7/25/2019 Barbara McClanahan Oklahoma Standards Review, English

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Barbara McClanahan

Associate ProfessorEducational Instruction and LeadershipSoutheastern Oklahoma State University

I have finished a cursory review of the PK-4 draft standards, and I don't present my thouhts as based on an

in-depth review! I find thins I li"e and thins I don't li"e!

In eneral, I thin" the standards for these rades represent an appropriate proression of conitive s"ills basedon typical child development! I also conferred with a colleaue of mine at #outheastern who is more of an earlychildhood e$pert than I, and she arees!

My biest concern at the PK level, and even K, is a lac" of a standard for play! Much recent researchsuests stronly that not only is play a critical need for these youn students, but pushin the conitive s"illsre%uired for early readin may later be found to be detrimental! I thin" more important than learnin letternames or sounds, there should be a standard callin for a substantial portion of the school day to be devoted toboth structured and unstructured play! &espite what many people believe, play is a learnin stratey andshould absolutely have a standard at this level! In addition, all of the standards reardin readin s"ills, evencomprehension of te$ts read aloud, should be applied very fle$ibly to allow for a wide rane of developmentallevels in any iven PK- classroom!

(s we move into K, the content reardin phonics and phonemic awareness builds, but these standards, alonwith vocabulary, aain may not be reachable for a lare percentae of students simply because ofdevelopmental issues! (ain, the standards must be applied fle$ibly!

#tandard ) for K says* +#tudents will demonstrate interest in boo"s!!!+ hat seems to me to be an impossiblestandard because interest must be built on students' affect over which the teacher has minimal control! oucannot command students to be interested in boo"s! .econi/in this, I thin" it is important for the standard toread +#tudents will demonstrate rowin interest in boo"s!!!+ hat is somethin a teacher could monitor throuhobservation and, with reflection, ad0ust the teachin approach to move the child alon on a continuum ofinterest!

In both PK and K, the word +1ith uidance and support+ appear fre%uently, but beinnin in first rade, theydisappear almost completely! 2specially for #tandard 3, anuae, I believe they need to be used to support

sentence writin! (nd aain I thin" the lanuae should read somethin li"e +he student will show rowth inthe ability to compose!!!+ (s lon as we are determined to maintain and ae5rad system, many students willcontinue to need +uidance and support+ into second rade!

6luency seems inade%uately addressed across the board in the standards! In 7rade , for e$ample, I thin"there should be somethin here to the effect that reularly spelled and previously decoded words will beincreasinly reconi/ed automatically in order to build fluency! his is the essence of mature readin but is notmentioned anywhere!

In the 7rade 1ritin standard there is a phrase that ma"es no sense to me* +include past tense or irreularlypast tense verbs+!

In 8rd 7rade, several standards re%uire a level of abstraction that may not be obtainable by a sinificantpercentae of third raders! 6or e$ample, while accordin to the standards, third raders need uidance and

support to determine the theme of a story, they are e$pected to neotiate fiurative lanuae on their own!9mmm!!!!

Beinnin in the first rade standards, the readin comprehension strateies are essentially the same acrossthe rade levels up throuh 4th! :ne must assume that the differences lie in the level of depth to which thestudent is re%uired to implement them and the level of te$t, but that is not spelled out! In the standards onCritical .eadin and 1ritin, we see a similar proression of re%uirements up throuh the rade levels; I woulde$pect that by 4th rade one of the re%uirements would be to identify how characters chane over the courseof the plot, but I did not see it! It could reasonably appear as early as nd or 8rd!

http://www.se.edu/dept/eil/faculty/dr-barbara-mcclanahan/http://www.se.edu/dept/eil/faculty/dr-barbara-mcclanahan/

7/25/2019 Barbara McClanahan Oklahoma Standards Review, English

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:ne other concern that my colleaue had was that there should be a lossary; she fears that not all teacherswould understand all the terms bein used! (nother concern I have is that some of the terms have ambiuousmeanins! 6or e$ample, what does rade-specific or rade-appropriate actually mean