1. Etowah County Text Complexity November 2014
Presented by
Keitha Segrest & Kathy Allen

2. SAY WHAT? In three sentences answer the following questions:
What is text complexity?
What makes it important?
What will get students out of their comfort zones?

3. Outcomes: Use the “close reading” strategy. Explore the process
of implementing practices that scaffold complex text.

4. Close Reading Tim Shanahan Read the definition
“Close Reading – an intensive analysis of a text in order to come to terms with what it says, how it says it, and what it means.”
Tim Shanahan
Read the definition
Make sure participants understand it’s not cloze reading (especially K-5).
Similar to literary or critical analysis (6-12)

5. Where does Close Reading appear in the College and Career Ready Standards?
Anchor Standards for Reading R.1: 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.
Ask question and allow time for table talk.
Note: It would be impossible to accomplish any of the standards without reading closely…

6. Where does Close Reading appear in the College and Career Ready Standards?
Grade Level Standards for Anchor Standard 1 RL.7.1 and RI.7.1: Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as draw inferences from the text.
Ask question and allow time for table talk.
Note: It would be impossible to accomplish any of the standards without reading closely…

7. Where does Close Reading appear in the College and Career Ready Standards?
Grade Level Standards for Anchor Standard 1 RL.8.1 and RI.8.1: Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as draw inferences from the text.
Ask question and allow time for table talk.
Note: It would be impossible to accomplish any of the standards without reading closely…

8. “Deep reading,” or slow reading, is a sophisticated process in which people can critically think, reflect, and understand the words they are looking at. With most, that means slowing down – even stopping and rereading a page or paragraph if it doesn’t sink in – to really capture what the author is trying to say. Experts warn that without reading and really understanding what’s being said, it is impossible to be an educated citizen of the world, a knowledgeable voter or even an imaginative thinker.
-Laura Casey
Contra Costa Timesmercurynews.com
International Reading Association:
Read the quote and talk to your partner about key terms and big ideas…
Ask: What would close reading look like?
Partner or table talk and share out
Reinforce answers with next slide….

9. How To Do a Close Reading
Read with a pencil in hand; annotate the text. Mark the big ideas and skills.
Reread to look for patterns in the things you’ve noticed about the text – repetitions, contradictions, similarities. Find the commonalities.
Ask and/or answer questions about the patterns you’ve noticed – how and why are these patterns important to the overall text?
We’ve talked about what close reading is. This slide shows us how to do a close reading.
Talking points:
Note taking skills are important, beginning in kindergarten. Teach multiple ways to take notes.
2. Example: Sherlock Holmes will have clues in the text….poems have a lot of repetition
3. Recognize how the author uses patterns (literary techniques) to enhance the piece.
You can closely read any type of text, but our overall purpose for today is to have a deeper understanding of the reading literature standards.

10. Close Reading of FDR’s Inaugural Address of 1933
Read with a pencil in hand;
annotate the text. Mark the big ideas and skills.
2. Reread to look for patterns in the things you’ve noticed about the text – repetitions, contradictions, similarities. Find the commonalities.
3. Ask and/or answer questions about the patterns you’ve noticed – how and why are these patterns important to the overall text?
Now, we are going to closely read chapter 1 of Charlotte’s Web. We are going to use this piece of literature as a way to get to know the literature standards. We are using this piece of reading literature because it is familiar to most people. Please think about the process, not the grade level. We will be working with subcategories, just like you did when you closely read the reading literature standards.
You can closely read any type of text, but our overall purpose for today is to have a deeper understanding of the reading literature standards. Now we are going to be closely reading literature.
Quickly review the anchor standards for Key Ideas and Details on the standards handout:
CCR Anchor Standard 1."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."
CCR Anchor Standard 2. "Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development;
summarize the key supporting details and ideas."
 CCR Anchor Standard 3."Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.“
Ask participants to follow the directions on the slide as they read Charlotte’s Web (handout).

