Pathways to the Common Core Chapter Summaries-3

Curriculum Office MemoTo: NTL, Administrators and ParaeducatorsFrom: Joseph F. Stefon, Director of Curriculum & Instruction Cc: Abby I. Dolliver, Mary Donnelly and Board of EducationDate: November 19, 2012Re: Pathways to the Common Core – Chapter Summaries

In 2012 Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth and Christopher Lehman published a book, Pathways to the Common Core – Accelerating Achievement. All three authors are currently connected or were connected with Teachers College (Columbia University). This book has become a “hot seller” across the country among educators at all levels. The Common Core Standards are critical to the success of education in the United States. Over the coming weeks I will be sending you excerpts and summaries of the book’s chapters. All of us need to be exceptionally well-versed about the Common Core. I realize inyour busy personal and professional lives it is sometimes difficult to keep abreast with every educational topic, issueand bit of research, so I am going to offer an “abridged edition” of this book.

Chapter 1 Summary

We need to embrace what is good about the CCSS

New levels of literacy are required in the information economy of today. During the four years between 1997-2002, the amount of new information produced in the

world was equal to the amount produced over the entire previous history of the world

Children who leave school today without strong literacy skills will not find a job. It is no longer okay to provide the vast majority of America’s children with fill-in-the-blank, answer-the-questions, read the paragraph curriculum that equips them to take their place on the assembly line. The assembly lines have closed down!

Instead of continuing to provide the vast majority of students with a skill and drill education, the U.S. needs to provide all students with a thinking curriculum, with writing workshops, reading clubs, research projects, “think tanks”, etc. The Common Core Standards offer an absolutely crucial wake-up call

Common Core expectations reveal that today’s document reveals a much stronger emphasis on higher-level comprehension skills. Readers today are asked to integrate information from several texts, explain the relationships between ideas and author’s craft. The nation’s last attempt to lift the level of literacy instruction in a fashion that fit easily into basal reading programs, with the emphasis on seatwork and on reading groups convened under a teacher’s thumb. The reform (Common Core) forwards an image of literacy instruction which involves students in reading lots of books and documents of all sorts, meeting in small groups to engage in heady, provocative conversations about what they read, taking stances for and against views found in the books and engaging in “accountable-talk” interactions

CCSS place equal weight on reading and writing. The emphasis on writing standards is parallel to and equal to the emphasis on reading, and furthermore, one can’t help but think that reading will be assessed through writing, making writing even more critical

The adoption of the Common Core suggests that America’s image of what it means to be educated will change

The Common Core text repeatedly says that the aim shouldbe for standards that are high, clear, and few. These standards accomplish this goal

There are ten “anchor standards” in reading and ten in writing. Each of the ten reading anchor standards is rolled out across grades K-12, with corresponding parallel work being expected in fiction and non-fiction

Another strength of the Common Core document is that it articulates grade level benchmarks and a trajectory of skill development. The specificity is helpful for grade level curriculum planning and designing assessments

When one sees the spread of work across the grades, it can be a wake-up call, showing you that what seemed to be challenging in eighth grade is in fact what should betaught in fifth grade

The Common Core design is also one of the strongest features of the standards because it sends a message loud and clear: Growth takes time; it can’t be the job of the fourth grade teacher, or the tenth grade teacher,to be sure students reach the expectations for that grade level. Instead, students need to be supported by a“spiral curriculum” within which teachers across the K-12 spectrum share responsibility for students’ progress along trajectories of skill development

The Common Core places emphasis on students learning to read and write complex texts independently at high levels of proficiency and at a rapid enough rate to be effective

Common core standards focus on proficiency and complexity but also on independence

The standards embrace the notion that literacy is everyone’s work – science, social studies and math are expected to support literacy.

According to the authors of this book, “The Common Core State Standards have been written, but the plan for implementing them has not. The goal is clear. The pathway is not.”

