers teachers are using more informational trade books in instruction so we need to make sure that our young students are learning how to access the information in those texts efficiently and effectively accessing information goes beyond just locating the information in the text it requires pulling out the information we need to meet our purpose for reading for example if we can t figure out how to work our car alarm we don t read the entire owner s manual to educate ourselves instead we find the section on the car s security system and pull out the information we need when i was in the classroom full-time i made sure my students had access to information books during thematic units i provided books about frogs weather and ecology spread out across the chalkboard and in literacy centers however when thinking back i realize that i had not taught my young students how to access the information within the books instead of teaching students how nonfiction works i like so many teachers spent literacy instruction time teaching them how stories work a look around our classrooms paints a pretty clear picture of how most young children learn to read we read aloud stories to help students learn story structure they learn that stories have characters setting and a problem that the characters try to resolve during the story books are read from beginning to end literacy instruction is explicit students are grouped for varying levels of support in the early grades of school children are immersed almost exclusively in fiction duke 2000 fisher hiebert 1990 venezky 2000 compare that to the two to three-minute average per day of literacy instruction with nonfiction text in many first-grade classrooms or the classrooms in which no literacy instruction with nonfiction was found duke 2000 teachers often assume that once children learn to read stories they easily transfer the necessary skills to nonfiction but that is not necessarily the case chall jacobs baldwin 1996 different kinds of text demand different kinds of reading strategies for students to access information efficiently and effectively they must know how nonfiction text works the strategies explained in this book will help make these differences explicit to young students 12 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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standard two the student who is information literate evaluates information critically and competently evaluating information is not the same as reading or even memorizing information to recall facts it is thinking critically about the information doyle 1996 elder paul 2003 facione 2006 specifically as the reader thinks about the facts he considers what he already knows about the topic what experiences he has had related to it and how the information connects to other information kintsch 1998 pearson fielding 1991 like joshua whose story was told at the beginning of the chapter as he analyzes reasons interprets connects and draws conclusions from the information he creates understanding facts per se are static however the reader s understanding is dynamic and variable depending on his or her prior knowledge experiences beliefs and thinking habits for example in one class i observed all first-grade students were reading the same text about reptiles the facts were static however each child s understanding of those facts was dynamic as sam read he compared the snake in the text to the snake he saw on his camping trip johnny though was so bogged down these second graders are learning to evaluate text about in the reading process that he only animal teeth got pieces of what the text was about and lindsay was grossed out by a photo in the book and didn t remember any of the facts she read the following chapters describe strategies to teach young readers to evaluate informational text for understanding standard three the student who is information literate uses information accurately and creatively from state reading exams in the third grade to the sat in high school students must not only know how to think critically about information but also how to use it as vito perrone writes our students need to be able to use knowledge not just know about things 1994 13 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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in classrooms we commonly ask students to use information by writing about it whether in journals learning logs retellings test questions or reports writing about information not only builds children s literacy skills but also provides us with a powerful authentic way to assess their learning when students can write well about information chances are they understand that information and yet how many of us have sat and listened to children s strained reading of their written reports as they stumble through their own text we must question their understanding of the report s content most of these students learned about using information by being what jamie mckenzie 1996 calls word movers they have rearranged words from a published sentence or sentences in a published paragraph and called it paraphrasing unfortunately these students do not understand the concepts they are writing about they have not successfully accessed or evaluated the information when students share their understanding in writing the piece should reflect their ability to organize the information integrate the information into their prior knowledge and apply their critical thinking students should be able to write accurately and creatively writing must reflect accurate understanding of the content it must also reflect evidence of creating of students shaping the new information into their own understanding and then communicating that understanding to accomplish this students need explicit teaching of writing and thinking the strategies in this book provide practical ways to teach students how to develop thinking to create understanding and then how to write from that understanding teaching the information generation to think about and understand fact-filled texts a ccording to marc prensky 2001a in a very short time technology has changed an entire generation s behavior radically and it behooves all of us who are not from the generation but whose life involves interactions with them such as parents and teachers to learn as much as we can about the new behaviors p 13 and he is right recognizing these behaviors helps us to address them effectively as we navigate the high expectations for literacy in the twenty-first century it also helps us to better understand this generation at home and at school take third grader jeffrey for example in a conference with his teacher his mother describes him this way jeffrey is the most curious kid i know he is so eager to learn about everything it seems he spends hours on the internet looking up all kinds of stuff he can tell me about every kind of shark and in what ocean they live he knows which kinds are aggressive and which aren t he knows that the smallest one is about the size of 1 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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your shoe and that the largest is half the size of a football field you should see what jeffrey created the other day he had downloaded some clips about sharks and made his own slide show however jeffrey s teacher describes him this way uninterested and unmotivated has a difficult time in content areas doesn t know how to answer questions listening in on this conference made me feel there were two jeffreys a world jeffrey and a school jeffrey jeffrey represents a breed of student that i see all too often these days the student who knows how to succeed with technology and information outside school but struggles with text and information in school these students tend to have more practice and immersion with technology than with texts recent research roberts et al 2005 reveals that students spend an average of 6.5 hours per day engaged with some type of electronic media and squeeze 8.5 hours into those 6.5 hours by multitasking with several types of media roberts et al 2005 before these students go off to college it is estimated they will spend over 10,000 hours playing video games watch over 20,000 hours of television talk more than 10,000 hours on cell phones but spend less than 5,000 hours reading prensky 2001b because of growing up digital and their immersion in technology the information generation has developed the following common thinking patterns it · · · · · · likes to receive information fast multitasks and parallel processes prefers random access of information prefers graphics to text craves interactivity functions best when networked prensky 2001b roberts et al 2005 tapscott 1999 our information generation kids come from homes that have an average of u 3.5 tvs u 3.3 radios u 2.9 vcr/dvd players u 1.5 computers u 3.6 cd/tape players 24 had 5 tvs 53 had 3 vcr dvd players 56 owned 2 game players 34 had dvrs 80 had cable satellite tv 63 said the tv is on during meals 68 have tvs in their bedrooms roberts et al 2005 let s consider how these common thinking behaviors impact learning from text and even interfere with today s higher literacy expectations see chart on the next page 1 teaching the information generation © vicki benson castagna published by scholastic teaching resources

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