Common Core State Standards Shifts: Changes in Classroom Practices

Rebekah Caplan

Literacy Field Services Specialist

Sheraton Waikiki, Oahu

5 March, 2012

Welcome and Introductions

• Take a minute to introduce yourselves at your tables:

Name

Role (teacher, coach, administrator…)

School

Complex

Grade Level

2

Group Survey: Show of Hands

How would you rate your background knowledge and experience with the Common Core State Standards?

3 = Quite knowledgeable/experienced.

If a teacher (or a coach supporting teachers) I have begun implementing or piloting the standards, and I am quite familiar with the ELA documents and expectations.

If an administrator, I have attended several seminars/trainings, and have begun hosting meetings/provided PD at my site/complex.

2 = Somewhat knowledgeable. This is an exploratory year, and I plan going full bore this summer and next year.

1= Just beginning to learn about the CCSS. I came to this symposium hoping to add to my growing knowledge.

Goals and Agenda

• Deeper understanding of principles that guided development of the CCSS

• Deeper understanding of fundamental “shifts” in the CCSS for ELA and how we address expectations

• Deeper understanding of the place of “argument” in the standards

• Information about how Pearson’s Schoolwide Improvement Model (SIM) supports implementation of the CCSS

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Common Core State Standards FOR

English Language Arts

&

Literacy in History/Social Studies,

Science, and Technical Subjects

Standards Organization

A comprehensive K–5 section with four strands- Reading strand (includes Foundational Skills)

- Writing strand

- Speaking and Listening strand

- Language strand

Standards Organization

A comprehensive K–5 section with four strands- Reading strand (includes Foundational Skills)

- Writing strand

- Speaking and Listening strand

- Language strand

Two content area-specific sections for grades 6-12 with four strands • ELA

- Reading strand

- Writing strand

- Speaking and Listening strand

- Language strand

• History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

- Reading strand

- Writing strand

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Three Appendices

• Appendix A: Supplementary material on reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language, as well as a glossary of key terms.

• Appendix B: Exemplar texts and sample performance tasks.

• Appendix C: Annotated samples of student work demonstrating at least an adequate performance in student writing at various grade levels.

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Big Questions

• How can a K-12 set of standards be so lean?

• What guided the development of these standards?

Academic Language for All Students11

Common Core State Standards

“Five Principles of Development”

David Coleman, ELA Team Coordinator for the CCSS

From The Common Core Implementation Video Series

Hunt Institute and the Council of Chief State School Officers

Common Core State Standards: Five Principles of Development(1) College and career readiness

Students must be truly college and career ready upon graduation from high school. Standards should build a staircase to readiness.

(2) Best state standards

Standards should be built not by collecting what are most common or popular standards between states but by identifying states with the most proven academic standards and performances.

(3) Solid evidence

Standards should be based on evidence for what matters most for college and career readiness—not just what we say or hope for.

(4) Focus

Standards must focus on what matters most so teachers have time to teach and students have time to practice. If standards become too long, they are a “wish list,” not standards.

(5) Local flexibility, teacher judgment

Standards should not dictate how to teach; they should not dictate a curriculum. They are a core set of expectations for college and career readiness.

Common Core State Standards: Five Principles of Development

“The standards are not everything you could teach, but describe a

vibrant

powerful

core

that, if mastered,

opens up wide areas of knowledge in mathematics, science, literacy, history,

social studies.”

College and Career Readiness

What is that core?

What are fundamental “shifts” from how we have addressed literacy in the past?

Standards Organization

A comprehensive K–5 section with four strands- Reading strand (includes Foundational Skills)

- Writing strand

- Speaking and Listening strand

- Language strand

Two content area-specific sections for grades 6-12 with four strands • ELA

- Reading strand

- Writing strand

- Speaking and Listening strand

- Language strand

• History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

- Reading strand

- Writing strand

What Matters Most

A few essential things done

Differently

Susan Pimentel, ELA Team Coordinator for CCSS

Fundamental “Shifts” for Realizing College and Career Readiness

• Shared responsibility for literacy development.

