This document discusses using point of view (POV) in non-fiction works for younger readers. It outlines how the Common Core standards approach developing an understanding of POV in both fiction and non-fiction from kindergarten through high school. Students learn to observe details, identify different perspectives, and compare and contrast varying accounts of events or topics. The goal is to help students see non-fiction as a living process of inquiry rather than just static facts, and to see disagreement as healthy when based on evidence and open to alternative views. Clustering related non-fiction books on a topic in the classroom or library allows students to explore different interpretations and ways of thinking about a subject.

1. What Is POV Doing in NF for
Younger Readers?

2. What Is a Fact?
• Is Pluto a planet?
• Is marriage between a man and a
woman?
• Is Iran building nuclear arms?
• Is the planet getting warmer, and is this
caused by human actions?
• Is the individual mandate for health
insurance constitutional?

3. Why Should
Non Fiction Be New?
Don’t Facts Stay
the Same?

4. In the 1960s when

6. Historians Rewrote
American History

7. In the 21 Century when
st

9. Non Fiction is About
Thinking and Change

10. Who We Are Influences
How We See

11. That is NOT the same as
“it is all relative”

12. One Key: Objectivity
• Objectivity is an approach
• What is your evidence?
• Where does it come from?
• Are there other interpretations?
• Have you consulted experts?
• Do experts disagree?

13. Notice

14. Look at a book
• Does it make its evidence apparent?
• Can you tell where the author got his/her
information?
• Do you learn of other interpretations?
• Do you learn about the author’s research
journey or reasons for writing the book?

15. Citation Is the Beginning, Not the
End
• A source note tells you where an author
found something
• An annotated note tells you what the
author thinks about that source, or gives
different sources with differing views
• This evidence trail is there for the engaged
student to follow
• You are creating a library of questions, not
answers

16. How Does the Familiar
Look Different
When you add a different POV?

17. The CC Sequence:
The genius of CC is how it builds
year to year: fiction
• Kindergarten: discuss relationship of art
and text;
• 2nd grade: establish differences in POV in
read alouds
• Compare versions of same tale (now
using art/text and POV)

18. Onward and Upward
• 3rd grade: Differentiate reader’s POV from
narrator or character
• Identify author’s POV as expressed in
variety of books or series
• 4th grade: compare and contrast narrator
POVs, such as first and third person
• 5th grade: describe how narrator’s POV
influences how events are described

19. Same Sequence in NF
• Kindergarten: identify details in text
• With help, identify similarities and
differences in two books on same subject
• 1st grade: compare and contrast two books
on same subject
• 2nd grade: identify how author supports
statements

20. Moving Forward
• 3rd grade: differentiate reader’s POV from
author’s
• 4th grade: compare first and secondhand
accounts of an event or topic
• 5th analyze multiple accounts of the same
event – note similarities or differences

21. Notice in both fiction and NF
• Youngest children learn to observe details
• Then identify approach (who speaking,
what evidence, how used)
• Then recognize POV
• Then compare and contrast POVs

22. I want to Take You Higher: Fiction
• 6th grade: explain how author develops
POV of narrator or character
• 7th grade: compare a fictional account of
person or place and NF account
• 8th grade: explore differences between
POV of characters and reader – irony,
suspense, humor

23. Higher and Higher: Fiction
• 9th grade: analyze an experience as
described in a work from outside of the US
• 9-10: Analyze treatment of same subject
across different artistic genres, such as
art, music, text, film
• 11-12: analyze a case where recognizing
POV requires distinguishing what is said
from what is meant (satire, sarcasm, etc.)

24. I Want to Take You Higher: NF
• 6th Grade: Compare and contrast one
author’s account of events with another’s
• 7th grade: Trace and evaluate an author’s
argument
• 8th grade: Analyze two or more texts that
present differing or opposing arguments

25. Higher and Higher: NF
• 9-10: Determine author’s POV in text and
show how uses language (art, media) to
advance that argument
• 11-12: Analyze effectiveness of structure
author has used to make his/her case
• Note: of course this analysis also gives
students tools to make different cases
themselves

26. Summing up: NF Offers
New Information
• Chronology -- time
• Location -- space
• Traits – characteristics
• Records: highest, most deadly, most
home runs, etc.
• 4 of the famous 5: who, what, where,
when

27. NF Offers New Ways of Thinking:
• Why?
• How does the author answer this?
• What techniques does the author use to
explain, to make a case, to posit a theory,
to reject other views, to convince readers?

28. Text Structures
• Before and after
• Compare and contrast
• If/then
• Broad survey
• Detailed look at single moment
• Focus on individual -- biography
• Focus on context – technology, ideas,
beliefs, ecology, health, laws

29. How Can You Alert Students to
These Text Structures?
• Within a book – Use Sample Chapter of
Master of Deceit for example:
http://bit.ly/PYvrVC
• Between books – “cluster”

30. Clustering Turns a School or
Classroom Library Into

32. Here’s How

33. Elementary School
• Pluto

35. Display, Shelf Talker, Classroom
Discussion
• Why does this book say X and that say Y?
• Is one right and the other wrong?
• Can there be different rights and wrongs?
• Why can NF books arrive at distinct
answers?
• Why can they treat the same subject in
different ways?

36. Dinos

37. This Is Not Just New Facts
• It is new interpretations
• New POVs
• Based on evidence
• Making contentions
• Testing ideas and observations
• Challenging other views

38. The More Students
• See the debate, the argument among
books
• The different approaches taken by authors
• The kinds of evidence and argument used
to make a case

39. The Better They Will Do
• On the kinds of questions we saw earlier
• In their own research papers and
presentations

40. Middle Grade

41. On and On
Some Prehumans Feasted on Bark Instead of Grasses
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD (NYTimes, June 27, 2012)
“Almost two million years after their last meals, two
member
of a prehuman species in southern Africa left traces in their
teeth of what they had eaten then, as well as over a lifetime
of foraging. Scientists were surprised to find that these
hominins apparently lived almost exclusively on a dies of
leaves, fruits, wood and bark.”

42. And On and On
• Prof. Mike Parker Pearson, of Sheffield University, said
during Stonehenge’s Main Period of Construction from
3,000 to 2,500 BC. There was a “growing island-wild
culture developing in Britain.”
• He added: “Stonehenge itself was a massive
undertaking, requiring the labor of thousands to move
stones from as far away as West Wales, shaping them
and erecting them, just the work itself, requiring
everyone literally to pull together, would have been an
act of unification.”

43. Knowledge Unfolds
• We need to prepare our students to learn
as knowledge changes
• We do that by shifting from only feeding
them “settled” answers to showing them
how answers are arrived at; why and how
authors arrive at different answers

44. Two Bios, One Man

45. Two Genres, One Subject

46. Voice

47. Disagreement Is Healthy
• So long as it is fair-minded, based on
evidence, open to question, alert to
possible alternative views

48. High School
• Many YA novels are in multiple voices
• Treat YA NF the same way – what is this
NF voice saying, what is that one saying,
how can we understand what they are
doing, and juxtapose their approaches
and answers.

49. Our Goal
• Help students see NF as alive
• Not dead facts
• But living process of inquiry
• Based on rules of fairness, evidence, and
argument

50. CLUSTERING
The art of exploring a topic with related resources

51. Wrap-Up
Questions?