The authors recommend allowing students to spend considerable time working with information, opinion, andnarrative writing units of study, producing work that matches the work described in the Common Core. An additional advantage to spotlighting the teaching of writing is that when students are actually taught writing and given opportunities to write (an hour a day)within a writing workshop, their skills develop in a very visible fashion

An advantage to supporting ELA writing instruction is that once students become fluent, fast, structured and proficient writers across a range of genres, it is easy to take those skills on the road, using writing as a tool for thinking across all the disciplines

Research and experience both have shown that often when students do higher-level thinking, the challenge is not that they do not have skills enough to compare and contrast, for example, but rather that they can’t handlethe text in the first place. Allington states, “You can’t learn much from books you can’t read” (2002)

Students need to become strong writers, and to do that,they need expert instruction, time to write, and meaningful opportunities for writing a wide range of informational, argument, and narrative texts. They must also become proficient readers of more complex texts, and that means they need expert instruction and opportunities to read a wide range and very deep volume of texts

With the Common Core there is a focus on higher-order comprehension instruction. You may think that if you have students moving up levels of text difficulty, you already have in place the higher-order comprehension instruction that is one of the hallmarks of the Common Core. You may. But it’s very possible that your readers are mostly reading for plot, grasping the gist of what they read, moving rapidly across books, but not really working on their reading

If you are familiar with Webb’s depth-of-knowledge work, you will see right away that the Common Core wantsreaders to be doing the intellectual work that is at levels two and three of Webb’s hierarchy. Common Core standards expect students to sort and categorize, compare and contrast, evaluate, analyze and reason

The Common Core standards are a wake-up call, reminding teachers that students need to read more non-fiction text across the curriculum as well as receive focused ELA instruction in non-fiction reading

The standards call for students to move away from simplereading for information, toward reading with a much moreanalytical stance. The Common Core emphasizes the importance of reading several texts about a topic, with readers determining central ideas, issues, and disputes in those topics, and anticipating the arguments around atopic

This is a summary of chapter 2 of Pathways to the Common Core, L. Calkins, M. Ehrenworth, and C. Lehman, Chapter 2. Itfocuses on the Common Core reading standards. Lots of food for thought.

Chapter 2 “Overview of Reading Standards – what do they say and what does it mean for us?

Common Core reading standards are unusually efficient inthe way they organize skills into a kind of grid

Whether you read the “anchor standards”, or the “standards for reading literature”, or those for “reading informational texts”, you’ll encounter the sameskill set

Common Core has decided that there are a small number ofenduring skills that constitute reading for readers at any age – no matter what kind of text a reader holds

All nine reader standards require “deep comprehension” and high-level thinking. Low-level literacy work of sound-letter correspondence and so on – (work that dominated the National Reading Report (2000) that has undergirded NCLB for years) – has been marginalized in its own separate section of the Common Core. That does not even qualify as part of the reading and writing standards. Reading, in the Common Core, is making meaning. All readers, therefore, even at the youngest age, are expected to attend to meaning, according to Common Core (C.C.)

You can judge what the standards value by looking at what they give repeated attention to and what they leaveout. For instance, these are some phrases that are repeated in the descriptive text leading into the reading standards: “close, attentive reading” (CCSS 2010a, 3) “critical reading” (3), “reasoning and use of evidence”(3) “comprehend, evaluate, synthesize”(4), “comprehend and evaluate”(7) “cite specific evidence”(7)“evaluate other points of view critically” (7)…

These are phrases repeated in the grade level specifics (grades K-12): “demonstrate an understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text” (12), “quote accurately from a text” (12) “objective summary” (36)….

These phrases ARE NOT in the C.C: “make text-to-self connections”, “access prior knowledge”, “explore personal response”, “relate to your own life”

C.C. authors worked backwards from the elite college skills and imagined a progression of reading skills thatwould lead to a sort of “university-level texts” – the standards reside in this territory of academic reading. Objective, close, analytical reading is what is valued as deep comprehension and interpretation by the C.C.

In focusing on textual analysis as the primary means of comprehending and interpreting text, the C. C. puts aside theories of reader response. Reader response approaches to reading suggest that even if you claim that themes reside within the corners of the text, the variation in the readers’ experiences and preoccupation releases meaning differently

Skills for reading literature and the skills for readinginformational text are the same in the C.C. That is, they share the same 10 reading standards. The C.C. does, though, provide individual grade level skills for reading literature and for reading informational texts

C.C. informational skills emphasize reading to determinecentral ideas and analyze authors’ viewpoints. The C.C. literature skills emphasize reading to determine themes,to elucidate figurative language and allusions, trace narrative elements

The C.C. does not give more weight to fiction than nonfiction. There is an implicit sharpening of focus on non-fiction, as reading instruction in most schools, until now, has happened exclusively in ELA classrooms (no more!)