Teachers address literacy across content areas and grades. (A staircase to readiness, across the curriculum).

• Text complexity and range.

Teachers help students read, write about, and discuss texts of sufficient complexity and range—in all content areas.

Increasing Text Complexity

1962

8XGreater

Independent reading assigned by college professors is ______ times greater than the quantity of reading assigned to high school

seniors.

High School and College U.S. History Textbooks

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Lily’s beautiful and juicy language…

impulse borne of kindness

radical recalibration

instructional interludes

nothing but the most beautiful

texts will do

Text Complexity

Fundamental “Shifts” for Realizing College and Career Readiness

• Shared responsibility for literacy development. Teachers address literacy across content areas.

• Text complexity and range. Teachers help students read, write about, and discuss texts of sufficient complexity and range—in all content areas.

• New grounding in informational texts.

• 50% of all reading in the elementary grades

• 75% of all reading in the secondary grades

• Close reading of texts. Reading that requires analysis and inference based on evidence in the text; discussions are “text-dependent.”

Grade Literary Informational

4 50% 50%

8 45% 55%

12 30% 70%

(National Assessment Governing Board 2009, 11)

NAEP Reading FrameworkRange of Reading: Increased Attention to Reading Informational Texts

Fundamental “Shifts” for Realizing College and Career Readiness • Emphasis on argument.

Premium put on written and spoken arguments; focus on logical reasoning.

• Short, focused research projects…

• Writing to Sources.

Writing in response to reading texts

• Focus on academic language.

Textual, oral, written

Summing Up the “Shifts” in the Common Core State Standards

A Perspective

from David Coleman, ELA Team Coordinator

“What the standards demand is for students to

read like a detective and to write like an

investigative reporter.”

Fundamental “Shifts” for Realizing College and Career Readiness

Evidence!

Evidence!

Evidence!

Fundamental “Shifts” for Realizing College and Career Readiness • Shared responsibility for literacy development.

• Text complexity and range

• New grounding in informational texts

• Close reading of texts

• Emphasis on argument

• Short, focused research projects

• Writing to Sources

• Focus on academic language

• Evidence…Evidence…Evidence!

Fundamental “Shifts” for Realizing College and Career Readiness

Focusing on what matters most.

Time for teachers to teach.

Time for students to practice.

K-12

Across the disciplines.

Fundamental “Shifts” for Realizing College and Career Readiness • Shared responsibility for literacy development.

• Text complexity and range

• New grounding in informational texts

• Close reading of texts

• Emphasis on argument

• Short, focused research projects

• “Writing to Sources”

• Focus on academic language

• Evidence…Evidence…Evidence!

College and Career Readiness

(Common Core State Standards Initiative 2010b, 24)

The Role of Argument in the Standards

Turn and Talk

What is argument?

Academic Language for All Students34

What is Argument?

What might students say?

What might students say?

• Synonyms for the verb, to argue:

fight, quarrel, disagree, bicker, wrangle, squabble, dispute, feud

Table Task

Work with your table group to arrange the following words in an array from left to right with the least serious way to argue on the left to the most serious on the right:

Synonyms for the verb, to argue:

quarrel, disagree, fight, dispute, feud

Least serious Most serious

What is Argument?

A different kind of definition…

An Academic Definition

Academic Definition

An argument is a reasoned, logical way of demonstrating that a writer’s position, belief, or conclusion is valid.

• Synonyms for the academic definition:

Argue: contend, assert, maintain, insist, hold, claim, reason, allege

Persuasion and Argument

What’s the difference between persuasion and argument?

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Difference between persuasion and argument

In persuasion, the goal is to convince—to get others to believe as you believe. You can use emotional appeals and subjective or biased information to achieve your goal of persuasion.

For an argument your goal is to establish that your claim is reasonable or logical. Your claim uses data, reliable authorities, evidence, textual support, primary and secondary sources.

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Guiding Question

Why is it that the reading and writing of “argument” have become so important for college and career readiness?

