Summary of Common Core Reading Directives from

Summary of Common Core Reading Directives from Calkins, Lucy, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman. Pathways to theCommon Core: Accelerating Achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2012. Print.

Viewing Common Core (CC): Two Choices As grumps, seeing crud: As treasure hunters, seeing gold: Poverty, not standards, is true problem. Budgets = slashed; class sizes growing. Why start with college skills and work backwards? Some skills don’t fit both kinds of texts (literary & informational) Where are these coming from and what’s the agenda? This will be expensive, and only about 15% of our kids perform at this level right now. Will they really work for college/career success? Wake-up call: “children who leave school today without strong literacy skills will not find a job” (9). Need “thinking” curriculum. Promote higher-level comprehension and reading increasingly complex texts. Equal weight on writing and reading “Critical citizenship” Clear, clean design showing growth in a “trajectory of skill development” (11). Student goal: independence in proficient reading and writing Cross-curricular literacy: This is every teacher’s work. Respects teachers: indicates what students must be able to do, not HOW teachers get them there.

What do we actually have to do? • Stuff to read: Provide “just-right” texts of increasing difficulty, interesting, when possible • “Just-Right” = read with 95% accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. • Time to read: 45 minutes a day (min.) in school + more time at home. • When/Where to read: not just LA but across the curriculum and not just in textbooks.

The CC Reading Standards DO Value DON’T Value “close attentive reading” “Reasoning and use of evidence” “Assess the veracity” “Cite specific evidence” “Evaluate other points of view critically” (25) Connecting the text to one’s own life and experience Exploring personal response to the text Accessing prior knowledge about a subject

CC: Students bring same skills to literary and informational texts • Small variations exist: nonfiction focuses more on main idea and authors’ purpose; fiction focuses on characterization, theme, and language. • Nonfiction moves to a stronger position (following NAEP’s recommendation): • 45% literary texts and 55% informational texts at 8th grade • 30% literary texts and 70% information texts at 12th grade.

Implications for high school reading Does NOT mean that CC requires dramatically MORE informational reading in LA classroom. Literacy is a shared responsibility among other classrooms AND Language Arts. Straight from the CCSS: “because ELA classrooms must focus on literature (Stories, drama, and poetry) as well as literary nonfiction, a great deal of information reading in grades 6-12 must take place in other classes” ( qtd. in Calkins 28).

Leaving Decoding and Low-Level Skills of NCLB Behind Many teachers haven’t received training on supporting students’ high-level reading skills, such as “analyzing texts for craft and structure” (29). Students will need a selection of strategies to sharpen their reading skills, broken down into bite-sized pieces. Lots of practice, lots of feedback, and lots of different texts as well as structures like reading partners and clubs to make work visible.

Reading Standard Metaphor One side of the ladder = Standard # 1: “Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it” (qtd. 33). Other side = Standard # 10: “read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently” (qtd. 33).

More About Standards 1 (literal comprehension) & 10 (text complexity) Students must be able to read within a text accurately, comprehending literally and using details to make inferences. They must “cite textual evidence as they explain what a text teaches” (41). Teachers are supposed to move students up the ladder of text complexity, though how to measure and keep track of this for high school students is challenging. Listening for fluency as students read aloud can help identify just-right texts.

PARCC = one of two groups designing new assessments aligned to CC for 2014 Their guidelines about increasing text complexity suggest Teachers choose a few complex whole-class texts to read while teachers ask text-based questions answered in conversational and written exercises for use in 2-3 weeks of close study. Then the class reads several shorter texts closely over 4-5 weeks. This is just one model of how to approach reaching the standards.

Research implications for designing a plan to work for our students Keep running records or use methods to determine what level of texts readers can handle with 95% accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Classroom factors strongly related to reading success: (1) access to high-interest texts and (2) choice. And of course, most of all: TIME to read! “The engine that motors readers’ development is the time spent in engaged reading and in talking and writing about that reading” (50).

CC Lit. Standards 2-9: rungs of the ladders Reading for Integration of Knowledge & Ideas 7, 8, 9 4, 5, 6 Reading for Key Ideas & Details Reading for Craft & Structure 2 & 3

Reading for Key Ideas & Details “2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas 3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text” (qtd. 54). 2 & 3 build off the literal comprehension of 1 by inviting discussion of central ideas, events, and character interactions. Move students from “what’s happening?” to “what is the story starting to be about?”

Reading for Structure & Craft “4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone. 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text relate to each other and the whole. 6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text” (qtd. 58).