11. Close Reading of FDR’s Inaugural Address of 1933
CCR Anchor Standard 1 "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."
Now, we are going to closely read chapter 1 of Charlotte’s Web. We are going to use this piece of literature as a way to get to know the literature standards. We are using this piece of reading literature because it is familiar to most people. Please think about the process, not the grade level. We will be working with subcategories, just like you did when you closely read the reading literature standards.
You can closely read any type of text, but our overall purpose for today is to have a deeper understanding of the reading literature standards. Now we are going to be closely reading literature.
Quickly review the anchor standards for Key Ideas and Details on the standards handout:
CCR Anchor Standard 1."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."
CCR Anchor Standard 2. "Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development;
summarize the key supporting details and ideas."
 CCR Anchor Standard 3."Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.“
Ask participants to follow the directions on the slide as they read Charlotte’s Web (handout).

12. Close Reading of FDR’s Inaugural Address of 1933
CCR Anchor Standard 2
"Determine central ideas or themes of a text and
analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.“
CCR Anchor Standard 3
"Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.“
What’s the story beginning to be about?
What in the story makes you say that?
Now, we are going to closely read chapter 1 of Charlotte’s Web. We are going to use this piece of literature as a way to get to know the literature standards. We are using this piece of reading literature because it is familiar to most people. Please think about the process, not the grade level. We will be working with subcategories, just like you did when you closely read the reading literature standards.
You can closely read any type of text, but our overall purpose for today is to have a deeper understanding of the reading literature standards. Now we are going to be closely reading literature.
Quickly review the anchor standards for Key Ideas and Details on the standards handout:
CCR Anchor Standard 1."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."
CCR Anchor Standard 2. "Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development;
summarize the key supporting details and ideas."
 CCR Anchor Standard 3."Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.“
Ask participants to follow the directions on the slide as they read Charlotte’s Web (handout).

13. A final thought….
“If young readers do the work of the first three anchor standards well— comprehending, inferring, synthesizing —then they’ll move rapidly up levels to the kinds of stories where paying attention to craft, structure, and language will become an essential part of their everyday reading work.”
-Calkins, Ehrenworth, & Lehman, 2012

14. “Text complexity is the hallmark of the Common Core State Standards.”

15. WHAT IS TEXT COMPLEXITY?
QUICK-WRITE: DEFINE COMPLEXITY Complexity: the state of being complex Complex: a whole made up of interrelated parts Interrelated: having a mutual relation Mutual: shared in common What is the Whole? Text
Webster’s Dictionary defines Complexity as “The state of being complex” Helpful, right.
So what is complex?- Read definition
Let’s take it further – Interrelated is… mutual is…
Finally, go back to the definition for complex…in our case what is the whole? Right! Text
Just so you know: The 8th definition of text in Merriam Webster’s online dictionary is “something (as a story or movie) considered as an object to be examined, explicated, or deconstructed”
Is your definition similar? Do you feel that the definition we came up with fits with the Common Core’s idea of Text Complexity?
We’re going to do some reading about text complexity,why it’s so important, and what makes this type of learning different from the ways we used to teach.

16. TEXT COMPLEXITY
“ It is not about just giving students harder texts. It is about consistently getting them out of their comfort zones.”
Sarah Brown Wessley, The TeachingChannel.org
Get out your note-taking tool. As we talk about the shifts in text complexity, take notes in the column labeled How Will It Be. Take a minute and read the quote at the top. Turn and Talk: What does it mean to you?
Clarification is needed: Thinking about text complexity means thinking about nuances and all the ways we must determine the text we choose. It is a myth to assume that we can put difficult text in front of students and it will make them better readers. We want students to find just the right approach. Sarah Wessley calls it the three bears approach. We don’t want it too easy- students need to grow, stretch, think. We don’t want it so hard that students shut down, so how do we make sure it is just right?
(move to next slide)

17. 1. Dial up the difficulty to help students grow
One way is to dial up the difficulty. If the text is too challenging, without scaffolding, students will not be able to comprehend. That means finding the text that is just right and “dialing it up” for growth. In “Key Considerations in Implementing Text Complexity” (appendix A) it is important to recognize that, while we don’t want to “enable” students by scaffolding to the point where the teacher does all the work and the student receives the information, scaffolding is often entirely appropriate. The expectation that scaffolding will occur with particularly challenging texts is built into the standards.
The idea of scaffolding is the gradual release of responsibility to the students….decreasing scaffolding and increasing independence both within and across the text complexity bands.

