1. Appendix A Jigsaw Activity
By Illinois State Board of Education English Language Arts Content Area Specialists

2. Purposes/Outcomes
Understand the key implementation ideas behind the Common Core State Standards
Define terms such as text complexity, writing text types, and close reading
Understand the characteristics of a college or career ready student

3. Kathleen McNeary Area IA Erik Iwersen Area I-BB, BC, BD Amy Robinson
Area I-C
Jill Brown
Area II
Katy Sykes
Area III and IV
Kathi Rhodus
Area V and VI
Currently, there are six English Language Arts Content Area Specialists with the Illinois State Board of Education. Each specialist is housed out of local offices. This group works to create and provide resources for stakeholders throughout Illinois as we transition to the Common Core State Standards.

4. Appendix A Activity Consists of: Key Implementation Factors
Key Design Considerations
Prioritizing Text Complexity
Determining Text Complexity
Implementing Text Complexity
Three Writing Types
Writing: Argument vs. Persuasive
Speaking and Listening
Language
Vocabulary
Characteristics of a College/Career Ready Student
The above slide shows the sections of the handouts that each group of participants should have. There should be approximately 12 groups with at least 2-3 people in each group. The small group members will each have the same document and each will read looking for key ideas and vocabulary terms that would be important to share out with the rest of the large group. In essence, they will become experts of their portion of the document Appendix A.
Once finished reading in small groups, they will need to determine the best way to share the information with the large group using the materials provided: chart paper, sticky notes, markers, pens and pencils. These will be hung around the room during the presentation for all to reference during a gallery walk after the presentations.
It is recommended to use the above list as the order of presentations as well. The appendix documents can be found separated and attached to this presentation.

5. Key considerations: Increased emphasis on Informational text
Grade
Literature
Informational
K-5
50%
6-8
45%
55%
9-12
30%
70%
This slide should be shared after the second group presents. This chart explains the necessity of increasing informational text instruction. Appendix A defines the research base behind the increase. In Literature classes in high school, the predominance of ELA instruction falls to literature content teacher but the rest of the high schoolers’ day rests with informational text. It stands to reason that preparing students in elementary how to understand the structure and elements of informational text are imperative.

6. Prioritizing text complexity
Too much scaffolding has occurred but it still has it’s place.
Publishers have created texts that offer too much support.
FACTS:
Text Complexity has steadily declined since 1963.
Hayes, Wolfer, and Wolf (1996)
Only AP textbooks met newspaper readability levels in 1992.
Hayes and Ward, (1992)
350 point Lexile gap found between end of high school and beginning of college.
Williamson, (2006).
The formal text complexity model can be found on website under the resources tab. It has been updated and current research has been tied to this document. It states: …”research shows that while the complexity of reading demands for college, career, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past half century, the complexity of texts students are exposed to has steadily decreased in that same interval. In order to address this gap, the CCSS emphasize increasing the complexity of texts students read as a key element in improving reading comprehension.”
The importance of text complexity to student success had been known for many years prior to the release of the CCSS, but its release spurred subsequent research that holds implications for how the CCSS define and measure text complexity. The new research in the supplemental materials deals with the tools that measure the qualitative portion of text complexity.

7. Three Writing Text Types
Argumentative
Demonstrates logically a point of view, position or belief
Informational/Expository
Conveys information accurately
Explanation is for clarification
Narrative
Conveys experience either imaginative or real
Creative Writing beyond Narrative
Poetry
Monologue vs. dialogue
Suspense
Arguments are used for many purposes—to change the reader’s point of view, to bring about some action on the reader’s part, or to ask the reader to accept the writer’s explanation or evaluation of a concept, issue, or problem. An argument is a reasoned, logical way of demonstrating that the writer’s position, belief, or conclusion is valid. Although young children are not able to produce fully developed logical arguments, they develop a variety of methods to extend and elaborate their work by providing examples, offering reasons for their assertions,
and explaining cause and effect. In K-5 the term opinion is used and argument begins in 6th.
Informational/explanatory writing conveys information accurately. To produce this kind of writing, students draw from what they already know and from primary and secondary sources. With practice, students become better able to develop a controlling idea and a coherent focus
on a topic and more skilled at selecting and incorporating relevant examples, facts, and details into their writing.
Narrative writing conveys experience, either real or imaginary, and uses time as its deep structure. It can be used for many purposes, such as to inform, instruct, persuade, or entertain.

8. Narrative Explain/ Inform Elementary 35% 30% Middle School High School
Argumentative
Elementary
35%
30%
Middle
School
High School
20%
40%
The ability to write logical arguments based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence is a cornerstone of the writing standards, with opinion writing—a basic form of argument—extending down into the earliest grades.
Research—both short, focused projects (such as those commonly required in the workplace) and longer term in depth research —is emphasized throughout the standards but most prominently in the writing strand since a written analysis and presentation of findings is so often critical.
Annotated samples of student writing accompany the standards and help establish adequate performance levels in writing arguments, informational/explanatory texts, and narratives in the various grades.
Just as the previous chart exemplified the amount of reading that should occur in a students day, this chart suggests the amount of writing that should occur in a students day or week and what type of writing should be the focus.