Reading for Craft and Structure (cont.) Standards 4-6 basically ask readers to look at the effects of authors’ decisions about “language, structure, point of view, voice, style on the meaning of texts” (59). An example would be the mockingjay symbol in The Hunger Games—how does it work within the novel and series. Pay attention to language to notice which word choices demand our attention. This doesn’t take extra work but time to pause and notice these aspects of texts.

Reading for Integration of Knowledge & Ideas “7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. 8.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 (not applicable to literature). 9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take “ (qtd. 62).

Reading for Integration of Knowledge & Ideas (cont.) In nonfiction, standards 7-9 mean reading more than one text on a topic, especially to compare authors’ reasoning. In literature, books and their movies can be experienced and analytically compared, or texts with related themes and subjects can be explored. It’s about “thinking between texts” and examination of the development of their themes. Invite and promote comparison of stories and nonfiction works related to fiction being read.

Implementing Standards Needs assessment: Take stock. How and what are they reading? Ask students to jot some thinking while reading thoughts on sticky notes. Collect to see where they are. Read with them and find spots where the thinking described in the standards could take place. Use text-based questions to elicit these processes. Be sure students can think through texts at a high level not just in whole-class work but in small group and independent settings as well.

Implementing Standards (cont.) Reading time is drastically cut at middle and high schools, and instruction and feedback also lose ground here. In communities where school may be the only setting where kids’ literacy skills move forward, carving time out of the schedule to read many pages daily is crucial. “Students who read a lot score better on every imaginable test—the NAEP, the SAT, the ACT” (71).

Implementing Standards (cont.) Students need CHOICE, interesting options that are not just teacher-chosen, whole-class texts. Give students the power to make meaning from texts rather than coaching them towards your own conclusions. Teachers need training to feel comfortable in facilitating reading. Other than opportunity and access, good teachers make the most difference to student success.

Informational Reading Stressed in CC Reading to learn, follow an author’s argument, and analyze evidence, the kind of nonfiction texts that might fit college students “majoring in journalism, economics, or political science” (75). Specific standards for reading in science, social studies, and technical subjects also exist in addition to these general ones for Language Arts.

Informational Texts, standards 1-3 1. Reading closely and making logical inferences means first “being able to say back what the text has taught you so far” (77). 2. Reading to determine central ideas and themes is similar to what students are to do with literature, asking, “What is this starting to be about?” It also involves gathering “up some of the information in the text as evidence for those ideas” (79) 3. Reading to analyze how individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text involves noticing how events play out, relationships, and cause/effect.

Reading for Craft & Structure, 4-6 4. Reading to interpret the language used in the text means “technical, connotative and figurative meanings of words, and how the specific language shapes meaning” (82). 5. Reading to analyze the structure of a text is typically best after it is finished so that the big picture of the divisions of it “as if you were in a plane, flying above it” (84). 6.Reading to assess the author’s point of view and how it shapes the text relates strongly to the tone that the author’s language choices convey.

Reading to Integrate Knowledge and Ideas and Think Across Informational Texts, 7-9 These all rely on reading of additional related texts. 7. “Integrate and evaluate content in different media” (86). Readers see more through comparison of texts. 8. Asks that we “analyze the trustworthiness of the supports that the author provides for his or her claims” (87). Can the argument be traced How sound and valid is the logic? 9. Specifically requires the comparison of two texts to assess how they “develop similar claims” (88).

Challenges for Implementation of Informational Text Standards Too little nonfiction is being read: Investigate how many pages of expository text does the average student read in a week. Much of the nonfiction in schools isn’t right for students, especially textbooks, often too hard or just badly written: “They summarize, they organize, but they do not engage students in complex reasoning” (90). Taking notes while reading kills the momentum, and often students can’t tell what is significant enough to write down. No choice in reading often means no engagement.

Overcoming Challenges Get more and more interesting nonfiction texts to students, including digital sources and journals. Develop more reading in content-area classes. Which units can best be infused with reading? Obtain many texts for these reading-friendly topics. Seek to match texts to individual student readers, both their interests and their reading levels. Increase the level of text difficulty slowly and incrementally.

Developing a Collection of Appropriate Texts Periodicals and short texts deserve special attention. Teachers & librarians should put together text sets, “small collections of texts representing different perspectives on a topic” (97). Instead of reading to amass information, student should move toward reading “ to develop concepts, discover ideas, and to follow (and analyze) arguments” (98). NOT just the facts. “Transition from seeing reading informational texts as a way to download facts toward seeing this as a way to wrestle with ideas and, ultimately, to form opinions” (100).

Summary of Common Core Reading Directives from