18. Text Complexity Grade Bands
Text Complexity Grade Bands in the Standards
Old Lexile Range
Lexile Ranges Aligned to CCR Expectations
K – 1
N/A
2 – 3
450 – 790
4 – 5
770 – 980
6 – 8
860 – 1010
955 – 1155
9 – 10
1080 – 1305
11 - CCR
1070 – 1220
Another way of dialing up the difficulty is through the increase in the level of difficulty in grades 2-12.
are no longer appropriate
Students need to be reading levels two – three years higher than in the past by graduation
CCSS uses several quantitative ways to set appropriate level (Flesch-Kincaid, Lexiles, etc.), but in all cases the grade-level matches have changed (increased).
K-5 facilitators: You’ll notice this doesn’t begin until grade 2. Why is that? Remember, last session we looked at the Foundational Skills. Students must have the foundational skills before we can put them into complex text.
Your media specialists are being trained on Lexiles and how to determine text complexity. They will be an excellent resource for you as you re-evaluate classroom library.

19. Webinar http://youtube/3ir257Dfvas
Tim Shanahan hosts an informative webinar on the CCRS Instructional Shifts that can be found at:
FYI…..this is not on the resource page
Great Resource
Google Tim Shanahan and cloe reading and/or complex text

20. 2. Strategically Use a Variety of Texts
Every type of text reads differently. We need to think about the text we are reading. We need to expose students to many kinds of text. We also need to make sure that they have the skills to comprehend these texts. This means that we need strategies, not just any strategies, but strategies that have a purpose and move students to that independence we talked about in the previous slide. Students need many opportunities to develop questioning skills, make inferences, paraphrase and summarize, cite evidence, and trace an argument or thought.

21. Different Text Require Different Strategies
Does the strategy support the selected text?
Does the graphic organizer selected take students deeper in their understanding of the text?
Does the strategy selected support the standard?
K-5: Your core reading program has taken care of the use of a variety of text by providing narratives, poetry, functional text, etc., if they are being used. Some examples are paired selection, leveled readers. You also need to look at your science and social studies texts as opportunities to include a variety of texts. We also need to remember that we do not need to blindly follow the program. We must be thoughtful about the suggested strategies and opportunities for practice.
6-12:

22. How It Has Been Think about “How It Has Been” in your classroom.
Jot your thoughts.
Share your thoughts with someone at your table.
SO what are the implications for you? Jot your thoughts.
Tim Shanahan suggests some implications for dealing with this shift:
Supplement textbooks with higher-level material.
Re-match your book room collections to different grade levels.
Replace current textbooks and books based on CCRS bands.
Anticipate what will be challenging, but don’t necessarily head it off. Guide students to deal with the difficulty. There must be productive struggling!
Re-reading is very important in working with challenging text. Don’t expect them to understand it the first time.

23. 3. Layer the Text
For example, finding a poem, narrative, and expository text that explores the same topic.
We have, in the past, used isolated text, then at a later date, compared another text to a previously read one. While this isolated approach allows comparison, by layering the text, we provide immediate opportunities to look for relationships. Students will learn to dig deeper, looking at structure, vocabulary, content, concepts, and points-of-view.
Note for K-5: You may have heard the term layering previously with a more negative connotation. The layering we have talked about in the past had to do with systematic instruction. We do not recommend layering, for example, in phonics. We do, however, need to layer text to increase the complexity.

