This is our last week! Thank you for participating in the Pathways to the Common Core online book study.
FINAL PROMPT:
Evaluate the text’s suggestions for assessment on pages 194 - 197. Reflect on one of these suggestions with your own classroom in mind.
Then, visit the SMARTER Balance website. (Smarter Balance is our state’s assessment consortium. PARCC is the other assessment consortium and the one mentioned in the book.) What is an idea or resource from the website that you would recommend to others? Please elaborate on your thinking.
Your response to the prompt is due by Monday evening (3/10). Then, you are expected to revisit this site and respond to at least one of your fellow participant’s comments by Thursday, March 13. If you need help posting your comment, watch this video.
PROMPT (Choose only one and indicate which you've chosen.)
A. The standards call for a shift in the role of listening and viewing media that closely aligns with the active analytic work students are asked to do in the reading standards. What approaches for integrating “multiple sources of information” (such as digital media) do you already use or wish to integrate?
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B. “The language standards are written to suggest the language work should not be taught in isolation. Rather, language work should be interwoven across the day so that conventions, vocabulary, and craft moves become a seamless part of the reading, writing, speaking and listening already underway in your classroom.”
- How can the language standards, which include grammar and conventions be taught through authentic writing?
- What specific steps can you take to integrate the language standards more deliberately in lessons and assessments?
Your response to the prompt is due by Monday evening (3/3). Then, you are expected to revisit this site and respond to at least one of your fellow participant’s comments by Thursday, March 6. If you need help posting your comment, watch this video.
Don’t forget to read chapter 11 in anticipation of next week’s prompt.
After reading Chapters 8 and 9, you now have an in-depth look at the three types of writing described in the writing standards (narrative, persuasive/argumentative, and informational). As noted, the standards are written to mirror the same learning progressions within each text type. Given that everyone may not already teach all three types, this a nice feature, allowing teachers to use similar strategies across the three types.
PROMPT (Choose only one and indicate which you've chosen.)
A. Reflect on the writing instruction in your class now that already addresses some of the writing standards. What resources and strategies have you found most successful in your work with adolescent writers? Share those here so that everyone can benefit from each other’s suggestions.
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B. What should we expect to see in our students’ writing samples for:
- Persuasive/Opinion/Argument Writing
- Informational and Functional/Procedural Writing
How is this different from our previous state standards?
Your response to the prompt is due by Monday evening (2/24). Then, you are expected to revisit this site and respond to at least one of your fellow participant’s comments by Thursday, February 27. If you need help posting your comment, watch this video.
Don’t forget to read chapter 10 in anticipation of next week’s prompt.
Chapter 6 provides an overview of the writing standards much like Chapter 2 did for reading. Chapter 7 launches into a discussion of narrative writing. In order to get you into the writing standards, this week we’re going to look closely at the grade-level standards for narrative writing. Likely, this chapter will appeal more to the language arts teachers in the group, who will also bear most of the responsibility for teaching narrative writing. Nonetheless, it's important for all of us to understand what will be required of our students. And, indeed, so much of the popular non-fiction today weaves in narrative structure to help illuminate and engage readers around technical and other non-fiction subjects. Thus, if you're not a language arts teacher, we hope you can still find something of worth in this week's activity and prompt.
PROMPT
On pages 116-119, the authors walk us through the increasing complexity that will be demanded of our students by starting with a kindergartener’s one-frame example of the roller-coaster narrative, showing how it would develop across the grade levels. This activity has great value in that it helps you think about the standards through application and gives you the opportunity to experience the demand (and joy) that writing an increasingly complex narrative can provide.
Complete this activity in preparation for this week's prompt: Think of a true, single experience you have had. Start with a one-frame example (just jot this down on paper) similar to the drawing on page 116. Then, turn to writing standard 3 (you’ll find K-5 standards on pp. 19-20 and 6-12 on pp. 43 and 46 of the CCSS document), develop your narrative for grades 3, 6, 9 and 12. (Again, just jot this down--we won’t be asking you to post your stories, unless you want to.)
