Engaging Young Children With Informational Books

Dr. Helen Patrick is a Professor of Educational Psychology in Purdue University’s College of Education. Her teaching and research focus on promoting positive classroom environments that promote students’ learning, understanding, and motivation. She has worked in numerous elementary schools in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. For the past seven years she has worked with teachers and children in ethnically-diverse kindergartens, focusing on ways to successfully integrate teaching “big ideas” of science with reading and writing activities. Read more about this Scientific Literacy Project, funded by the US Department of Education, at http://www.purduescientificliteracyproject.org/.Dr. Panayota (Youli) Mantzicopoulos is Professor of Educational Psychology in Purdue University’s College of Education. Her interests include early personal-social development and learning in diverse environments. Her research has examined the effectiveness of early grade-retention practices, the development of self-competence beliefs, early teacher-child relationships, and shared-reading of informational texts as a context for learning both at home and school. Her most recent work has been associated with the Scientific Literacy Project (http://www.purduescientificliteracyproject.org/) where she has focused on the integration of informational texts with science inquiry activities and on investigating the development of children’s socially derived meanings about science. Visit her at https://collaborate.education.purdue.edu/edst/youli/default.aspx

• Series Preface to Classroom InsightsAcknowledgmentsAbout the AuthorsIntroduction1. English Language Arts in the Early Years of School: Priorities and Consequences2. Do Young Children Find Informational Books Hard to Understand?3. Are Young Children Really Interested in Informational Books?4. What Should I Consider When Selecting Informational Books?5. How Can I Use Shared Informational Book Reading in my Classroom to Build Children′s Reading Skills and Background Knowledge?6. How Can I Incoporate Writing With Informational Books?7. How Can Parents Use Informational Books to Support Children′s Learning?References for Children′s BooksReferences for Research SourcesIndex

"This book is an urgent read for all teachers and parents of young children who want their kids to achieve long-term academic success! This book will drastically change how I read and how I encourage writing with my students and children. I am very grateful to Mantzicopoulos and Patrick for reminding me how essential informational reading and writing are, not only to the development of language arts skills, but to the reintroduction of science and social studies to daily elementary education. Including informational texts in the classroom is necessary if we are to produce students prepared for success on an international scale."