Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing and the Arizona ELA Standards Jenna Quarelli-Buck Secondary ELA Specialist Arizona Department of Education

Local control at all levels – K-16 The Wild, Wild West Local control at all levels – K-16

Evolution of Arizona’s K-12 English Language Arts Standards 2015/2016 – Arizona conducts a review and revision of the College and Career Ready ELA Standards 2010 – Arizona adopts Common Core State Standards 2012 – Arizona renames standards “College and Career Ready Standards” 2016 – Arizona adopts revised Arizona English Language Arts Standards .

Standards, Curriculum, & Instruction Standards – What a student needs to know, understand, and be able to do by the end of each grade. Standards build across grade levels in a progression of increasing understanding and through a range of cognitive demand levels. Standards are adopted at the state level by the State Board of Education. WHAT As we do at each meeting, we will review key concepts so that we are all operating from the same base of understanding.

Standards, Curriculum, & Instruction Curriculum – The resources used for teaching and learning the standards. Curricula are adopted at a local level by districts and schools. Instruction – The methods used by teachers to teach their students. Instructional techniques are employed by individual teachers in response to the needs of the students in their classes to help them progress through the curriculum in order to master the standards. As we do at each meeting, we will review key concepts so that we are all operating from the same base of understanding. HOW

How these standards are different - There are 10 READING INFORMATION standards that require ELA teachers to be familiar with the elements of rhetoric and the rhetorical situation. These RI standards also mean that students should be engaging with a variety of texts, not just literature in their K-12 classrooms. There is a focus on ARGUMENT writing, rather than “persuasive essays.” This is a big shift for many of our 6-12th grade ELA teachers, many of whom received little or no training in composition pedagogy or rhetorical or academic writing. All four strands of the ELA standards (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language) are designed to be integrated, not taught as stand-alone performance objectives.

RI.8 – Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. RI.1 – Read carefully to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it RI.5 – Analyze the structure of the text, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text relate to each other and the whole RI.2 – Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development RI. 6 – Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text RI.3 – Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. RI.7 – Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats RI.4 – Interpret words and phrases as they are used in the text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meaning and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning and tone RI.9 – Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the author takes. RI.8 cannot be mastered unless the students can apply all the other skills in the RI standards. They ALL matter.

How many of you are familiar with this document? Does it inform any decisions you make about your first-year writing/composition courses? Does it impact curricular decisions? Does it guide syllabus construction? Do your writing teachers discuss what these outcomes look like in their classrooms? How are the habits of mind brought into your writing classrooms?

CWPA OUTCOMES VS. AZ ELA STANDARDS What a student needs to know, understand, and be able to do by the end of each grade. Standards build across grade levels in a progression of increasing understanding and through a range of cognitive demand levels. Standards are adopted at the state level by the State Board of Education. “ … intentionally defines only “outcomes,” or types of results, and not “standards,” or precise levels of achievement. The setting of standards to measure students’ achievement of these Outcomes has deliberately been left to local writing programs and their institutions.” AZMERIT is aligned to the standards.

The Wild, Wild West THE ONLY THING LOCAL LEAs HAVE IN COMMON IS THE STANDARDS AND THE AZMERIT TEST

Please grab the standards packet I have provided! How many of you are familiar with the K-12 standards?

Developing Rhetorical Knowledge • learn and practice key rhetorical concepts such as audience, purpose, context, and genre through writing and analysis of a variety of types of texts (nonfiction, informational, imaginative, printed, visual, spatial, auditory, and otherwise); • write and analyze a variety of types of texts to identify • the audiences and purposes for which they are intended, • the key choices of content, organization, evidence, and language use made by their author(s), • the relationships among these key choices and the ways that the text(s) appeal or speak to different audiences; • write for different audiences, purposes, and contexts; • write for real audiences and purposes, and analyze a writer’s choices in light of those audiences and purposes; and • contribute, through writing, their own ideas and opinions about a topic to an ongoing conversation. Look at the AZ ELA Standards packet: Focus on the Reading Information and Writing standards. Where do you see connections?

Developing Critical Thinking Through Writing, Reading, and Research read texts from multiple points of view (e.g., sympathetic to a writer’s position and critical of it) and in ways that are appropriate to the academic discipline or other contexts where the texts are being used; • write about texts for multiple purposes including (but not limited to) interpretation, synthesis, response, summary, critique, and analysis; • craft written responses to texts that put the writer’s ideas in conversation with those in a text in ways that are appropriate to the academic discipline or context; • create multiple kinds of texts to extend and synthesize their thinking (e.g., analytic essays, scripts, brochures, short stories, graphic narratives); • evaluate sources for credibility, bias, quality of evidence, and quality of reasoning; • conduct primary and secondary research using a variety of print and nonprint sources; • write texts for various audiences and purposes that are informed by research (e.g., to support ideas or positions, to illustrate alternative perspectives, to provide additional contexts); and • generate questions to guide research. Look at the AZ ELA Standards packet: Focus on the Reading Information and Writing standards. Where do you see connections?

Developing Flexible Writing practices • practice all aspects of writing processes including invention, research, drafting, sharing with others, revising in response to reviews, and editing; • generate ideas and texts using a variety of processes and situate those ideas within different academic disciplines and contexts; • incorporate evidence and ideas from written, visual, graphic, verbal, and other kinds of texts; • use feedback to revise texts to make them appropriate for the academic discipline or context for which the writing is intended; • work with others in various stages of writing; and • reflect on how different writing tasks and elements of the writing process contribute to their development as a writer. Look at the AZ ELA Standards packet: Focus on the Reading Information and Writing standards. Where do you see connections?

Developing Knowledge of Conventions • write, read, and analyze a variety of texts from various disciplines and perspectives in order to • investigate the logic and implications of different conventions, • practice different conventions and analyze expectations for and effects on different audiences, • practice editing and proofreading one’s own writing and explore the implications of editing choices, • explore the concept of intellectual property (i.e., ownership of ideas) as it is used in different disciplines and contexts, and • identify differences between errors and intentional variations from expected conventions; • read and analyze print and multimodal texts composed in various styles, tones, and levels of formality; • use resources (such as print and online writing handbooks), with guidance, to edit drafts; • practice various approaches to the documentation and attribution of sources; and • examine the underlying logic in commonly used citation systems (e.g., MLA and APA). Look at the AZ ELA Standards packet: Focus on the Reading Information and Writing standards. Where do you see connections?

Composing in Multiple Environments • use a variety of electronic technologies intentionally to compose; • analyze print and electronic texts to determine how technologies affect reading and writing processes; • select, evaluate, and use information and ideas from electronic sources responsibly in their own documents (whether by citation, hotlink, commentary, or other means); • use technology strategically and with a clear purpose that enhances the writing for the audience; • analyze situations where print and electronic texts are used, examining why and how people have chosen to compose using different technologies; and • analyze electronic texts (their own and others’) to explore and develop criteria for assessing the texts. Look at the AZ ELA Standards packet: Focus on the Reading Information and Writing standards. Where do you see connections?

Turn and Talk - Is there anything in the AZ ELA standards that surprised you? Are your campuses having discussions about what is expected of students in post-secondary environments with the secondary schools your students are coming from? Are there ways for you to build partnerships with secondary teachers and discuss the overlap of the CWPA outcomes and the ELA standards?

Questions? Thoughts? Ideas?

Thank You! Jenna Quarelli-Buck Secondary ELA Specialist Arizona Department of Education Jenna.quarelli-buck@azed.gov