24. Anchor Standard 10 Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently.
Appendix A, pp. 4-10
3-part model of text complexity
Equally important considerations of text complexity
To be used with the 9 reading standards for Reading Literature
Quantitative
Qualitative
Qualitative evaluation of the text
(p. 5 & 6, Appendix A)
Levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands
Quantitative evaluation of the text (p. 7 & 8)
Readability measures and other scores of text complexity
Matching reader to text and task (p. 9)
Reader variables (such as motivation, knowledge, and experiences) and task variables (such as purpose and the complexity generated by the task assigned and the questions posed)
Progression of Standard 10
Note K-12 progressions in text complexity (p. 10, Appendix A)
Note reference in the CCSS to the Lexile Framework in pages 7-8, Appendix A.
Page 8 in Appendix A provides a chart with new Lexile ranges (ex. 1080L-1305L for gr. 9-10) aligned to CCR expectations.
More information is included from
Look at Dibels conversion.
Today, we have only brushed the surface of Text Complexity. This is a PD in and of itself. Since your media specialists are being trained, this will be an area of support for you.
Reader and Task

25. Why Use Complex Text?
Complex text holds the vocabulary-, language-, knowledge-, and thinking-building potential of deep comprehension.
If students have not developed the skills, concentration, and perseverance to read challenging texts with understanding, they will read less in general.
Limited access to complex texts is an equity issue. The consequences are disproportionately harsh for students in poverty or high-mobility situations.
Oregon Dept. of Education
Facilitators:
Briefly remind participants that complex text for ALL students is the expectation of the new standards.

26. Scaffolding of Complex Text
Temporary guidance or assistance provided to a student by a teacher, another adult, or a more capable peer, enabling the student to perform a task he or she otherwise would not be able to do alone, with the goal of fostering the student’s capacity to perform the task on his or her own later on. Appendix A, page 43
We spent a great deal of time last year talking about text complexity. Because many of you responded on the surveys that you wanted more information about how to teach using complex text, and CCRS requires that students read more complex text, this afternoon we are going to talk about what is needed to implement complex text in the classroom for all students.

27. independently and proficiently
scaffolding
independently and proficiently
Handout 4- Have participants read the top section of page 10. This explains the chart on Grade-specific text complexity demands based on Anchor Standard 10.
Ask participants to read the chart to notice the increasing rigor and how the grade-bands scaffold. For Example, Grade 2 asks for scaffolding and Grade 3 with the same standard asks for independently and proficiently. Look at your grade band? Look before and after. What rigor is displayed in those grades?

28. Instructional Supports
1. Cultivates student interest and engagement in reading, writing, and speaking about texts.
2. Addresses instructional expectations and is easy to understand and use for teachers (e.g., clear directions, sample proficient student responses, sections that build teacher understanding of the whys and how of the material).
3. Integrates targeted instruction in multiple areas such as grammar and syntax, writing strategies, discussion rules and aspects of foundational reading.
4. Provides substantial materials to support students who need more time and attention to achieve automaticity with decoding, phonemic awareness, fluency and/or vocabulary acquisition.
5. Provides all students (including emergent and beginning readers) with extensive opportunities to engage with grade-level texts and read alouds that are at high levels of complexity including appropriate scaffolding so that students directly experience the complexity of text.
Handout 1- Equip Rubric
Take participants back to the rubric
What does it say about how you support the students in your class? Highlight which students need these instructional supports.
How will you know what to put in your lesson plans? –( you will know based upon your daily formative assessments.)

29. “The Challenge of Challenging Text” Shanahan, Fisher, & Frey
leadership/mar12/vol69/num06/The-Challenge-of-Challenging-Text.aspx
Handout 5: “The Challenge of Challenging Text”
Ask participants to read the introduction and talk to a partner about the analogy of lifting weights

30. What Makes Text Complex?
Read the Text
Identify the factors that make text complex.
Explain the challenges students may experience due to the identified factors.
Read “What Makes Text Complex?”
Handout 6- graphic organizer
For facilitators:
Ask participants to read the first chunk (up to “What Can Teachers Do About Text Complexity?”) to identify the factors that make text complex and explain the challenges students may experience due to the identified factors.
Participants will talk at their tables about the challenges to cement their learning.

