All New Engaging Selections Across Four Genres

Learn what inspired our creative team!

What guided us in creating our new Junior Great Books Inspire Series for grades 2–5? Why is it different and special compared to what came before?

Our goal as a nonprofit educational organization is to help students of all ages to become critical, reflective thinkers, lifelong learners, and thoughtful, discerning citizens. Our student anthologies have always contained carefully curated, age-appropriate fiction that supports Shared Inquiry. These short texts support interpretive questions, and our teacher materials provide the framework needed to help students discuss and expand their ideas, which are backed up by textual evidence. Our literature selections have always been carefully chosen and thoroughly tested to ensure they energize classrooms and lead to engaging, inquiry-focused explorations. The texts and their specific ability to spark interpretive discussion are the key to helping students learn to read for deeper comprehension, develop greater stamina and reading fluency, and think critically.

With the new Junior Great Books Inspire series, we seek to continue this tradition, as well as expand on its scope. Not only does the JGB Inspire Student Edition include fresh, exciting, recently published fiction choices with stories from around the world, but Inspire also includes new genres for inquiry: narrative nonfiction, as well as poetry and drama, giving students the opportunity to use these pieces as the centered text for inquiry-based discussion. Each piece within Inspire has been carefully selected, reviewed, and tested within the Shared Inquiry framework before being officially included for the anthology, so that these new pieces are worthy of deep, meaningful conversations that will ignite curiosity and critical thinking in our students, providing students the best possible Junior Great Books experience. Inspire has also revised and reinvigorated the students’ accompanying Reader’s Journal, which supports students through each session of Shared Inquiry with guided questions. The Reader’s Journal contains expanded opportunities for writing, additional drawing activities, useful speaking frames, and other activities that are unique to each selection.

Inspire isn’t just updated for the student; it also includes brand-new teacher-facing materials, with the same thought-provoking discussion questions we’re known for, and detailed pre- and post-reading activities. The JGB Inspire Teacher’s Edition includes an array of vocabulary activities for each text and cross-curricular activities that connect to other parts of a curriculum, including historical research, scientific experiments, art projects, and more. The Teacher’s Edition also includes opportunities for practicing reading fluency, as well as detailed background information that supports teachers to better help their classrooms access each text and build connections that they can carry into future lessons. Last but not least, Inspire’s Teacher’s Edition also aligns with the science of reading and its pillars of learning, giving educators the tools they need to facilitate student learning. For a more in-depth look at how JGB Inspire works with the science of reading, please read this article.

What we have set out to do with the Junior Great Books Inspire series is to further the mission that we’ve always had, which is to help students read and think critically. We’re doing this by updating our offerings to students, but we’re also listening to our customers and giving our instructors more resources for ensuring student success within our Shared Inquiry framework, updating and expanding our Teacher’s Editions, our Reader’s Journals, and our Online Resources.