Choosing Books for Your Classroom Curriculum

Shelly Shaffer is an associate professor of literacy in the School of Education at Eastern Washington University. Her research focuses primarily on using and studying young adult and children’s literature in elementary, middle, and secondary classrooms. She previously taught secondary English Language Arts in Mesa, AZ. She currently teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses related to literature, reading, and writing. Her current work focuses on social justice and criticality through the lens of literature. Her work has been published in several edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Multicultural Perspectives, Voices from the Middle, and more. Her edited book Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom (2019) focuses on YAL and school shootings.

Choosing Books for Your Classroom Curriculum by Shelly Shaffer

​As the school year begins, veteran and beginning teachers alike consider the novels they might select for whole class instruction. This blog post shares some of the questions that I have lately about choosing books for classroom curriculum. Hopefully, it will start conversations around this important topic. 

Choosing the “Right” Text to Teach

What makes a text the right fit for your curriculum? How do we choose books to teach to our students? With the number of new publications each year–1700+ according to Jensen (2023), it’s impossible to keep up with everything in the field of Young Adult literature. Therefore, there is no possibility of choosing the “perfect” text. It’s more than likely that another text will come out that’s even better–but you might not have access to it or even know about it.

Teachers and teacher educators make critical choices about which books to teach to our students, and by including particular texts, we send a clear message. From among all the books out there, we choose one book to highlight as a potential text they might learn from. Our knowledge of authors or awards might have influenced our decisions, or even more likely, access to class sets of books might influence your decision. 

When I taught eighth grade English in Arizona, I started planning my curriculum based on the books that were available to be taught (i.e., books in the department office). The selection was outdated, not relatable to my student population, and even contained culturally objectionable content! Robert Newton Peck’s A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972) was among the choices–and this was for my urban school in Arizona, where there were no farms and no pigs. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (2016/1845), Frederick Douglass’ autobiography was also on the shelves for teachers to use. This book, though full of many social issues that could be discussed, also used antiquated language and vocabulary. Perhaps the Narrative would be a perfect part of my curriculum, provided that I used excerpts, and it was accompanied by some current YA texts. 

Similar issues abounded with several other titles that were available: Johnny Tremaine (Forbes, 2011/1943), Across Five Aprils (Hunt, 2002/1964), and Around the World in 80 Days (Verne, 2024/1872). I’m sure many of us can relate to the dusty stacks of books many teachers find tucked in far-away cupboards. Perhaps when these titles were purchased by the prior department chair or district curriculum folks, these books were “highly recommended” titles, but by the time that I was teaching at the school, they were simply taking up shelf space. 

​In my role as eighth grade English teacher, I was lucky enough to go through a curriculum adoption process. We were able to choose sets of books to accompany the textbook that was being adopted. However, the teachers at our school weren’t familiar with some of the newest titles available on the list, so they relied on their knowledge of more traditional works as they were making decisions or on their experience in their teacher education program and children’s or YA literature professors. The process was not standardized across schools in the district, and so each school ended up with different sets of books by the end of the process. Some of these books were great finds and proved to motivate students while others were not as great.

What Can We Do?

What questions do you ask yourself as you are choosing a novel for whole class reading? There are several lists of questions for teachers on various blogs and websites (e.g., weareteachers.com, corwin-connect.com, therobbreviewblog.com). Each list contains questions that are a little different from the next. I encourage you to take a look at some of these lists and think about the kinds of questions that you ask yourself when making curricular decisions. 

Universal appeal is often mentioned in these lists. We must consider things such as: “Is this a book that will appeal to both genders?” or “Will this book foster a love of reading?” With a push toward diverse texts and representations in literature, we also must take a critical stance when considering who the main characters are, who the author(s) are, and the kinds of identities that are present in the text. Questions like: “Does this book perpetuate stereotypes?” or “Whose voice is missing in this text?” become important for teachers to consider. These questions are difficult because if you are like the majority of teachers: a white woman (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2021)  Since teachers are still 76% female and 79% white, we must ensure that our students are represented in the curriculum we teach. I bring this up because implicit bias based on identities and experiences is inherent in our lives; however, we can combat this by being aware of these biases and working toward overcoming them. 