9. Persuasive VS. Argument
Appeals to emotions rather than logic.
Argument
Convinces audience based on logic and sound reasoning.
Persuasion is only one type of argument writing. Argument writing is based on logic and reasoning and the CCSS states the following:
An argument is a reasoned, logical way of demonstrating that the writer’s position, belief, or conclusion is valid. In English language arts, students make claims about the worth or meaning of a literary work or works. They defend their interpretations or judgments with evidence from the text(s) they are writing about. In history/social studies, students analyze evidence from multiple primary and secondary sources to advance a claim that is best supported by the evidence, and they argue for a historically or empirically situated interpretation. In science, students make claims in the form of statements or conclusions that answer questions or address problems. Using data in a scientifically acceptable
form, students marshal evidence and draw on their understanding of scientific concepts to argue in support
of their claims.

10. Speaking and Listening
Receptive vs. Expressive Language
Oral Language
Purposeful and systematic in even earliest of grades
Foundation for written language skills
Listening comprehension outpaces reading comprehension
Allocate instructional time building listening skills
The standards require that students gain, evaluate, and present increasingly complex information, ideas, and evidence through listening and speaking as well as through media.
An important focus of the speaking and listening standards is academic discussion in one-on-one, small-group, and whole-class settings. Formal presentations are one important way such talk occurs, but so is the more informal discussion that takes place as students collaborate to answer questions, build understanding, and solve problems.
The early grades should not focus on decoding alone, nor should the later grades pay attention only to building reading comprehension. Time should be devoted to reading fiction and content-rich selections aloud to young children, just as it is to providing those same children with the skills they will need to decode and encode.
This focus on oral language is of greatest importance for the children most at risk – children for whom English is a second language and children who have not been exposed at home to the kind of language found in written texts. Ensuring that all children in the United States have access to an excellent education requires that issues of oral language come to the fore in elementary classrooms.

11. Vocabulary
Tier One Words- Consist of basic words and rarely require instructional attention in school and highly frequent in life: clock, baby, ball, happy, walk, run, etc.
Tier Two Words - High frequency use for mature language users and found across a variety of knowledge domains: coincidence, absurd, industrious, fortunate, etc.
Tier Three Words - Low frequency use and limited to specific knowledge domains: isotope, lathe, peninsula, refinery, etc. Best learned when teaching specific content lessons such as geography, science, etc. Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction. NY: Guilford Press.
Research suggests that if students are going to grasp and retain words and comprehend text, they need incremental, repeated exposure in a variety of contexts to the words they are trying to learn. When students make multiple connections between a new word and their own experiences, they develop a nuanced and flexible understanding of the word they are learning. In this way, students learn not only what a word means but also how to use that word in a variety of contexts, and they can apply appropriate senses of the word’s meaning in order to understand the word in different contexts.
Key to students’ vocabulary development is building rich and flexible word knowledge. Students need plentiful opportunities
to use and respond to the words they learn through playful informal talk, discussion, reading or being read
to, and responding to what is read. Students benefit from instruction about the connections and patterns in language.
Developing in students an analytical attitude toward the logic and sentence structure of their texts, alongside an
awareness of word parts, word origins, and word relationships, provides students with a sense of how language works
such that syntax, morphology, and etymology can become useful cues in building meaning as students encounter
new words and concepts (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2008).
Which is more important? The tier 2. Tier Two words, which by definition are not unique to a particular discipline and as a result are not the clear responsibility of a particular content area teacher. What is more, many Tier Two words are far less well defined by contextual clues in the texts in which they appear and are far less likely to be defined explicitly within a text than are Tier Three words. Yet Tier Two words are frequently encountered in complex written texts and are particularly powerful because of their wide applicability to many sorts of reading.
Teachers thus need to be alert to the presence of Tier Two words and determine which ones need careful attention.

12. Characteristics of a college/career ready student
Develops and builds strong content knowledge with increased complexity
Demonstrates independence
Responds to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose and content discipline
Comprehends as well as critiques
Values evidence
Utilizes technology and digital media strategically and capably
Understands other perspectives and cultures.
These portraits exemplify students who are college and career ready.
This is not the “product” that the CCSS would like to produce but the depiction of a student who is at mastery levels of reaching the standards and ready to become a globally responsible consumer and independent thinker.

13. Additional Resources Common Core Standards
Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects 6-12
Text Complexity Supplemental Information
Appendix B – Text Exemplars, Sample Performance Tasks, Cross Content Nonfiction and Informational Text
Appendix C – Student Writing Samples
Publisher’s Criteria for K-2 and 3-12
These are other resources available that support the standards. Each appendix offers samples and definitions supporting the standards. There is also an area defining vocabulary within each standard. Check out the resources tab at

14. Contact Information
Katy Sykes
Jill Brown