Dive into Text Complexity

1. Dive into Text Complexity Stanislaus County Office of Education Dive into Common Core Literacy - Day 2

2. 1 2 Dual Roles As a Learner As a Leader

3. 1 Dual Roles • What do I understand and what is still unclear? • What aspect of the presentation is supporting my learning? • What else would support my learning? As a Learner

4. 2 Dual Roles • What are the implications for our local context? • What challenges will we face as we move forward? • How will we use / modify these tools to support the learning for our staff? As a Leader

5. Review of Yesterday’s Learning • Brainstorm a list of ten things you remember from yesterday. Prioritize your list in order of most to least meaningful. • Compare your list with others at your table. Collapse your lists into a single, prioritized list • Select a reporter for your table • Each table will share their most meaningful thing, sharing novel ideas only. If your top idea has been shared, move down your list until you find a novel idea.

6. Text Complexity Rating Tools From Supplemental Information for Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy: New Research on Text Complexity

7. Shifts in Content and Instruction • Building knowledge through content‐rich nonfiction • Reading, writing and speaking grounded in evidencefrom text, both literary and informational • Regular practice with complex text and its academic language

8. Close Reading “A close reading [results from] a careful and purposeful rereading of a text. It’s an encounter with the text where students really focus on what the author had to say, what the author’s purpose was, what the words mean, and what the structure of the text tells us.” --Dr. Doug Fisher

9. Shanahan on Close Reading Close reading requires a substantial emphasis on readers figuring out a high quality text. This "figuring out" is accomplished primarily by reading and discussing the text. Essentials of close reading include: • intense emphasis on text, • figuring out the text by thinking about the words and ideas in the text, • minimization of external explanations, • multiple and dynamic rereading, • multiple purposes that focus on what a text says, how it says it, and what it means or what its value is

10. Close Reading Close reading can not be reserved for students who are already strong readers; it should be a vehicle through which all students grapple with advanced concepts and participate in engaging discussions regardless of their independent reading skills. It builds skill and motivationin the reader. (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983 as cited in Brown & Kappes, 2012)

11. David Coleman: Interview “And I think that careful reading can be the basis for then making wonderful, deeper connections. But you need time for the text to live almost on its own. And it’s funny because I think the movement away from the text is a lot, Kate, just like you’re saying, to engage students, to interest them, to try to make it more interesting, it’s interesting to talk about myself, what do I feel, how I connected to it, how it resembles my life.Often people describe it as the golden hook that gets kids interested in what they’re reading. And so I do think there’s a challenge here, at the heart of teaching, which is how do we develop a fascination with what the text is up to?”

12. “When we talk about text-based questions it’s of course also the inferences you make, what can we infer from what is said and unsaid, how does the argument fit together….how can we create interesting sequences that help get kids interested in this work so we don’t have to go outside the text for excitement.” – David Coleman in the video interview “Common Core in ELA/ Literacy: Shift 4: Text-based Answers” from Engage NY (2012).

13. “If a teacher feels the need to deliver content from the text rather than allow students to discover the content independently and through text-dependent questions and discussion, then either the text is not appropriate for a close reading lesson or the teacher does not believe his/her students are ready for the rigor that close reading of complex text demands.” ~Amy Koehler Catterson and P. David Pearson, The University of California, Berkeley

14. Zone of Proximal Development The distance between what a child can achieve alone, and what the same child can achieve with guidance from another person. According to Vygotsky (1978), ‘..what is the zone of proximal development today will be the actual development level tomorrow.’

15. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) ZPD is the gap between actual competence level (what problem level a student is able to independently solve), and the potential development level (what problem level could she solve with guidance)

16. Text Complexity “The clearest differentiator in reading between students who are college ready and students who are not is the ability to comprehend complextexts.” ~Reading Between The Lines: What the ACT Reveals about College Readiness in Reading, 2005

17. Text Complexity and Rigor “Just as rigor does not reside in the barbell but in the act of lifting it, rigor in reading is not an attribute of a text but rather of a reader’s behavior --engaged, observant, responsive, questioning, analytical.” (Beers & Probst, 2012).

18. Text Complexity and Rigor • Not synonymous • But equally important We can’t get students to College and Career Readiness without providing multiple, ongoing opportunities to grapple with both simultaneously.

19. Connect-Extend-Challenge Consider the following questions, making some notes of your reflection. Be prepared to share at your table. • How are the ideas and information presented connected to what you already knew? • What new ideas did you get that extended or broadened your thinking in new directions? • What challenges or puzzles have come up in your mind from the ideas or information presented?

20. Two Critical Questions for Constructing a Close Reading Experience • Why are students reading this text? • What are we asking them to do with the information that they are getting from it?