The C.C. recommends following NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) distribution, which is:

√ at the fourth grade level the focus should be on 50% literacy text and 50% informational text

√ at grade 8 the focus should be on 45% literacy text and 55% informational text

√ by 12th grade the focus moves to 30% literacy text and 70% informational text

This distribution does not mean that C.C. calls for dramatically more non-fiction reading in ELA Classrooms. To the contrary, the standard makes it clear that the call is for literacy to be shared responsibility in content- area classrooms as well as in ELA classrooms.

The C.C. “says”, “….because ELA classrooms must focus on literature (stories, drama, and poetry) as well as literary non-fiction, a great deal of informational reading in grades 6-12 must take place in other classes.”

The C.C. emphasis on high-level comprehension calls for a reversal of NCLB’s focus on decoding and low-level literacy skills. C.C. pushes reading for meaning. This means a shift. Classrooms that have coasted on low-level reading skills need to quickly get on board with high-level reading skills.

Many teachers have not had a lot of training or practicewith teaching high-level comprehension skills and analytical reading skills. C.C. skills such as analyzingtexts for craft and structure “feel” more like university skills, therefore most K-12 teachers are unprepared or unfamiliar with teaching such skills

In order for students to do C.C. reading work they will need explicit instruction in the skills and strategies of high-level comprehension. Students will need a repertoire of strategies that undergird these reading skills. They’ll need skills broken into manageable steps– they’ll need to practice them and get expert feedback along the way.

They will need repeated practice on a variety of texts. Teachers will need assessments that will allow them to calibrate their teaching – to move students up levels ofskills and text difficulty

Students will need “structures” that will make reading work visible – structures such as reading partners and clubs in order to give opportunities to have rich literacy conversations about fiction/non-fiction

Teachers will need to assess the texts students are holding, and ensure they are texts on which they can actually practice synthesizing and critical reading. Classrooms which have depended on excerpts, anthologies and textbooks will find themselves needing to extend their libraries with literature, for older students, primary and secondary sources

Because reading will no longer be the domain solely of ELA teachers, as it has been in most schools, science andsocial studies teachers will need to participate in professional development on reading instruction

Pathways to the Common Core

Chapter 3 – “Literal Understanding and Text Complexity” – Standards 1 and 10

There is a grave concern that students be able to read more complex text. Reading anchor standard 10 asks readers to “read andcomprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently”. Grade level specific iterations call for students to read (what CCSS refer to as) grade level complex textsand to do so with independence. The standards do not lay out a pathway for moving readers toward this goal, as they are not a curriculum

In order to understand reading standard 10, it is important to also understand standard 1- the literal comprehension standard. Standard 1 asks readers to “read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it”.

Reading standards can be likened to a ladder, with standards 1 and10 as the “crucial struts that form the two sides of the ladder, and the other reading standards as the rungs of the ladder”

Standards 1 and 10 have sometimes been referred to as the “runningrecord standards”, as the work involved in meeting these standards

has, in many K-8 schools, revolved around teachers conducting running records to track students’ ability to progress up the gradient of text complexity while continuing to read with fluency,accuracy, and basic comprehension

Reading must never be mere word calling; accuracy without strong literal comprehension is not reading

Text complexity, in connection with literal comprehension is a complicated topic. There are 4 “disputes” within this area – 3 central to the common core and 1 outside the domain of the common core

√ dispute 1 - how to measure test complexity√ dispute 2 - what do the standards mean exactly when they say that “students should read at a grade level’s “text complexity band?”√ dispute 3 – what the common core expectations are for literal comprehension√ dispute 4 – what the common core’s emphasis on text complexity means for curriculum and instruction

Although the standards recognize the limitations of all existing book leveling systems and call for more research in this area, they do stress that teachers need to do everything possible to move students toward increasingly complex texts.

