CT Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts

1. CT Standards (CCSS) forEnglish Language Arts Moving Beyond Awareness

2. Common Core State Standards • Define the knowledge and skills students need for college and career • Developed voluntarily and cooperatively by states; more than 40 states have adopted • Provide clear, consistent standards in English language arts/Literacy and mathematics Source: www.corestandards.org

4. Implementing Connecticut Standards (CCSS) • Curriculum Framework & Materials • Communication • Professional Development • Assessment

5. Phase III2012-2015 2012 -2013 • Continue to implement a CCSS-based curriculum at the grade or course level • Professional development for teachers and administrators continues 2013 -2014 • K-12 CCSS-based district curriculum fully implemented • Professional development for teachers and administrators continues 2014-2015 • CCSS- based assessments administered in grades 3-8 and 11

6. Implementing ELA CCSS Your table has been set…

7. Planning for Implementation

8. Several Key Shifts • Text Complexity • Make sure students are exposed to grade level text complexity regardless of their reading ability. • Range of Text Types • Make sure that students are exposed to a wide range of text types including informational text (HS – 70%/30%).

9. Why Text Complexity Matters Measuring Text complexity

10. Why Text Complexity Matters • Research indicates demands placed on readers have either held steady or increased. • The difficulty of college textbooks has not decreased. • Students in college are expected to read complex texts with substantially greater independence.

11. CCSS Three-Part Model for Measuring Text Complexity

12. CCSS Three-Part Model for Measuring Text Complexity • Qualitative dimensions of text complexity • Levels of meaning or purpose; structure; language conventionality and clarity; and knowledge demands • Quantitative dimensions of text complexity • Word length or frequency, sentence length, and text cohesion • Reader and task considerations • Variables specific to particular readers and to particular tasks

13. Text Complexity

14. Text Complexity • Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades K–2 • Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades 3–12 These criteria are intended to help curriculum developers and publishers determine what to include and what to exclude in instructional materials.

15. Turn and Talk • It is important to make informed decisions about whether a particular text is an appropriate challenge for particular students. • How will these decisions be made? • Who will be making these decisions? • Will the decisions that are made be revisited? How often?

16. Several Key Shifts • Close analysis of texts • The focus of the revised standards is to read shorter texts but with much closer attention. • Evidence to back up claims and conclusions • Rereading and looking for evidence to support conclusions drawn from the text is critical to becoming an effective reader.

17. Several Key Shifts • RH. 11-12.8: Evaluate an author’s premises, claims and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information. • Sample performance task: • Evaluate the premises of James M. McPherson’s argument regarding why Northern soldiers fought in the Civil War by corroborating the evidenceprovided from the letters and diaries of these soldiers with other primary and secondary sources andchallengingMcPherson’s claims where appropriate. Handout #1

18. Turn and Talk • What is the objective of the performance task? • How does this performance task connect history and English language arts? • Discuss why this performance task in considered a shift. • Is this type of performance task similar to what is currently used? Handout #1

19. Several Key Shifts • Writing prompts should be tied to texts. • In other words, the student must have read and analyzed a text to respond to the prompt.

20. Several Key Shifts • A typical writing prompt might ask… • After reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” discuss the idea of freedom and what it means to you (the student).

21. Several Key Shifts • A “writing to sources” assignment would be: • What does freedom mean to the author? How does the author define freedom? • In this assignment, students cannot answer the question without having read and analyzed the text and used evidence from it to support his/her conclusion.

22. Several Key Shifts • Research (short projects) • Short research projects should be included in every unit of study and occur throughout the year. • Marshaling arguments • The Standards put particular emphasis on students’ ability to write sound arguments on substantive topics and issues. • Students should be taking stances and using evidence from sources to support their positions (verbally and in writing).

23. Marshaling arguments “A logical argument…convinces the audience because of the perceived merit and reasonableness of the claims and proofs offered rather than either the emotions the writing evokes in the audience or the character or credentials of the writer.The Standards place special emphasis on writing logical argumentsas a particularly important form of college- and career-ready writing.” CCSS, Appendix A

24. Several Key Shifts • Academic vocabulary • Words that add to students’ language ability (e.g., maintain, fortunate, required, tend, clever, insisted, detest) • Words that are learned when needed in a content area (e.g., isotope, peninsula, photosynthesis, cubism, isosceles triangle)

25. Several Key Shifts • Evidence, evidence, evidence • Students must be able to support their conclusions with specific source-dependent evidence.

26. Teaching and Learning Content Knowledge and Cognitive Strategies

27. The Standards Do Not Define: • How teachers should teach • All that can or should be taught • The nature of advanced work beyond the core

28. The Standards Do Not Define: • The full range of support for English language learners and students with special needs • All knowledge and skills needed to be college and career ready • The interventions needed for students well below grade level

29. Ten Guiding Principles Make close reading of texts central to lesson Structure majority of instruction so all students read grade-level complex texts Emphasize informational texts from early grades on Provide scaffolding that does not preempt or replace text Ask text-dependent questions

30. Ten Guiding Principles Provide extensive research and writing opportunities (claims and evidence) Offer regular opportunities for students to share ideas, evidence and research Offer systematic instruction in vocabulary Provide explicit instruction in grammar and conventions Cultivate students’ independence

31. Focused Professional Learning • Professional Learning Communities • Teachers and Administrators, PK-12 • Ongoing and targeted professional development • Teachers and Administrators, PK-12 • Communication and purpose • Teachers and Administrators, PK-12; Parents; Other Stakeholders

32. Contact us: • Amy Radikas • amy.radikas@ct.gov • Joanne White • joanne.white@ct.gov