MARY NEWTON CAMILLE HOUSE Common Core for English Language Arts
During Today’s ELA Session, We Will: Briefly review how ELA standards build across grade levels Discuss and examine three key shifts in ELA and the various roles of responsibility Analyze what Text-Based Questions with Text-Based Evidence are Identify the differences between the three tiers of vocabulary Apply our new knowledge through a lesson-based scavenger hunt
CLITMAP/ELA.HTML Vertical Alignment: ELA K-12
Shifting Gears With Common Core, the ELA classroom should look and feel different from before. As teachers begin to shift gears, we need to redefine roles.
What the Student Does…What the Teacher Does… Builds content knowledge through text Finds evidence Gains exposure to the world through reading Handles primary source documents Balances informational & literary text Scaffolds for informational texts Teaches “through” and “with” informational texts by allowing students to read the text instead of summarizing Principal’s Role: Purchases and provides equal amounts of informational and literary texts for each classroom and supports teachers’ transition to this balance Provides PD and co-planning opportunities for teachers to become more familiar with informational texts and how to use them side by side with literary texts Supports the role of all teachers (all disciplines) in advancing students’ literacy ELA/Literacy Shift 1: Building Knowledge through Content-Rich Nonfiction and Informational Text
What the Student Does…What the Teacher Does… Finds evidence to support their argument and writes using evidence Forms own judgments and creates informational texts Reads texts closely Engages with the author and his/her choices Compares multiple sources Facilitates evidence based conversations and presents opportunities to write about multiple texts Keeps students in the text and gives them opportunities to analyze, synthesize ideas Identifies questions that are text-dependent, worth asking/exploring, delivers richly Develops students’ voice so that they can argue a point and articulate their own conclusions using evidence Spends much more time preparing for instruction by reading deeply Principal’s Role: Provides planning time for teachers to engage with the text to prepare and identify appropriate text-dependent questions Supports teachers as they spend more time with students writing about the texts they read ― building strong arguments using evidence from the text Encourage teachers to foster evidence based conversations about texts with and amongst students ELA/Literacy Shift 2: Reading and Writing Grounded in Evidence from the Text
What the Student Does…What the Teacher Does… Rereads Tolerates frustration when engaged with challenging text Uses high utility words across content areas Builds “language of power” database Spends more time on more complex texts at every grade level Gives students less to read, lets them reread Provides scaffolding & strategies Develops students’ ability to use and access words Is strategic about the new vocabulary words Teaches fewer words more deeply Principal’s Role: Supports teachers as they work through and experience their students’ frustration with complex texts and learn to chunk and scaffold that text Ensures that texts are appropriately complex at every grade and that complexity of text builds from grade to grade Supports teachers as they scaffold so that students can move to more complex texts Provides training to teachers on the shift for teaching vocabulary in a more meaningful, effective manner ELA/Literacy Shift 3: Regular Practice with Complex Text and its Academic Vocabulary
Levels of Responsibility What did you notice about the levels of responsibility over the Three Shifts? Let’s revise it for mastery and success on all levels!
Text Dependent Questions Ask Students to: Analyze paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated
Which Are Text-Dependent Questions? Thumbs Up = YesThumbs Down = No How is the word liberty used differently throughout the excerpt? When was Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison? How does the analogy contribute to the reader’s understanding? Have you ever felt strongly about something like Madison that was not popularly accepted? Based on the text, how might Madison answer the essential question?
Text-Based Questions = Text-Based Answers The overall Reading Anchor Standard for grades K- 12 states: “Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.” The strand changes per grade level; however, by grade 3 students “refer explicitly to the text,” by grade 5 students “quote accurately,” and from there the level of “citing” evidence intensifies
Resources On DPI’s ACRE webpage, there are Instructional Resources teachers can access and use. Synthesis Example: mmon-core-tools/#goela mmon-core-tools/#goela
Common Core’s Vocabulary Organization Based on Isabel Beck’s 3 Tier Distinctions Tier 1 (sight words): Basic vocabulary children often come to school knowing – exception: ELL students and students of low socio-economic status 4000 word gap between Kindergarteners of low and high socio-economic status and 6000 word gap for ELLs Examples: river, on, because, before, after Tier 3 (domain specific): Content specific words which need to be explicitly taught (taught by content specific teachers) Examples: isosceles, democracy, protagonist
Tier 2 Academic Vocabulary Tier 2 (academic): More commonly found in writing rather than speech Not commonly used in young children’s speech Not usually learned by simply reading the words in context. Words that are used in a variety of situations and used frequently (we often assume students know these, but many times they need to be taught) Must be taught across the curriculum Examples: compare/contrast, detail, analyze, sequence (could be technical terms, informational terms, or literary terms)
Isabel Beck’s Criteria for Teaching Tier 2 Words: Students are likely to see the word often in other texts and across domains. The word will be useful in students’ writing. The word relates to other words or ideas that the students know or have been learning. Word choice has significance in the text. The context does not provide enough information for students to infer the meaning.
ACADEMIC VOCABULARY RUBRIC Resource for Teachers
Scavenger Hunt! Use the Rubric and Sample Lesson to practice Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy: Apply what you have learned today to a real-world lesson plan sample Analyze the lesson plan for the CC elements according to the Guide Synthesize and Evaluate the level of proficiency demonstrated through this lesson
Repair or Start Fresh?
Coming Soon content/uploads/2012/04/Tri-State-ELA-Rubric- V pdf