When choosing texts during my first few years teaching, I often gravitated toward texts that had female main characters. My administrator at the time was extremely data-driven, so my colleague and I studied our students’ test scores. Our investigation discovered that our male students scored lower on the standardized assessment than our female students. I researched scholars that had focused on male reading motivation and achievement (e.g., Fletcher, Martino, Smith & Wilhelm). We discovered that male readers consistently lagged behind female readers; however, we wanted to combat this statistic.

​Considering how our choices of which texts we taught might have influenced our male students’ learning, we purposefully began choosing texts with male main characters in both short stories and novels–for example, Stotan by Chris Crutcher (2003/1986), The River by Gary Paulsen (2006/1991), and The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis (2020/1995). Indeed, our male students seemed to be more motivated and interested in the stories we read. However, these texts still didn’t represent the diverse population of my school, which was 45% Latiné. So, though we addressed one identity (gender), another was not addressed at all (ethnicity). 

​Today, I am critical of authorship and representation in books that I used in my children’s and Young Adult literature courses at my university. It often feels limiting, and I have had conversations with colleagues about how to approach this. “Who can tell this story?” has become one of my primary questions. But, often there may be limited stories written by folks that have the same ethnicity or characteristics as the characters in the story. Do we dismiss stories that are well researched but written by outsiders? What determines a quality book? Are we eliminating important stories because of these limiters? All of these questions are important to consider as well. Some of the books on the shelves of your department might not be written by an author of color, but still might tell a story that’s worth telling. How do you determine this? I wish I could tell you an answer, but the conversations I’ve had with colleagues have not come to strong conclusions about what to do in these cases. 

Standards and Assessments

Of course, in today’s teaching context focused on standards and assessment, we must also consider what we are going to teach with the novel. After all, we have limited time with our students each year: 180-ish school days, 45-60 minutes per day = 10,800 minutes, or 180 hours to teach “everything” that is expected. When put into these simple terms, teachers must consider very carefully what to do with that limited time. We definitely don’t want to waste time teaching a book that our students (or we) don’t love, and we don’t want to spend time teaching a book that doesn’t dip into several of the standards and outcomes we are required to meet by the end of the 180th day. 

SEL. Several of my recent M.Ed. students focused their final cumulative research projects on teaching SEL (Social Emotional Learning) through literature, which actually addresses Washington State teaching expectations. The standards include self-awareness, self-management, self-efficacy, social awareness, social management, and social engagement, with several benchmarks listed for each standard (Social Emotional Learning Standards, Benchmarks and Indicators, n.d.).  Which books best address these standards? In my opinion, almost every book could potentially work, but the teacher would have to be intentional about the discussion topics and activities that would guide students to explore these topics. 

A book like The Henna Wars (Jaigirdar, 2020) could address several SEL standards at the same time. For example, the main character Nishat develops self-awareness throughout the novel as she explores her identity as an immigrant, a Bengali, and a lesbian (addressing Standard 1: Self-Awareness). In addition, Nishat overcomes and perseveres through a variety of situations during the novel, from experiencing bullying to cultural appropriation (Standard 3: Self-Efficacy). Several other SEL standards and benchmarks could also be addressed through the teaching of this book. ​

When my daughter began teaching sixth grade ELA, she had a limited number of books that were available to teach to her whole class. Among these were Hatchet (Paulsen, 1986) and The Lightning Thief (Riordan, 2005). A book like The Lightning Thief (Riordan, 2005) could be used to teach SEL standards as well. When Percy Jackson discovers that he’s a half-blood, he becomes more self-aware and his ability to see himself within a community of other half-bloods shows social engagement. He demonstrates problem solving skills, which improves his self-efficacy. You probably get the point by now.

ELA skills. When considering ELA skills, such as reading comprehension or plot development, the same holds true. Of course, certain books might contain specific elements such as foreshadowing, flashbacks, or internal thoughts, while other books might not have as clear examples as another text. The standards adopted by your state or by NCTE/ILA can help to guide your decision making in this regard. You can also decide to adopt a text selection process;  NCTE provides some helpful guidance here.