PROMPT (Choose one and indicate which you've chosen.)
A. After completing this activity respond with your thoughts about the implications this standard will have for your instruction of narrative writing as well as cross-grade and cross-school planning.
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B. Compare the book’s suggestions for using the continuum of narrative writing to your own method of writing instruction. Discuss similarities and differences between what is outlined on pages 123 and 124 to what you do currently. What change(s) will you make to your instruction?
Your response to the prompt is due by Monday evening (2/10). Then, you are expected to revisit this site and respond to at least one of your fellow participant’s comments by Thursday, February 13. If you need help posting your comment, watch this video.
Both chapters 4 and 5 describe the three categories of the CCSS reading standards (Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas) in literature and informational texts. Of course, depending on your content area, you may spend more time in one chapter than the other. Here are a couple resources you may want to take a look at, if you haven't already:
- The informational reading standards that specifically spell out the standards in social studies/history and science start on page 61 of the CCSS document. If you teach a subject other than language arts, I encourage you to take a look at them if you haven’t already.
- The range of text types for literature (fiction, drama, poetry, and literary non-fiction) which will fall to language arts teachers can be found on pages 57-58 of the CCSS document.
PROMPT (Choose only one and indicate which one you have selected in your response.)
A. Reflect on these three categories in light of your content area. Which particular category will create the greatest challenge for you in your own classroom/work, and what can you specifically do to support your students in acquiring the standards associated with this particular category?
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B. How will increased emphasis on the reading of informational texts and its instruction (which the authors rightly suggest must occur across content areas) change your approach in the classroom and your school’s approach to meeting the challenges of “Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects”?
Your response to the prompt is due by Monday evening (2/3). Then, you are expected to revisit this site and respond to at least one of your fellow participant’s comments by Thursday, February 6. If you need help posting your comment, watch this video.
Don’t forget to read chapters 6 and 7 in anticipation of next week’s prompt.
According to Calkins, “the Common Core’s discussion of text complexity leans heavily on Reading Between the Lines, a report...that explains that when students didn’t achieve benchmark on the ACT, their struggles stemmed more from the levels of text complexity in the passages than from deficits in the specific skills called for by the questions” (32). As a result, the CCSS places emphasis on helping students to progress toward reading more complex texts.
PROMPT (Choose only one and please identify which one you've selected in your response.)
A. What “repertoire of strategies for scaffolding a reader’s work with a text that is just a mite hard for her,” do you currently employ (46)? How effective are your methods, and what evidence do you have that your methods are effective?
OR
B. What are you currently doing to assess the reading level and/or comprehension of your students? What specific evidence does your assessment give you about your students as readers? How are you using this information to accelerate student progress up the ladder of text complexity?
Responses to the prompt are due by Monday evening (1/27). Then, you are expected to revisit this site and reply to at least one of your fellow participant’s comment by Thursday, January 30. If you need help posting your comment, watch this video.
Don’t forget to read chapter 4 and 5 in anticipation of next week’s prompt.
Great responses and discussion last week! After reading chapter 2, please respond to the following prompt.
PROMPT: You may have noticed that in the Common Core standards are teachers are not instructed to guide students to “make text-to-self connections, access prior knowledge, explore personal response, and relate to [one’s] own life. In short the Common Core de-emphasizes reading as a personal act and emphasizes textual analysis” (25). With the focus squarely on textual analysis as the primary means of comprehending and interpreting texts, how might these expectations change your approaches in the classroom? What are the implications for your reading instruction?
Responses to the prompt are due by Monday evening, January 20. Then, you are expected to revisit this site and reply to at least one of your fellow participant’s comment by Thursday, January 23. If you need help posting your comment, watch this video.
Don’t forget to read chapter 3 in anticipation of next week’s prompt.