21. Close Reading: Not a Linear Process • It is a process that should be constructed to lead to a particular reader and task outcome • There is no one right way to “do” a close reading

22. The Very Hungry Caterpillar A Close Reading Exemplar

23. Progression of Text-dependent Questions Whole Acrosstexts Entire text Segments Paragraph Sentence Word Part

24. General Understandings • Overall view • Sequence of information • Story arc • Main claim and evidence • Gist of passage

25. General Understandings in Kindergarten Retell the story in order using the words beginning, middle, and end.

26. Key Details • Search for nuances in meaning • Determine importance of ideas • Find supporting details that support main ideas • Answers who, what, when, where, why, how much, or how many.

27. Key Details in Kindergarten • How long did it take to go from a hatched egg to a butterfly? • What is one food that gave him a stomachache? What is one food that did not him a stomachache?

28. It took more than 3 weeks. He ate for one week, and then “he stayed inside [his cocoon] for more than two weeks.”

29. Foods that did not give him a stomachache Foods that gave him a stomachache Chocolate cake Ice cream Pickle Swiss cheese Salami Lollipop Cherry pie Sausage Cupcake watermelon • Apples • Pears • Plums • Strawberries • Oranges • Green leaf

30. Vocabulary and Text Structure • Bridges literal and inferential meanings • Denotation • Connotation • Shades of meaning • Figurative language • How organization contributes to meaning

31. Vocabulary in Kindergarten How does the author help us to understand what cocoon means?

32. There is an illustration of the cocoon, and a sentence that reads, “He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself.”

33. Author’s Purpose • Genre: Entertain? Explain? Inform? Persuade? • Point of view: First-person, third-person limited, omniscient, unreliable narrator • Critical Literacy: Whose story is not represented?

34. Author’s Purpose in Kindergarten Who tells the story—the narrator or the caterpillar?

35. A narrator tells the story, because he uses the words he and his. If it was the caterpillar, he would say I and my.

36. Inferences Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole.

37. Inferences in Kindergarten The title of the book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. How do we know he is hungry?

38. The caterpillar ate food every day “but he was still hungry.” On Saturday he ate so much food he got a stomachache! Then he was “a big, fat caterpillar” so he could build a cocoon and turn into a butterfly.

39. Opinions, Arguments, and Intertextual Connections • Author’s opinion and reasoning (K-5) • Claims • Evidence • Counterclaims • Ethos, Pathos, Logos • Rhetoric Links to other texts throughout the grades

40. Opinionsand Intertextual Connections in Kindergarten Narrative Informational How are these two books similar? How are they different? Is this a happy story or a sad one? How do you know?

41. Develop Text-dependent Questions for Your Text • Do the questions require the reader to return to the text? • Do the questions require the reader to use evidence to support his or her ideas or claims? • Do the questions move from text-explicit to text-implicit knowledge? • Are there questions that require the reader to analyze, evaluate, and create?

42. Reflection on Hungry Caterpillar • This was a close reading exemplar. In what ways did these questions lead students to look more carefully at the text? • How would you systematically implement this type of questioning in your classroom so that all students have a close reading experience?

43. Task Analysis for Child Labor Student Task: (RI.8.6) Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints. • In your table groups, determine the skills that a student will need to successfully complete this task. What reading, writing, speaking and and & listening, and language will be required?

44. Two Critical Questions for Constructing a Close Reading Experience • Why are students reading this text? • What are we asking them to do with the information that they are getting from it?

45. Semantic Mapping Speaking & Listening Language Reading Determine an author’s point of view Writing

46. Childhood Lost Another close reading exemplar with photographs

47. A First Hand Account

48. THE MORE YOU LOOK, THE MORE YOU SEE PHOTO ANALYSIS • What I See (observe) • Describe exactly what you see in the photo. • What people and objects are shown? How are they arranged? What is the physical setting? • What other details can you see? • What I Infer (deduction) • Summarize what you already know about the situation and time period shown and people and objects that appear. I see ___ and I think ___ • Interpretation • Write what you conclude from what you see. • What is going on in the picture? Who are the people and what are they doing? What might be the function of the objects? What can we conclude about the time period? • Why do you believe the photo was taken? • Why do you believe this photo was saved? • What I Need to Investigate • What are three questions you have about the photo? • Where can you research the answers to your questions?

50. Building Background vs. Scaffolding • How might engaging students in an activity like this prepare students to engage in a complex text like Child Labor? • Is there a distinction between frontloading (aka building background) and scaffolding? • What distinguishes a “good” frontloading activity from a “bad” one in the era of the common core?