31. What Makes Text Complex?
Directions
You will not be able to take the text with you (due to copyright restrictions) when you leave so you may choose a tool that best suits you to note your learning.
Use the graphic organizer provided for you
Use sticky notes to write your annotations
Use notebook paper
Choose another way that helps you better comprehend the text

32. What Can Teachers Do About Text Complexity?
Read the Text
Identify three important components of literacy instruction.
Explain actions teachers can take to help students read complex text.
Ask participants to read the second chunk to identify the outcomes. Participants will talk at their tables about the actions and then reflect on how ongoing formative assessment will allow the teacher to:
build skills
establish purpose
foster motivation and persistence

33. What Can Teachers Do About Text Complexity?
Directions
You will not be able to take the text with you (due to copyright restrictions) when you leave so you may choose a tool that best suits you to note your learning.
Use the graphic organizer provided for you
Use sticky notes to write your annotations
Use notebook paper
Choose another way that helps you better comprehend the text

34. How It Has Been Think about “How It Has Been” in your classroom.
Jot your thoughts.
Share your thoughts with someone at your table.
SO what are the implications for you? Jot your thoughts.
Tim Shanahan suggests some implications for dealing with this shift:
Supplement textbooks with higher-level material.
Re-match your book room collections to different grade levels.
Replace current textbooks and books based on CCRS bands.
Anticipate what will be challenging, but don’t necessarily head it off. Guide students to deal with the difficulty. There must be productive struggling!
Re-reading is very important in working with challenging text. Don’t expect them to understand it the first time.

35. Planning Scaffolds for Complex Text
We’ve read about the factors that make text complex, the challenges, and the actions teachers can take to help students read complex text. Let’s take a closer look.

36. This is How We Do It! Handout 7 (Scaffolding graphic organizer )
Hand out the graphic organizer. Before we begin, we want to show you the tool we’re going to use to plan a scaffolded lesson. It has four columns.
Know: These are the facts, key vocabulary, dates, places, names, and examples that you feel are important. Examples: The word ecosystem means…, multiplication tables, In our last article, we might have said five factors that make text complex.
Understand: The concepts, big ideas, principles “students should understand that…” Each part of an ecosystem affects all other parts, multiplication is repeated addition, some texts are complex due to factors that can impede understanding.
Do: skills of the discipline, (usually the verb phrases) examine various ecosystems and trace the movement and identify and explain the challenges students may face due to the five factors of complex text.
The last column is for any addition information you feel is important.
We’re going to try this together using some steps for scaffolding complex text.

37. Know, Understand, Do Statements
The elements of a short story keep the story running smoothly and allow the action to develop in a logical way.
Describe the evolution of the characters and how they affect the outcome of the story.
There are five Elements of a Short Story (Plot, Character, Conflict, Theme & Setting).

38. Know
(concepts, facts, formulas, Key vocabulary)
Understand
(big idea, large concept, declarative statement of enduring understanding) Do
(skills, competencies)
Additional Information
 There are five Elements of a Short Story (Plot, Character, Conflict, Theme & Setting).   
The elements of a short story keep the story running smoothly and allow the action to develop in a logical way.
 Describe the evolution of the characters and how they affect the outcome of the story.
Unit formative assessment(s)
Before we practice with text, let’s make sure we can identify statements and what they represent
We’re going to try this together using some steps for scaffolding complex text.

