Children's Books and Curriculum Integration in K-12

Abstract

Children's Books and Curriculum Integration in K-12 Antonio Causarano (bio) As a former special education teacher supporting students with disabilities in inclusive programs, and as a literacy instructor teaching literacy courses in an urban redesigned program, I have always seen picturebooks as paramount to designing an integrated literacy curriculum that can effectively support students' acquisition of foundational knowledge in content areas (Vučković). The importance of children's books as multimodal texts that scaffold reading comprehension by a balance between illustrations and narrative with content that presents cultural and racial variations is key to see student-centered instruction around the themes created by choosing quality children's books integrated across the curriculum (Zunshine). The overarching question here is how to create a student-centered curriculum using children's books across the curriculum that expose students to diversity in language, culture, and exceptionalities. One of the many possible answers is to see the learner at the center of the reading process and to provide teachers with the theory and the methodological tools to design effective curriculum integration using children's books as core texts in curriculum and instruction (Roger). The Reader at the Center of the Literacy Process Curriculum integration happens when students are placed at the center of the learning process by considering who they are in terms of culture, language, and exceptionalities. This means that the learner is the most important element that determines what texts will be used to design an integrated curriculum that will see students' diversity as the driving force to scaffold the literacy process across the curriculum. The theory that supports an integrated curriculum design is, in my experience, Rosenblatt's reader response theory (Literature; The Reader), which provides the theoretical framework to put the learner at the center of the reading process by choosing texts that mirror the learner's interests. Readers, according to reader response theory, come from different walks of life. The diversity and richness in the reader's background knowledge are key in looking at the processes that underlie the response to the same text and also, more importantly, indicate that the meaning is determined by the dynamic relationship between the reader and the text (Rosenblatt, Literature and The Reader). Reader response theory gives the learner a variety of possible ways in which he or she can contribute to the meaningmaking [End Page 83] process during the reading event. In turn, the reader is an active participant in literacy events across the curriculum, where the content of children's books acts as a cognitive stimulus to delve into the dynamics of the content of the text in relation to the learner's background knowledge. Rosenblatt's (Literature; The Reader) theory sees the reader, the text, and the context of reading as integrated. The three components cannot be separated in the meaning-making process and represent the blueprint for an effective design of integrated curriculum across content areas. The methodological processes that follow from reader response theory clearly point to assessing the background knowledge of the learners in a classroom to match the concepts of books to children and to create a virtuous cycle of learning where readers, texts, and contexts of learning are integrated across the curriculum. Assessment of children's background knowledge and interests represents the stepping stone for designing the curriculum from the bottom up (Columba et al.). I will lay out the components of effective assessment teachers can use to acquire a systematic knowledge of their learners and how to apply this knowledge to design integrated curriculum using children's books. Know Your Students in Depth The first step is to ask the crucial questions that drive your assessment design in an integrated curriculum using children's books. Columba et al. suggest the following questions to shape authentic assessment of learners' interest in the reading process and to differentiate texts to match them to each learner's ability and intrinsic motivation. (1) What is special about this student? (2) What is the student's background (sociocultural, economic, linguistic, etc.)? (3) What values does the learner hold (e.g., cultural or religious)? (4) What does the learner already know, and what can he or she do? (5...