Textbook Selection

Textbook selection

Kaylie Melville EDU535 Corban University Dr. Villers

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Unit Context:

- Harvest, Hardship, and Humanity: Agriculture, Literature, and History (1900-1940) - 10th Grade American History - Traditional K-12 School Setting -Rural School District (highly agricultural area)

Process for Selection

Key Considerations

Alignment to Learning Goals and Standards:

• A fictional novel depicting the struggles of the American farmer during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl is at the center of this unit. This brings history to life and helps students gain sympathy and empathy for historical people and events.
• This unit is inherently interdisciplinary, so bringing in a work of literature is important to keeping that interdisciplinary focus. A novel that brings together correct history, agricultural science and history into an easily accessible work is important.
• Standards Alignment:
• HS.G.MM.2 Analyze recent voluntary and forced migration patterns to identify and understand the push and pull factors and their effect on people and places.
• 9-10.RH.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate and evidence-based summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
• 9-10.RH.3 Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier events caused later ones or simply preceded them.
• The textbook chosen will easily align with these standards in both the Social Sciences and also Literacy in the Social Sciences. All teachers are literacy teachers and bringing an accurate historcal novel into the fold is a great way to boost that literacy.

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Key Considerations

Instructional Approach and Pedagogy, Support For Assessment & Feedback:

• The novel chosen will be the foundational text for the unit and will be supplemented by other secondary text resources and primary sources.
• The novel will be read independently by students at least two days/ week throughout the entirety of the unit. This will allow time for students to finish reading during class time but also have time to annotate the novel, prepare for in-class discussion, and ask clarifying questions as needed.
• The novel reading will also be supplemented by a "study-guide" that will ask reading comprehension questions to help guide students toward major themes and timelines in the novel. This is a formative assessment and provides structured support for students.
• It needs to be a novel that doesn't need a lot of frontloading or language support for ease of implementation.

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Key Considerations:

Cost of the Resource For Student Purchase:

• Because this is a supplemental text, students will need to acquire the text themselves. This means that the text needs to be in-print, and relatively inexpensive.
• Most new books cost less than $20, and encouraging students to buy used will be important.
• There will be "scholarships" avaliable for students to request and I will help supply the text to them.
• I will also look into opportunities to fill out a grant for purchasing the novel for students from year to year.
• The reason for independent purchase is that the student will be turning in the annotated novel at the end of the unit as a part of a larger portfolio, and the hope is that they keep the novel after the unit is finished.

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Key Considerations

Accessibility and Usability for Students and Teachers, Differentiation:

• The novel needs to be easily accessible for purchase for reading and annotation. There also needs to be an audio book option avaliable for students as a differentiation strategy.
• There is also the possibility for in-class read-alouds by the teacher or other students if they would like to.
• The language also needs to be simple enough for English Language Learners or those with reading disabilities to be able to understand the language to read the novel without much vocabulary front-loading.
• Choosing a contemporary novel that has simple/ contemporary language and that also reads well and is also compelling is a must!

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Key Considerations

Demographics of the School/ District:*Note: This is the information for my alma mater High School in Oregon*

• Enterprise High School, Enterprise, Oregon
• Students: 195​
• Languages Spoken: 5
• <10 students ever English Language Learners
• 17% of student population have learning disabilities

• 16% of student population is experiencing poverty
• Racial Demographics:
• 91% of students are white/caucasian
• 1% of students are Native American
• 5% of students are Hispanic/Latino
• 4% of students are multi-racial

*Information gathered from the Oregon Department of Education's "At-A-Glance" School Profiles

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Key Considerations

Worldview or Value System:

• American History and the American experience needs to be at the center of the work.
• There needs to be room in the work for discussion on how it can inform the present moment. ​
• The novel should bring history into conversation as well- what is the tone and opinion of the historical event(s) protrayed in the novel, and how can that influence further understanding of history and the contemporary moment.
• The novel needs to be grade level appropraite but also not "dumbed down" for the historical era and its struggles.
• It should strive to result in genuine inquary for learning from the student(s), which will continue to bring the content to life.

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Evaluation of the Three Resources

Resource Options:

• Whose Names are Unknown by Sonora Babb (Written in the 1930s, Published in 2004).
• It is widely thought and suggested that Steinbeck ripped off Babb's research and stole the limelight from her with publishing his novel before she could.
• There are not very many instructional resources avaliable for adaptation and implementation either.
• Langauge accessibility is also one of the biggest concerns with this resource.
• There would need to be quite a bit of front loading for this novel as well. It is not nearly as long as the other two options so it would be a "faster read", but it does read slow and uneventful.

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Published 1939).

• This is the classic Dust Bowl story, and probably one of the most recognized American historical fiction novels.
• Lots of instructional materials avaliable for adaptation and use.
• Language accessibility is one of the biggest concerns and constraints for the resource.
• Lots of frontloading and explanation would also be required for this book. The end scene can also be a little bit jarring for some readers, but it is the most famous scene from the novel by far.
• This novel is also quite long and can be a slow and uneventful read- one strength is that it can be supplemented by its film adaptation (John Ford, 1940).

• The Four Winds by Krisitin Hannah (Published 2021).
• This is a contemporary Dust Bowl story that has gained critical acclaim.
• There is almost no language accessibility issues since it was written in the contemporary moment.
• This book is the longest out of all three options which means it will take more time to read and work through as a class.
• It covers almost all of the issues of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression and so it makes it a very thurough resource.
• There are a lot of "time gaps" in the novel that will require frontloading and chunking to help with student comprehension.