39. + Steps for Scaffolding Complex Text
Step 1: determine the purpose of the reading Step 2: determine the levels of scaffolding you will need Step 3: design the scaffolding activities, starting at the top level Step 4: check your scaffolding activities against your Know, Understand, and Do outcomes
Handout 8: Text (elementary text) (secondary text)
Ask participants to read the text, thinking about how they would use the text with their students and what they would want their students to know. They will NOT put anything on the scaffolding tool at this point. They are just annotating their text. We will work through the scaffolding tool together after reading the text.
Handout 9: scaffolding reading for understanding
When they have finished reading, introduce Handout 9.
Bring up step 1, explain the step and have them work in pairs to decide what they want students to know, understand, and do with the provided text. (See notes below). Repeat with each step, allowing participants time to think and talk.
Facilitators:
This may seem obvious, but what we want students to get out of a reading and what they get out of reading on their own are usually two completely different things. Particularly if the content is new learning, or the text is complex. So come up with outcomes to determine what do you want them to know when they are finished, what do you want them to understand, and what will they have to do with their new knowledge and understanding? If you don’t want to use a graphic organizer you can always just jot it down on post-it notes for yourself.
You know your class. You know your students. How many of them will be able to access the material with very little guidance? This will be your top level. They should still be told the purpose of the reading. Most often you will need three levels, though in some classes, AP classes for example, two levels may be enough. Once you know how many levels you want to create, you can actually divide your class into these levels on paper, which may make it easier to design your scaffolding activity or strategy.
Always start with the top, as this is the level of thinking you want all students to reach. Remember that scaffolding does not mean “dumbing it down” for some students; it means providing the structures necessary for students to reach the highest levels of thinking. For example:
For your top level, create a chart, worksheet, or note-taking tool that provides the purpose, but not much guidance around how to read or what’s going to be most important, as you know that they have the reading and thinking skills to be able to determine this on their own.
For your mid-level group, consider what students would struggle with in the top layer, and add a layer of structure. This will look different depending on the purpose or complexity of the reading. It might be a particular note-taking structure that will help them determine what’s most important; it might include an annotated version of the reading; it might provide an example from early in the reading, showing what you want them to do with it.
For your third level group, add another layer. Again, this will differ based on the reading, but you may need to be more explicit about how to read or what to look for; you might need to provide more targeted questions, or partially filled out diagrams.
Handouts 10 and 11 may be given out as they do this part if you feel it will not confuse them. These handouts provide examples of scaffolding.
Take a look at your outcomes (know, understand, do) again, and hold them up to each of the activities. If a student successfully completed the activity at each level, would it show that they know and understand what you wanted them to? If not, you need to change the activity. Does the student work show too much, meaning do the activity makes students take in and work with information that you do not need them to know or understand? If so, change the activity so they focus just on what’s important. Finally, if students at all levels complete the student work successfully, are they prepared to be successful with your “Do”? In other words, if there is to be a quiz or test, could they get an A? If they will be writing an essay, do they have the content they need to get an A? If they are going to be applying the content to a project, do they have enough of an understanding to do so?
Adapted from:

40. This is How We Do It With Insight!
KNOWLEDGE
SKILLS (DO)
UNDERSTAND
We have a screenshot of the Insight tool to remind us about the help it can be when planning. Remember that there are three columns that can be of help when you’re planning in your class. They go beautifully when you are planning your outcomes.
There is a knowledge column, a skills (do) column, and an understanding column that go with each standard and grade. You know your content and your students the best, but this can provide you with a starting point.

41. Scaffolding makes the impossible possible!
Handouts 9 and 10
These are examples of the scaffolds that could take place in your classroom.

42. Food for Thought…
“What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? It would be saying to students something like `Read this nine- page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday.’ Yikes – no safety net, no parachute, no scaffolding – just left blowing in the wind.”
Rebecca Alber, “Six Scaffolding Strategies to Use with Your Students.”
Participants will discuss this quote.

43. RESOURCES
We have struggled with how to provide what you need to know about text complexity and close reading without overwhelming you. Since you are all in different places, here are some resources that you will want to delve into for your own growth.

44. SAY WHAT? In three sentences answer the following questions:
What is text complexity?
What makes it important?
What will get students out of their comfort zones?