Transcript ELA/Literacy Shifts of the Common Core State Standards

ELA/Literacy Shifts of the Common
Core
State Standards
Adapted from Achieve the Core and
presented to Directors of Special Education
February 6, 2014
The Background of the Common
Core
Initiated by the National Governors Association (NGA)
and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)
with the following design principles:
• Result in College and Career Readiness
• Based on solid research and practice evidence
• Fewer, Higher and Clearer
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The CCSS Requires Three Shifts in
ELA/Literacy
1. Regular practice with complex text and its
academic language
2. Reading, writing and speaking grounded in
evidence from text, both literary and
informational
3. Building knowledge through content-rich
nonfiction
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Shift #1: Regular practice with complex
test and its academic language
achievethecore.org
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Regular Practice With Complex Text and its
Academic Language: Why?
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Gap between complexity of college and high school texts is
huge.
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What students can read, in terms of complexity is the
greatest predictor of success in college (ACT study).
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Too many students are reading at too low a level.
(<50% of graduates can read sufficiently complex texts).
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Standards include a staircase of increasing text complexity
from elementary through high school.
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Standards also focus on building general academic
vocabulary so critical to comprehension.
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What are the Features of Complex
Text?
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Subtle and/or frequent transitions
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Longer paragraphs
Multiple and/or subtle themes and purposes
Density of information
Unfamiliar settings, topics or events
Lack of repetition, overlap or similarity in words and sentences
Complex sentences
Uncommon vocabulary
Lack of words, sentences or paragraphs that review or pull things
together for the student
Any text structure which is less narrative and/or mixes structures
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Scaffolding Complex Text
The standards require that students read appropriately
complex text at each grade level – independently
(Standard 10).
However there are many ways to scaffold student
learning as they meet the standard:
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Multiple readings
Read Aloud
Chunking text (a little at a time)
Provide support while reading, rather than before.
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Academic Language
“Acquire and use accurately a range of general
academic and domain-specific words and
phrases …”
Three Tiers of Words
Tier 3:
Academic Vocabulary
Domain- Specific
Words
Tier 2:
General Academic Words
Tier 1:
Words of Everyday Speech
Access to Complex Texts
Tier Three words often receive the most instructional time and
attention because they:
• are unfamiliar to most students
• contain ideas necessary to a new topic
• are important to specific subject areas
Tier Two words are not unique to a particular discipline, therefore are
not usually the focus of vocabulary instruction, however they are:
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far less well defined by contextual clues
far less likely to be defined explicitly within a text than Tier Three words
frequently encountered in all sorts of texts
powerful because of their wide applicability to many sorts of reading.
words that often represent subtle or precise ways to say fairly simple things
Example 1: Volcanoes (Grades 4–5 Text Complexity Band)
Simon, Seymour. Volcanoes. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. (2006)
Excerpt
In early times, no one knew how volcanoes formed or why they spouted red-hot molten rock. In
modern times, scientists began to study volcanoes. They still don’t know all the answers, but they
know much about how a volcano works.
Our planet made up of many layers of rock. The top layers of solid rock are called the crust. Deep
beneath the crust is the mantle, where it is so hot that some rock melts. The melted, or molten,
rock is called magma.
Volcanoes are formed when magma pushes its way up through the crack in Earth’s crust. This is
called a volcanic eruption. When magma pours forth on the surface, it is called lava.
Of the Tier Two words, which word is the most important to the overall meaning of
the excerpt?
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An understanding of the word layers is necessary both to visualize the structure of the crust (“the top
layers of solid rock are called the crust”) and to grasp the notion of the planet being composed of
layers.
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Perhaps equally important are the word spouted and the phrase pours forth; an understanding of
each of these is needed to visualize the action of a volcano.
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The same could be said of the word surface.
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Both layers and surface are likely to reappear in middle and high school academic texts , which
would justify more intensive instruction in them in grades 4–5.
Considerations for ELL/SWD
• Instruction must include both “macro-scaffolding,” in which teachers
attend to the integration of language and content within and across
lessons and units, as well as “microscaffolding” during the “moment-tomoment work of teaching.”1
• In order to develop the ability to read complex texts and engage in
academic conversations, ELs and SWDs need access to such texts and
conversations, along with support in engaging with them.
• With support, ELs can build such repertoires and engage productively in
the kinds of language and literacy practices called for by the Standards for
both ELA and other disciplines
1
Bunch, George C., Amanda Kibler, and Susan Pimentel. "Realizing Opportunities for English Learners in the Common Core English Language Arts
and Disciplinary Literacy Standards." Understanding Language, Stanford University. Web.
Close Analytic Reading
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Requires prompting students with questions to
unpack unique complexity of any text so students
learn to read complex text independently and
proficiently.
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Not teacher "think aloud“.
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Text dependent questions require text-based
answers – evidence.
Virtually every standard is activated during the
course of every close analytic reading exemplar
through the use of text dependent questions.
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Shift #2: Reading, Writing, and Speaking
Grounded in Evidence From Text, Both
Literary and Informational
achievethecore.org
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Reading, Writing and Speaking Grounded
in Evidence from Text: Why?
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Most college and workplace writing requires evidence.
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Evidence is a major emphasis of the ELA Standards: Reading
Standard 1, Writing Standard 9, Speaking and Listening
standards 2, 3, and 4, all focus on the gathering, evaluating
and presenting of evidence from text.
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Being able to locate and deploy evidence are hallmarks of
strong readers and writers
Ability to cite evidence differentiates strong from weak
student performance on NAEP
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Content Shift #2
Text-Dependent Questions
Not Text-Dependent
•In “Casey at the Bat,” Casey strikes out.
Describe a time when you failed at
something.
•In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr.
King discusses nonviolent protest.
Discuss, in writing, a time when you
wanted to fight against something that
you felt was unfair.
•In “The Gettysburg Address” Lincoln
says the nation is dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created
equal. Why is equality an important
value to promote?
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Text-Dependent
What makes Casey’s experiences at bat
humorous?
What can you infer from King’s letter
about the letter that he received?
“The Gettysburg Address” mentions the
year 1776. According to Lincoln’s
speech, why is this year significant to
the events described in the speech?
Shift #3: Building knowledge through
content-rich nonfiction
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Content Shift #3
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Content-Rich Nonfiction
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In grades 2+, students begin reading more complex texts,
consolidating the foundational skills with reading
comprehension.
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Reading aloud texts that are well-above grade level should be
done throughout K-5 and beyond.
50/50 balance K-5
70/30 in grades 9-12
Students learning to read should exercise their ability to
comprehend complex text through read-aloud texts.
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Building Knowledge Through
Content-Rich Nonfiction: Why?
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Students are required to read very little
informational text in elementary and middle school.
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Non-fiction makes up the vast majority of required
reading in college/workplace.
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Informational text is harder for students to
comprehend than narrative text.
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Supports students learning how to read different
types of informational text.
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Content Shift #3
• Sequencing Texts to Build Knowledge
• Not random reading
• Literacy in social studies/history, science,
technical subjects, and the arts is embedded
Resources
Page 33 in the CCSS for ELA/Literacy – The Human Body example
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