Teaching English Trade Books and Content Literacy

The content are is English.

E-Book

Cost

Where

Tools to read

TEK

Reading/Comprehension Skills. Students use a flexible range of metacognitive reading skills in both assigned and independent reading to understand an author's message. Students will continue to apply earlier standards with greater depth in increasingly more complex texts as they become self-directed, critical readers. The student is expected to:

(A) establish purposes for reading selected texts based upon own or others' desired outcome to enhance comprehension;

(B) ask literal, interpretive, evaluative, and universal questions of text;

(C) reflect on understanding to monitor comprehension (e.g., summarizing and synthesizing; making textual, personal, and world connections; creating sensory images);

(D) make complex inferences about text and use textual evidence to support understanding;

(E) summarize, paraphrase, and synthesize texts in ways that maintain meaning and logical order within a text and across texts; and make connections between and across texts, including other media (e.g., film, play), and provide textual evidence.

The Jungle Book

$1.99

Barnes & Noble

Nook

A Tale of Two Cities

$2.99

Barnes & Noble

Nook

Treasure Island

$4.29

Barnes & Noble

Nook

Use of trade books in content area:

Texts selected for English should be widely rccognized as noteworthy: a seminal or influential text in its genre. The texts should contain themes or ideas that are engaging, provocative, and significant. The themes of the books should support analysis, have a clear and developed narrative structure, and provide a discernible point-of-view.

Other trade books to read not directly related to content area: I would read (and have students read) The Call of the Wild by Jack London.

Module 6 -- Trade Books and Literacy

London, J. (2012). The Call of the Wild. Amazon Digital...

The protagonist of the story is a part St. Bernard, part Scottish shepherd dog that was taken to the Klondike goldfields to be trained and used as a sled dog. The life is harsh and the dog reverts to his primitive ancestry, eventually becoming the leader of a pack of wolves. The dog undertakes an epic, nearly mythical journey in which he leaves the safety of the familiar and encounters danger and adventure. Through his heroism, the dog becomes known as the legendary Ghost Dog of the Klondike.
Text-to-Text

Test-to-World

Text-to-Self

The book reminds me of Moby Dick as both stories are reduced to a situation of the gravest significance. The protagonist in Moby Dick is a man, yet the story is clearly shared with the whale, whose nature is anthropomorphized by the man. Both the man and the whale must rely on experience, instincts, and intellect to survive.

"And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again." The domesticated generations fell from him. There are people living in the world right at this moment that are facing harsh lives and astonishing cruelty and violence. They must rely on their instincts and their tribes (packs) and small communities to survive. In the developing world, we are often critical of people who live by their wits and never seem to be able to escape a constricted life.

"They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always." When we experience truly dire situations, our senses are heightened and we become aware of things we would at other times not have perceived or not have…