When determining text complexity of literary or informational textyou can look at it through the “lenses” of : (qualitative factors)

√ are the meanings implicit or explicit√ is the structure conventional or unconventional √ is the language literal, figurative, or domain specific√ are the knowledge demands “everyday” or“highly specialized”

(Quantitative measures) In addition to the aforementioned qualitative factors, we must also take into account some quantitative measures. They can be calculated by computer software– word length, frequency, sentence length and text cohesion (systems/tools that can do this are Flesch-Kincaid test, Dale-Chall readability formula and the Lexile Framework for Reading)

Reader and task consideration is a third measure the common core takes into account when determining text complexity. The measure in underdeveloped, but does take into account the role that prior knowledge and motivation play, positioning text complexity as

situational – sentence and word length are only part of what counts

One of the best sources of information to help a teacher answer the question, “How high is high enough?”, is the list of example texts representing approximate levels of text difficulty that the standards regard as sufficient. This provided in Appendix B of thecommon core ELA document? (which can be found on the Connecticut State Department of Education’s website)

The common core standards do provide in Appendix A a chart of recommended Lexile levels to help teachers understand the expectations for grade-appropriate texts (remember Lexile is just one measurement system among many others)

Common Core Standards insist that the absolute first order of business is that students need to be able to grasp what a text actually says and suggests. If students don’t understand what a text says explicitly, they won’t have a clue about doing textual analysis. Readers need to get their mental arms “around the text, to be able to retell it, to cite it, to ground anything they have to say about the text with textual references, to talk and think in ways that are confined within what you might call the four corners of the text”

To understand the work of anchor standard 1 you should look at grade level specifics for reading literature and then for informational texts. What you’ll find is that the challenge involved in grasping what text says increases as texts become morecomplex

An example:In first grade students are asked to“ask and answer questions about key details in a text”.By third grade (standard 1) students are asked to “ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of the text referring explicitly to the text as the basis for answers”.In fifth grade, standard 1 asks the reader to include 2 new subsets of skills as part of demonstrating literal understanding inferring across the text and quoting explicitly when explaining the story: “Quote accurately from the text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text”

There is growth in skill level – students now need to do everything that came before (those skills are prerequisites for understanding more

complex text), and they also need to sort through and cite several places of the text, clarifying what they know for sure and what they are inferring

Literal understanding of informational texts in the common core also demands a sharp rise in expectations

What qualifies as literal comprehension for informational text?In grade 2, for example, standard 2 asks students to “ask and

answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why and how to demonstrate understanding of key detail in a text”.By third grade readers are expected to refer explicitly to the text, to point to specific pages to support their explanation.And by fifth grade students are expected to “quote accurately froma text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text”.

Common core now expects students to cite textual evidence as they explain what the text teaches. Each grade lays the essential groundwork for the next. If you had the work in place in grade 2 and 3 so that students were able to demonstrate an accurate understanding of what they read, then this high-level fifth grade work would be a continuation of those skills. When the same child is in eleventh grade he/she must be sure to “cite strong and thorough evidence” as well as be able to determine “where the textleaves matters uncertain” all part of demonstrating literal comprehension.

Teachers need to take stock of where their students are in relation to the standards levels for text complexity:

can they read high-level texts rapidly and speak knowledgeably about them? If so, you can move them up the “ladder of text complexity”. If not, you need to find out what level of text they do comprehend. (This isall teachers, not just ELA/Reading teachers)

consideration needs to be given to the fluency (listening to the student read orally). If a student reads in phrases with intonation, the text may be appropriate for the reader. (You still need to consider their comprehension)

If a student reads in phrases and lacks appropriate intonation or mostly reads word by word, the text is

probably too hard. Tim Rasinski notes that fluency is one of the strongest indicators of comprehension (2010)

Teachers need to match readers to books and provide students with opportunities to read extensively. Teachers should accelerate student progress up the level of text complexity so that over timethey read increasingly complex books. In the effort to move students up reading levels, it is not helpful for students to “read” texts that are too hard for them because they aren’t reallyreading.

Giving students the opportunity to access complex text is not justfor reading reasons but also those texts give students access to more knowledge.

Teachers need to reassess and reconsider the level of text difficulty a reader is reading often during a school year not justonce or twice. If this is the practice, teachers don’t see an opportunity to accelerate progress of students except during thoseassessment periods. If it were done more often throughout the school year, students might have the opportunity to move up three,four, even five reading levels.