Final Selection Rationale

Final Textbook Selection: The Four Winds

• Projected Cost (if the school bought 32 books used every year: $230.00).
• Alignment to Instructional Goals:
• This novel covers virtually the whole unit's time period.
• This novel covers all of the disciplines examined during the unit (history, economics, science, and agriculture).
• This novel is inherently interdisciplinary and this unit is interdisciplinary.
• Alignment with Worldview and Values:
• This novel is strongly tied to the plight of Americans during the Great Depression.
• This novel also brings a lot of themes from American history into conversation with the present moment (i.e., stewardship of the land, Socialism and Communism, economic plight, racism, and classism).
• There are a few scenes in the book that will need to be skipped due to keeping the content appropriate for high school aged students.
• Support for Assessment and Feedback:
• The novel's stong connection the interdisciplinary themes make it a great novel for annotation which functions as both a formative and summative assessment. This is also a great place for the teacher to provide feedback on the assessment.
• This novel supports strong discussion which is central to studying history.
• The language within the novel is also accessible which means that comprehension and discussion is easier.
• Fit with Context:
• This novel fits with the context of the unit as it deals with the issues plauging an agricultural era and then the migration of farmers to other places in order to make a living. A lot of discussion can come out of the reading of this novel.
• Long-Term Instructional Value:
• Since this is a novel written in the contemporary moment, it will remain accessible to students for the next few decades.
• Adding this novel to the curriculum builds up interdisciplinary instructional value.

Non-Selected Options

Non-Selected Options

WHOSE NAMES ARE UNKNOWN

• This novel was my third choise for the textbook for the unit, and I shifted away from it for a few different reasons:
• Like The Grapes of Wrath, the language of the novel can almost be too inaccessible for readers. This would make it difficult for English Language Learners or those with disabilities to access and understand.
• I would spend too much time decoding language with students rather than exploring historical context and themes.
• The novel almost reads like a historical documentary that drags on. It is not fast-paced and narrative built which can hinder student understanding connection to the characters in the novel, which can make reading it less interesting.
• It is more a primary source than it is a novel.
• Much like The Grapes of Wrath, this novel would have taken more front loading and the reading of the novel would have been condensed rather than stretched out across the whole unit, which would have not benefitted the layout and flow of the unit.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH

• This novel was my second choice for the textbook for the unit, but I decided to shift away from it for a few different reasons:
• The written language is almost too inaccessible for readers (even myself, to a point!). This would have made it very difficult for English Langauge Learners, or those with reading disabilites to access.
• The dialect, biblical imagery, and characterization can be difficult for a lot of students to grasp.
• It would have also taken a lot of front loading and I wouldn't have been able to stretch the reading of the novel out across the whole unit, it would have been concentrated and that is not beneficial to the layout and flow of the unit.
• This would have been compounded with the fact that the novel reads very slow and can be difficult for a lot of students to understand as it switches from discussing the Joad Family and then discussing social commentary.

Reflection

Reflection

• Finding novels that fit the unit well was actually easier than I expected. There are a lot of books about the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era and so that made that part of textbook selection really easy.
• What was the most difficult was deciding between the three novels. They are all great pieces of literature and all have their own distinct "mark" and are all great for the unit.
• Deciding between The Grapes of Wrath and The Four Winds was probably the hardest part of the selection.
• I am a huge Steinbeck fan and teaching great pieces of American literature is important to American history and identity, but the language used in The Grapes of Wrath is just too much of a barrier for a lot of students now. The Four Winds uses contemporary prose and language, and so that can remove a lot of the barriers for students.
• Another aspect that made this decision hard was that The Grapes of Wrath has a lot of instructional materials ready to implement in the classroom. All of the instructional materials that I will use for The Four Winds have to be made by me, and that takes a lot of thought, work, and planning.
• Essentially, I traded an American classic with plenty of instructional resources for a novel that was written in the contemporary moment with easier prose and language to help students in their learning.
• The worldview of the material is very important to take into consideration when choosing a textbook. It should fit the school's context, needs, and of course state standards. Thankfully, all three of these resources were aligned with my values and worldview which made the textbook selection process fairly easy in that regard.
• I would say that it is better to have a textbook aligned with your worldview and value system that is sub-standard rather than a great textbook that is not related to your worldview and value system. This is because a sub-standard textbook can be supplemented with outside materials that continue to help the students rather than having a textbook that may prove to be controversial as a part of the curriculum- especially at the K-12 level.

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With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to leave your audience amazed. You can also highlight a specific phrase or data that will be engraved in the memory of your audience, and even embed external content that surprises: videos, photos, audios... whatever you want!

Write a great headline

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to leave your audience amazed. You can also highlight a specific phrase or data that will be engraved in the memory of your audience, and even embed external content that surprises: videos, photos, audios... whatever you want!

Write a great headline

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to leave your audience amazed. You can also highlight a specific phrase or data that will be engraved in the memory of your audience, and even embed external content that surprises: videos, photos, audios... whatever you want!

Write a great headline

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to leave your audience amazed. You can also highlight a specific phrase or data that will be engraved in the memory of your audience, and even embed external content that surprises: videos, photos, audios... whatever you want!