Most scholars will agree that students should read for pleasure and that not all books need to be taught (see Readicide by Kelly Gallagher, 2009). Teachers must strike a comfortable balance between teaching reading and letting students read. However, in the case of full class novels, the act of teaching reading is likely to be more present than when students are reading their own self-selected books. I always tried to strike a balance between time spent “teaching reading” (i.e., whole class novels or texts) versus “reading for pleasure” (i.e., reading self-selected texts). Both deserved time in my class, and so I balanced the time between each. This meant that students were often reading two books at the same time–the one that was assigned and the one they chose. These books didn’t need to relate to one another, but I would often book talk complementary books related by plot or organization style. 

As I considered the standards for each whole class novel, I considered the following questions: What would students write? What reading skills would they work on? Can those reading skills be connected to their writing? What critical thinking skills can be developed as they read this novel? Does this novel connect with content in any of their other classes (e.g., social studies, science, math)? 

A novel like The Lightning Thief (Riordan, 2005) provided my daughter with many options for curriculum. Her students could write a research paper about Greek mythology; they could create their own creative stories about a mythological being; they could compare and contrast two of the characters in the book. Considering her yearlong curriculum and the number of writing assessments for each text type (e.g., informative, argument/persuasive, narrative), she needed to consider where this novel would fit in her sequence. This helped her to decide the style of writing students would practice. She also had to consider the reading skills students needed to work on during the unit (e.g., summarizing, characterization, foreshadowing) and link those skills with the writing assignment and reading strategies. Students in her sixth grade class could even engage with speaking and listening standards by discussing the book in small groups or literature circles. 

Conclusion​

With the school year upon us, many teachers are considering young adult novels to teach this year. You might be thinking about the resources that can guide your decision-making process. I hope that this column sparks some of your thinking and pushes you to consider some of the various questions you might ask yourself as you make these tough decisions. 

Take a look at all of the books mentioned.
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While all have their literary merit, are they all appropriate for our current classrooms as full class instruction?

Literature Cited​

​Crutcher, C. (2003). Stotan. Greenwillow. (Original work published 1986).

Curtis, C. P. (2020). The Watsons go to Birmingham, 1963. Yearling (25th anniversary edition). (Original work published in 1995).

Douglass, F. (2016). The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Dover Publications (1st ed.). (Original work published 1845).

Forbes, E. (2011). Johnny Tremaine. Clarion Books (reprint edition). (Original work published 1943).

Hunt, I. (2002). Across five Aprils. Berkeley (reprint edition). (Original work published 1964).

Jaigirdar, A. (2020). The henna wars. Page Street Publishing Co.

Paulsen, G. (2006). Hatchet. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (reissue edition). (Original work published 1986).

Paulsen, G. (2012). The river. Ember (reprint edition). (Original work published 1991).

Peck. R. N. (1972). A day no pigs would die. Alfred A. Knopf.

Riordan, Rick. (2005). The lightning thief. Disney Hyperion.
​
Verne, J. (2024). Around the world in 80 days (G. M. Towle, Trans.) (C. Miles, Illus.). Sky Publishing. (Original work published 1872). 

References

Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide. Heinemann.

Jensen, K. (2023, January 24). By the numbers, a look at YA being published in 2023 (so far). School Library Journal: Teen Librarian Toolbox. https://teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2023/01/24/by-the-numbers-a-look-t-ya-being-published-so-far-in-2023/#:~:text=When%20looking%20at%20the%20total,and%20190%20are%20trade%20paperbacks.

National Center for Educational Statistics. (2021). Characteristics of public school teachers. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/2021/clr_508c.pdf

National Council for Teachers of Engliish. (2012). NCTE/IRA standards for English Language arts. https://ncte.org/resources/standards/ncte-ira-standards-for-the-english-language-arts/
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Washington Professional Educators Standards Board. (n.d.). Social emotional learning standards, benchmarks and indicators. Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction. https://www.pesb.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/SELStandardsBenchmarksIndicatorsLongForm.pdf