Elfrieda Hiebert (2012) reminds teachers that we simply cannot move along levels of text complexity at the expense of reading comprehension. She stated that it is unacceptable to move studentsup to other books (next levels) where they can’t read with 95% fluency, accuracy and comprehension.

The authors of Pathways to the Common Core offer some strategies for scaffolding a reader’s work with a text that may be a bit harder:

read aloud the first chapter of a book and discuss it with readers. Usually characters are introduced; settingis established, and readers may become “accustomed to the voice of the text”.

set readers up with a same-book partnership and let partners establish habits that will support each other. (i.e. read silently together but progress through text in sync; regularly spend time recalling the chapter, etc.)

support readers who are new to a text level by giving a book introduction and sometimes expanding into a text introduction.

encourage a reader to listen to an audio version of a book that is a “notch” too hard.

allow a reader to have a go at a “too-hard book” when you note the reader’s high expectation.

The common core document opens with a statement that the standardsfocus on results rather than means. “By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached… Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards”.

“The Standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach”.

Far too often, students who have fallen behind are given only lesscomplex texts rather than the support they need to read texts at the appropriate level of complexity.

When designing an approach that will accelerate your students’ progress up the ladder of text difficulty, research strongly supports that you conduct “running records” or use some other means to determine the level of text difficulty that each reader can handle with 95% accuracy, fluency, and comprehension, and thenmatch readers to appropriate texts, and teach in ways that keep readers progressing towards text that are just one notch beyond those they can read with total ease.

Pathways to Common Core

Chapter 4 “Reading Literature” Standards 2-9

Chapter 4 of this book begins with this opening paragraph:

“One of the beauties of the Common Core reading anchor standards 2-9is that they assume that works of literature are about more than theplots they unfold…Reading literature involves learning from the characters in the stories and looking to books for lessons in courage, determination, and integrity. As students investigate language, delve into themes, and analyze possible morals and meanings of stories, they develop insight into the text, which is the goal of the Common Core.”

The anchor standards capture the CCSS’s vision of analytical, engaged reading more than the specific grade level standards do. The anchors are the overarching goals; they provide the benchmarks you should aim toward. Learning goes along a trajectory by grade levels so there is a learning progression.

Teachers should pay attention to the trajectory that is implied in grade level specifics that come before and after the grade in which they teach.

Reading for Key Ideas and Details: Ensuring Students Read for Meaning Across a Story

Anchor standards 2 and 3 ask readers to summarize the text, to connect parts of the text, to infer central ideas and themes and to trace their development across the text. The standards specifically say: Key Ideas & Details (standards 2 and 3).

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.

Students will need to learn more than just words on a page in front of them. They must develop the ability to carry meanings across the whole story and realize what happens on one page is part of the thread of meaning which weaves through the text.

Students who can “do the work” of standards 2 and 3 can carry their understandings across a story – they’ll be able to infer a logic of cause and effect; synthesize character traits and motivations and analyze logical consequences of events. All of this becomes more important as books get more complex.

The first anchor standard, with its emphasis on literal comprehension, is critical for readers. If the CCSS are known for anything, they are known for an emphasis on text-centered discussion and thinking.

Pathways authors state teachers should linger on the literal detailsof text before jumping to ideas.

The work of standard 2 is to determine central ideas and themes, while standard 3 invites students to determine how events, characters and ideas are connected across text.

Reading for Craft and Structure

If you think of the first grouping of reading standards as reading for meaning, think of the second grouping of anchor standards as reading for craft (How the text says it).

Craft and Structure (standards 4, 5, 6)

4. Interpret words and phases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning and tone.

5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g. a section, chapter, scene or stanza) relate to each other and thewhole.

6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

Essentially, these anchor standards ask readers to investigate the effect of author’s decisions – about language, structure, point of view, voice, style – on the meaning of texts.(To understand the rationale for this emphasis in the CCSS, it helps to remember that the standards were constructed through a process of backward planning).

Remember, when implementing the standards you will not be able to address every standard at once and some will seem especially important for some grade levels.

As texts become more complex and more carefully wrought, thinking about “the craft” moves that an author has made and looking between the structure and the meaning of the text movesfrom being interesting enrichment work to being work that is essential to understanding.

