Appropriate Classroom Instruction and the Common Core

1. Appropriate Classroom Instruction and the Common Core Lisa Arneson, Director School Improvement Division larneson@cesa3.k12.wi.us

2. Exclusionary Factors for SLD Placement • Environmental or Economic Disadvantage • Are conditions outside of school preventing success? • Evidence might include: Transience, homelessness, trauma, frequent absences, access to learning activities, family change, low expectations • Limited English Proficiency • Is a language barrier preventing success? • Evidence might include: limited knowledge of English • Lack of Appropriate Instruction • Is ineffective classroom instruction preventing success? • Evidence might include the lack of: strong universal core curriculum, differentiation, highly qualified teacher, majority of students succeeding, attendance • Other Impairments • Are other impairments preventing success? • Evidence might be: hearing/visual impairments, other health impairments, and emotional behavior disability

3. “If there is evidence that any one of the exclusionary factors is the primary reason for a student’s inadequate achievement or insufficient progress, the IEP team should not find the student to have the impairment of SLD.” (DPI, p. 25)

6. ELA Focus • Text Complexity • Use of Text Sets • Close Reading • Levels of Comprehension • Academic Vocabulary

8. A New Definition • Texts can be spoken, written, or visual – listened to, read, or viewed. Although people most commonly think of written text as texts, a text is any communication – spoken, written, or visual – involving language. In an increasingly visual and online world, students need to be able to interpret and create texts that combine words, images, and sound in order to make meaning of texts that no longer read in one clear linear direction. (DPI Form DL-E)

9. What are your kids reading? AllegoriesArtwork AutobiographiesCartoonsGraphic novels Fables Flash fiction short storiesnovelsadventure fiction fantasy fictionhistorical fiction horror fictionmystery fiction realistic fictionromance fiction science fiction Folk tales LegendsMemoirsMusic compositions Myths ParodiesPersonal narratives PetroglyphsPhotographsPictographsReference materials SatiresDramas PlaysScripts Poems Articles Charts Critical analyses CritiquesEmails Essays FormsGraphsLab reports Maps Posts Recipes Research proposals Reviews SymbolsTextbooksAdvertisementsArticles Artwork Autobiographies Biographies Cartoons Critical analyses Critiques Editorials Emails EssaysGraphic novels Journal entries Letters Memoirs Memos PostersReport abstracts ReviewsSpeechesTextsWhite papers

12. Text Sets • Multiple texts related in some way • Provides ACCESS and CHOICE • Students reading different things so each can contribute in some way

13. Close Reading

16. Classroom Discourse Questioning is prominent in present-day classrooms, but it occurs most often in the initiate–respond–evaluate (IRE) discourse form. The IRE model describes classroom practice in which teachers Initiate classroom talk by asking questions, students Respond to the questions, and then the teacher Evaluates students’ responses (Cazden, 1986; Mehan, 1979). Following is an example of the IRE form: Initiate (teacher): What is a compass rose? Respond (student): It’s the part of a map that shows directions. Evaluate (teacher): Yes, that’s correct. IRE discourse often focuses on “known answer” questions, in which the students’ task is, in part, to figure out what the teacher wants to know. In reading lessons, IRE questions often focus on literal and simple inferential comprehension of text. It is not that such comprehension is not important—it is critical. It is that failure to move be- yond such understanding of student understanding with our questions is a missed op- portunity to both promote and evaluate students’ more complex thinking. Afflerbach, 2007, p. 52

18. Academic Vocabulary “Perhaps the biggest misconception is that teaching vocabulary means teaching formal dictionary definitions,” (Marzano, 2002)

19. Classifying Vocabulary Words “When choosing vocabulary words to be tested, it is important to distinguish among the following tiers:” “These words will seldom be the focus of vocabulary questions on common core assessments.”

20. Smarter Balanced

21. Effective Vocabulary Instruction Robert J. Marzano, Ph.D, recommends a Six-Step Process in Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement, (2004) 1. The teacher provides a description, explanation, or example of the new term. 2. Students restate the explanation of the new term in their own words. 3. Students create a nonlinguistic representation of the term. 4. Students periodically engage in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the vocabulary term. 5. Periodically, students are asked to discuss terms with one another. 6. Periodically, students are involved in games that allow them to play with the terms.