ABSTRACT
As the teachers went through their curriculum maps, writing down the titles that they wished to keep that correlated with a particular standard and those they wished to discard, it became quickly apparent that there were not many, if any, nonfiction titles on either side of the list. Discussion took place amongst grade levels, favoring or dismissing certain books and short stories, sometimes accompanied by cries of “But I love that book!” or “I am so glad to get rid of that one.” The fifth grade team reached the end of the process and called me over. “We are done!” one teacher proclaimed, spreading her hands to show me the work they had accomplished. But before I could respond, a teacher countered: “We are done with this part. But if you look at our list, you will see that we have almost no nonfiction titles. Lori, didn’t you say we needed to try and get our nonfiction texts to comprise more than 60% of the texts we read with our students to get at the informational text standards?” I nodded in response and she turned back to the group, “We are just getting started.”