Reading to Integrate Knowledge and Ideas

Anchor Standard:

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.

Non-fiction readers definitely want to read more than one text on a topic, to compare authors’ ideas, information, perspectives and reasoning, which is why standard 8 is reservedfor informational texts.

As readers pursue the work of anchors 7 and 9, they end up finding themselves becoming more skilled at analyzing craft andstructure – the work of anchors 4-6. This makes sense when you

think about it, as it’s easier to “see” craft and structure when you are already comparing two texts that develop similar themes, through different craft decisions.

Anchor standards 7 and 9 invite students to compare versions ofa narrative, to read non-fiction texts that are related to fiction stories, and to explore the literary traditions from which some stories spring.

Assuming your students can read their books, then the authors (Pathways to the Common Core) recommend a couple of pathways to getting to the standards. The first is to do a needs assessment – one that lets you see what students are doing as they read.

The second is to align teaching methods and the content of reading instruction so that teachers do, in fact, teach students the skills of close reading.

Once teachers have come to the realization that implementing the CCSS means putting new skills in literature, the question becomes how to go forward. The authors (Pathways…) say we need to start by realizing that the methods most schools in America have used have not produced readers who demonstrate the skills of the CCSS. (For example – everyone reads the same story in a core reading text either silently or orally, or both; the next day all students discuss the story with the teacher followed byeveryone answering questions from the workbook, etc.

The authors state that students should be doing “lots and lots of in-school reading”. There has been a lot of research about dedicating time to independent reading, to moving students as rapidly as possible up levels of texts, and to teach higher-level reading skills within the books they are reading. (Schools that have done this have shown tremendous reading progress).

For readers to actually move up levels they have to read a lot and, more importantly, feedback – these both take time.

Students should apply instruction they have received in a skillsuch as interpretation to a whole sequence of books that they read.

Pathways to the Common Core

Chapter 5 “Reading Informational Texts – Standards 2-9”

CCSS stress the importance of informational reading:

To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new.

This statement shows the laser focus on reading to learn, reading to follow an author’s reasoning, reading to analyze claims and support those claims with evidence. It is not a one-text sort of reading. Right from the first mention of nonfiction reading, the common core emphasizes synthesis, evaluation and comparative text analysis.

When reading informational texts, the standards focus readers on the work of analyzing the claims texts make –soundness and sufficiency of their evidence – the way a text’s language and craft reveal points of view, and theemphasis on investigating claims, ideas, reasoning and evidence.

Specific standards for reading informational texts are found in two places in the CCSS. There are the standardsfor reading informational texts found in the ELA standards, K-12. The others are found in science, socialstudies and technical subjects – grades 6-12.

Reading for Key Ideas and Details (anchor standards 1-3)

Anchor Standard 1 – Reading Closely and Making Logical Inferences

CCSS don’t concern themselves with what you already know, or think you know, or how you feel about a topic. They are more focused on textual analysis than personal response. (If you are reading 2 or 3 lines and get sidetracked into thinking about related personal experiences or your own opinion – refocus on what the text says explicitly).

Anchor Standard 2 – Reading to Determine Central Ideasand Themes

This standard asks readers to determine central ideas and to summarize the text, linking key ideas and details. (Hint: This is very hard to do if you didn’t do standard 1 well.)

Anchor Standard 3 – Reading to Analyze How Individuals, Events, and Ideas Develop and Interact Over the Course of a Text

This standard asks readers to analyze how “individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of the texts.” Readers, therefore, need to notice the sequence of events, analyze relationships and connections, and discern cause and effect.

Anchor Standards 4-6 – Reading for Craft and Structure

These standards invite you to look at how text is written.

Anchor standard 4 asks readers to interpret the technical, connotative and figurative meanings of words, and how specific language shapes meaning.

(As a reader) a student may have opinions that are different than the author’s but anchor standard 4 asksthe reader to study how this text’s craft conveys meaning.

Any text you’re reading will reveal its stance throughthe language choices the author makes. Start by looking at the words in the text more closely, noticing if some words seem more important than others, and if there are categories or kinds of words used as there were in our text.

Anchor standard 5 moves the reader to pay attention tohow the text is structured.

