Standards That Count: Reading, Discussion, Writing, and Presentation

Introduction  Current standards do not dictate how many readings or papers students should have each year.

Reading  Allington suggests that students should engage in 60 minutes of reading and 40 minutes of writing across the curriculum daily.

Reading: Strategies for Success  According to David Conley, English departments should agree upon an established minimum number of readings to ensure that all courses have “common quality curriculum.”

Reading: Strategies for Success  Conley makes these recommendations to achieve this goal:  Teams should agree upon a specific number of quality “core texts” for every grade level on which students learn to master the core skills of “annotation and close reading.”

Reading: Strategies for Success  Most reading should be in the argumentative/interpretive mode.  Teachers should agree upon the general purposes or kinds of analysis to be done for some of the basic texts.  To achieve this, teachers should develop common questions or sets of questions.

Reading: Types of Works  Readings should be divided in this way:  Fiction: 40-60%  Nonfiction: 40-50%  Self-selected nonfiction: 25-40%  Readings should be organized by grading periods.

Constructed Responses: You Can Help  All departments can help our students to respond to open response questions by using the “Yes, M.A.A.M.” model for constructing open responses. ○○○  Students should be able to complete the following tasks:  Restate the question while providing an answer, idea, or opinion.

Constructed Responses: You Can Help  Tie the response directly to the reading by citing specific details from the text that support their answers, ideas, or opinions.  Explain how the text details actually support their answers, ideas, or opinions. This is called "interpreting" the answer.  - See more at: reading-skills-on-state-assessments.

Reading: Conclusions  The more children read, the more they will develop a love for reading.  Schools should allot for more reading time in class.  Students need everyday practice in writing constructed responses.

Discussion  Discussion is a critical counterpart to reading.  During discussion, students learn to support their arguments and provide evidence for their claims or opinions.

The Importance of Discussions  Students should be given plenty of opportunities to share these aspects of their learning:  personal experiences and values  opinions  interpretations

Recommended Frequency of Discussions  Frequent literary discussions help students to learn important life and college- preparation skills.  Students should discuss their readings- books, poems, articles- at least three (3) times per week.

The Quality of Discussions  To ensure that discussions are engaging and successful, teachers and teams should develop, refine, and share good questions and prompts.

The Quality of Discussions  For the greatest benefit to students, teachers should incorporate these two steps:  Provide a simple rubric as described in Chapter 3 of the Focus book.  Establish clear criteria and ground rules for discussion.

Writing  Schools should determine the minimum number of writing assignments that all students will complete in a course.

Writing: Criteria for Success  There should be at least one “exemplar” paper for each agreed-upon written assignment.  Exemplar papers, or example papers, help teachers to guide students before and during the writing process.

Writing: Criteria for Success  There should be a “common scoring guide” with adaptations for specific writing assignments.  In keeping with the “college knowledge” study, writing should also have an argumentative focus.

Writing: Criteria for Success  Students should write several of their papers in two drafts.  The second draft is where students learn the “craft” of writing.

Writing: Criteria for Success  Students should be required to write several formal papers of one-and-one-half to three handwritten pages beginning in 2 nd grade and three to five handwritten pages in middle and high school.  These formal papers should be required monthly.

Writing: Criteria for Success  Students should also be required to write one longer research paper of 10 to 15 pages in their senior year.

Writing: Criteria for Success  Students should make presentations of their written works.  Students should make one to two presentations per semester.  Students improve speaking and presenting skills when they make presentations.

Handling the Paper Load

Paper Load: Goal One  Increase the amount of writing and writing instruction while reducing the amount of time teachers spend grading students’ papers.

Goal One: Rubrics, Peer Editing, and Exemplars  Teach students to use rubric-based checklists before they hand in their work.  Teach students to do conscientious peer editing. Both writers and editors benefit.  Use exemplars.

Goal One: Evaluation, Good Lesson Components  Evaluate for only one area of scoring at a time.  Examples: organization, use of transitions, varying sentence type and length, etc.  Incorporate “routine components” of good lessons:  multiple iterations of modeling  guided practice  checks for understanding

Goal One: Collecting Student Work, Walk Arounds  Collect only some of students’ work. Good quality work should come as a result of teaching most of the time.  Walk around and scan student work while they are working.

Conclusions  Students don’t learn the craft of writing from comments on their papers.  They learn more from carefully designed lessons which are built around exemplars and rubrics that clarify good writing.  More Information: “Write More, Grade Less” at www. mikeschmoker.com

TAKE AWAY: Standards that Count: Reading, Discussion, Writing, and Presentation!

Check Your ! Sheron A. Stocker, M.Ed Regular English