Appropriate Classroom Instruction and the Common Core

Lisa Arneson, DirectorSchool Improvement Division

larneson@cesa3.k12.wi.us

Exclusionary Factors for SLD Placement

Environmental or Economic DisadvantageOAre conditions outside of school preventing success?

O Evidence might include: Transience, homelessness, trauma, frequent absences, access to learning activities, family change, low expectations

Limited English ProficiencyOIs a language barrier preventing success?

OEvidence might include: limited knowledge of English

Lack of Appropriate InstructionOIs ineffective classroom instruction preventing success?

O Evidence might include the lack of: strong universal core curriculum, differentiation, highly qualified teacher, majority of students succeeding, attendance

Other ImpairmentsOAre other impairments preventing success?

O Evidence might be: hearing/visual impairments, other health impairments, and emotional behavior disability

“If there is evidence that any one of the exclusionary factors is the primary reason for a student’s inadequate achievement or insufficient progress, the IEP team should not find the student to have the impairment of SLD.” (DPI, p. 25)

ELA FocusO Text ComplexityO Use of Text SetsO Close ReadingO Levels of ComprehensionO Academic Vocabulary

A New DefinitionO Texts can be spoken, written, or visual – listened to,

read, or viewed. Although people most commonly think of written text as texts, a text is any communication – spoken, written, or visual – involving language. In an increasingly visual and online world, students need to be able to interpret and create texts that combine words, images, and sound in order to make meaning of texts that no longer read in one clear linear direction.

(DPI Form DL-E)

What are your kids reading? Allegories Artwork Autobiographies Cartoons Graphic novels Fables Flash fiction short stories novels adventure fiction fantasy fiction historical fiction horror fiction mystery fiction realistic fiction romance fiction science fiction Folk tales Legends Memoirs Music compositions Myths Parodies Personal narratives Petroglyphs Photographs Pictographs Reference materials Satires Dramas Plays Scripts Poems Articles Charts Critical analyses Critiques Emails Essays Forms Graphs Lab reports Maps Posts Recipes Research proposals Reviews Symbols Textbooks Advertisements Articles Artwork Autobiographies Biographies Cartoons Critical analyses Critiques Editorials Emails Essays Graphic novels Journal entries Letters Memoirs Memos Posters Report abstracts Reviews Speeches Texts White papers

Text SetsO Multiple texts related in some wayO Provides ACCESS and CHOICE O Students reading different things so

each can contribute in some way

Engl

ish

Clas

sroo

m3-5 different novels—students reading in groupsw/ song lyrics, youtube videos, etc

Scie

nce

Clas

sroo

m1) Textbook chapter2) Articles3) Photo or chart4) Picture book

His

tory

Cl

assr

oom

Multiple primary documents: *diary entries, *photos, *cartoons, *newspaper articles*textbook chapter

Close Reading

Classroom DiscourseQuestioning is prominent in present-day classrooms, but it occurs most often in theinitiate–respond–evaluate (IRE) discourse form. The IRE model describes classroompractice in which teachers Initiate classroom talk by asking questions, students Respond to the questions, and then the teacher Evaluates students’ responses (Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979). Following is an example of the IRE form:

Initiate (teacher): What is a compass rose?Respond (student): It’s the part of a map that shows directions.Evaluate (teacher): Yes, that’s correct.

IRE discourse often focuses on “known answer” questions, in which the students’task is, in part, to figure out what the teacher wants to know. In reading lessons, IREquestions often focus on literal and simple inferential comprehension of text. It is notthat such comprehension is not important—it is critical. It is that failure to move be-yond such understanding of student understanding with our questions is a missed op-portunity to both promote and evaluate students’ more complex thinking.

Afflerbach, 2007, p. 52

Academic Vocabulary“Perhaps the biggest misconception is that teaching vocabulary means teaching formal dictionary definitions,” (Marzano, 2002)

Classifying Vocabulary Words

“When choosing vocabulary words to be tested, it is important to distinguish among the following tiers:”Tier 1

Basic, everyday words

head, hand, book, girl, dog

Tier 2

Used in academic writing and used in learning across many topics/levels.

Exactly, construct, modify, verify, compensate

Tier 3

Low-frequency and discipline-specific; included in specific, focused topics

Legislative, circumference, allegory, stamen

“These words will seldom be the focus of vocabulary questions on common core assessments.”

Smarter Balanced

Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Robert J. Marzano, Ph.D, recommends a Six-Step Process in Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement, (2004)

1. The teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the new term.2. Students restate the explanation of the new term in their own words.3. Students create a nonlinguistic representation of the term.4. Students periodically engage in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the vocabulary term.5. Periodically, students are asked to discuss terms with one another.6. Periodically, students are involved in games that allow them to play with the terms.