Anchor standard 6 asks readers to assess how the author’s point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of the text. This work, determining the author’s point of view and how it influences the text,stands on the shoulders of anchor standard 4 and 5.

Anchor standards 7-9 focus on reading to integrate knowledge and ideas and think across informational texts. At this point, to tackle standards 7-9, you need to read a text that is in some way related to thefirst text. Anchor standard 7 asks us to integrate andevaluate content in different media.

Anchor standard 8 is also easier to do when comparing texts, especially primary documents, though it is possible to do through textual analysis within a text.It asks readers to evaluate the evidence that the textlays out, weighing the validity of the author’s claimsbased on the sufficiency and soundness of the evidenceand reasoning.

Essentially anchor standard 8 asks the reader to analyze the trustworthiness of the supports that the author provides for his/her claims and soundness and logic that links supports to the claims.

Pathways for implementing the informational text standards:

√Challenges – students are not reading enough nonfiction texts. CCSS advocate that 45% of a studentsentire academic reading diet be composed of

informational text – and this includes everything students read during social studies, science and math,as well as all the reading they do within nonfiction units of study in ELA.

√ Students are not reading “just-right” informational text – in many schools students are reading nonfictiontext that is either too hard or too poorly written to engage students intellectually. Ask them to read alouda small section and listen to see if they are reading with the necessary fluency – with enough fluency that the oral text has the intonation and pace one would expect of normal conversation. Are they reading with at least 96% accuracy (a level most reading researchers believe would be a low level of accuracy, suggesting the text already contains more words that are hard for the reader than there would be in any text we picked up to read)?

√ Students are not engaging with informational texts in the appropriate way. Often time students are reading nonfiction text with pen in hand, ready to take notes – record facts. Experts say when reading nonfiction text in a stop-and-go way, it slows the students’ progress, resulting in a limited volume of nonfiction reading.

√ Students have no choice in what to read. Students may be reading without engagement – and engagement is the “sine qua non” for learning. (In the words of the author). The authors of the book state, “If your students are not devouring nonfiction texts with ‘raptengagement’, it could be that they have no choice overwhat they will read.

The authors suggest schools/teachers infuse more information reading into content-area classes. They also suggest that when teachers plan the sequence of units in social studies, science, and perhaps math, they actually plan which units will be writing

intensive, which will be media intensive, and which will be reading intensive.

If there is one overwhelming aspect of the CC for reading informational texts, it is that they move students away from “reading to accumulate information”, to reading to discern ideas and conceptsand analyze texts critically for their reasoning and perspective.

Grade Level Specifics of the Reading Standards for informational text.

CC asks (even) young readers to read to determine ideasand supporting details. Students are expected to understand text features – illustrations, captions, glossaries, etc. The point here is not to label them but to use these features as helpers as they read.

By second grade students are not only asked to identifythe main topic of a text and its details but also to identify subtopics of paragraphs/parts within the context so the standards assume these readers are beginning to sort out central ideas and subordinate ideas.

By grade 5 students are determining two or more centralideas and showing how they are supported by key details, and the standards assume that students will have to infer and make connections across the text in order to do this.

(The CC has high expectations for intellectual work students do with informational text)

The move toward analyzing and comparing texts, looking closely at how they work as much as at what they say, is the most significant aspect of the CC for reading informational text.

Pathways to the Common Core chapter 6

Overview of the Writing Standards

The Standards’ Emphasis on Three Types of Writing

The standards acknowledge the fact that whereas somewriting skills, such as the ability to plan, revise,edit, and publish, are applicable to many types ofwriting; other skills are more properly defined in termsof specific writing types: arguments,informative/explanatory texts, and narratives.

The standards are organized in a way that highlights thedemands these three broad categories of writing place onthe writer. The first standard delineates expectationsfor opinion and argument writing, the second, forinformational writing, the third narrative writing.

For each kind of writing, the CC delineate the way inwhich expectations grow each year, standing on theshoulders of the preceding year. The standards not onlydescribe the progression of skill development that isexpected to occur across grades in a spiral writingcurriculum in which one grade builds upon the next, butalso provide annotated exemplar texts to illustrate whatthese pieces of writing might look like and answer thequestion, how good is good enough?