Why is Argument so Essential?

Excerpt from the CCSS for ELA Appendix A:

The unique importance of argument in college and careers is asserted eloquently by Joseph M. Williams and Lawrence McEnerney of the University of Chicago Writing Program. As part of their attempt to explain to new college students the major differences between good high school and college writing, Williams and McEnerney define argument not as “wrangling” but as “a serious and focused conversation among people who are intensely interested in getting to the bottom of things cooperatively.”:

Why is Argument so Essential?

Those values are also an integral part of your education in college. Four four years, you are asked to read, do research, gather data, analyze it, think about it, and then communicate it to readers in a form…which enables them to assess it and use it. You are asked to do this not because we expect you all to become professional scholars, but because in just about any profession you pursue, you will do research, think about what you find, make decisions about complex matters, and then explain those decisions—usually in writing—to others who have a stake in your decisions being sound ones. In an Age of Information, what most professionals do is research, think, and make arguments. (And part of the value of doing your own thinking and writing is that it makes you much better at evaluating the thinking and writing of others.) (ch1)

Common Core State Standards for ELA, Appendix A

CCR Anchor Standards

Reading Standard Eight:

Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

Writing Standard One:

Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

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Partner Task

• With a partner, decide on the learning progression for building students’ capacity to read and evaluate arguments, K-12.

• Write the grade level next to the standards for:

Kindergarten

Grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Grades 9-10 and 11-12

Academic Language for All Students46

Answer Key

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Answer Key

48

Answer Key

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The Vision of a College and Career Ready Student

They value evidence.

Students cite specific evidence when offering oral or written interpretation of a text. They use relevant evidence when supporting their own points in writing and speaking, making their reasoning clear to the reader or listener, and they constructively evaluate others’ use of evidence.

(Common Core State Standards Initiative 2010c)

Scaffolding LanguageK-2

I liked the book ____________ because ____________.

My favorite parts of the book ___________ are ___________ and ___________ because ___________.

I also like ____________ because ____________.

Sentence frames

Scaffolding LanguageGrades 5-8

In my opinion, ______________; consequently, ______________.

On the other hand, I also believe that ______________; thus, ______________.

I agree that _____________ because _____________.

While some expert say that ______________, an alternate explanation is ______________.

• Paraphrase: So you are saying that _____.

• Summarize: In other words, you think _____.

• Clarify: Are you saying that _____.

• Acknowledge: This reminds me of the time when I _____.

• Elaborate: Can you say more about _____?

• Argue: My idea is slightly different than _____.

• Persuade: I see that differently because on page _____.

• Defend: While I understand what you are saying, I think _____, because _____.

• Predict: Based on _____ I infer that _____.

• Opinion: It seems to me that …

Academic Language for All Students54

The Language of Academic Conversations

Performance Tasks and Assessments

WRITING TO SOURCES

(Common Core State Standards Initiative 2010c)

Achievement of the Common Core State Standards

How does Pearson provide support for implementation of the Common Core

State Standards?

Pearson SchoolwideImprovementModel (SIM)

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Standards-Aligned Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment

Focus.

Time for teachers to teach.

Time for students to practice.

Schoolwide.

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Schoolwide Instructional Focus (SIF)

A. Instructional Practices that support College and Career Readiness

1. Teach academic language in the context of content instruction

2. Teach the process and expression of logical reasoning and justification

3. Promote student collaboration including dialogue and discussion

4. Build students’ capacity for independent learning

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Schoolwide Instructional Focus (SIF)

B. CCR Learner Competencies for Becoming a Self-Directed, Independent Learner

- Planning & organizing

- Prioritizing

- Self-assessing and revising

- Collaborating

- Determining when and how to seek help

- Reflecting on one’s own work practices and setting goals

Reflect the nature of 21st century work expectations

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Jan Chappuis quotation:

What do you think this means you know?

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Schoolwide Instructional Focus (SIF)

C. Content Area Concentrations

• ELA

• Mathematics

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How can we help all students learn Academic Language and CCR Learner Competencies?

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