The standards call for a distribution of writingexperiences that gives students roughly equal accountsof time and instruction in argument, informative, andnarrative writing. The balance tilts more in favor ofnarrative writing in the elementary school and thentilts toward argument and informational writing in highschool.

In the CC, the discussion of the distribution of writingbetween these types of texts is situated under thesubheading of “Shared Responsibility” as part of an

emphasis on writing instruction belonging in the handsof all disciplines and every teacher. That is, if 5th

grade students are expected to write narratives 35% ofthe time, information and explanations 35% of the time,and opinions and arguments 30% of the time, and writingis expected to be woven in math, science, socialstudies, music, etc., then presumably a good deal of theexplanatory and information writing will occur inscience (lab reports), in math (math journals reflectingon the students’ processes), in social studies(summaries of texts read, responses to questions askingstudents to synthesize information from several sources,and in reading (reading notebook entries, quick analytic“jottings”, preparations for partnership and book clubconversations).This suggests that the CC recommend thata large portion of the writing done during ELA benarrative writing.

The Standards’ Emphasis on the Writing Process

Writing standard 5 describes the writing process, andstandard 10 describes the need to write routinely as partof the process. Both standards will be an integral partof students being able to work toward all the otherwriting standards as well. The grade level specifics foranchor 5 are almost the same across the grades. Thisstandard states that students should be able to “develop”and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revisingand editing with expectations for revision increasing –with age and with expectations for independenceincreasing as well.

Anchor standard 10 calls for students to “write”routinely over extended time frames (time for research,reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (asingle sitting – a day or two).

The standards call for students to write often. “Writeroutinely” means making writing a habit.

The standards are very specific about the expectationsfor production. Fourth graders, for example, are expectedto produce a minimum of one typed page in a sitting, andfifth graders, a minimum of two typed pages in a sitting.

The Standards’ Emphasis on the Quality of Student Writing

Expectations for writing in the CCSS are carried byanchor standard 4. At every grade level, starting ingrade 3, standard 4 says that students are expected to“produce clear and coherent writing in which thedevelopment and organization are appropriate to task,purpose, and audience”.

*Note: The “spotlight” is placed on clarity and structure,as opposed to vividness or voice.

The Standards’ Emphasis on Writing as Integral Even for VeryYoung Students

An example about writing for young students is stated inthe Pathways book:

“In the majority of kindergarten classrooms, more time isspent on socialization, learning the alphabet, or perhapscopy in whole-class text, with emphasis on penmanship.”

The CCS conveys a crystal – clear message opposed to thispractice. Rather, the message is this: Kindergartners can write. They can not only invent their own spellings andwrite with fluency and power, but also write long, well-developed, shapely texts.

The important thing about the primary writing standardsis not specific expectations of each grade, but ratherthe fact that all skills that are considered to beessential for a high school student actually have theirbeginnings in primary grades.

Implicit in the CCS is the presence of a spiralcurriculum. (For example, a child who has been learningnarrative craft for 13 years should, by the end of

twelfth grade, be extraordinarily skilled, ready to spinan anecdote from his/her own story into an engagingcollege essay or scholarship application.)

The standards suggest it would be hard to achieve thishigh level of craft and knowledge if students weren’tmoving steadily along a spiral curriculum, practicing andextending skills in each type of writing each year.

The Standards’ Emphasis on Writing across All Disciplines andfor Real Purposes

CCS emphasizes writing (and reading) in the contentareas, across every discipline. (The message is clearthat every teacher needs to be a teacher of reading andwriting)

CC promotes the value of writing often-routinely, theysay, including writing for shorter time frames, and inresponse to specific tasks.

CCSS state – “To build a foundation for college andcareer readiness, students need to learn to use writingas a way of offering and supporting opinions,demonstrating understanding of the subjects they arestudying, and conveying real and imagined experiences andevents. Students learn a key purpose of writing is tocommunicate clearly.

Implementation Implications of the Writing Standards: SomeEssentials

Writing must become part of the “bill of rights” for allstudents. Writing needs to be given its due, starting inkindergarten and continuing up the grades. Teachers willneed to assess and teach writing, track their progressand to plan interventions.

What does it mean to teach writing? The writing process approach, which emphasizes the importance of students

rehearsing, drafting, revising and editing theirwriting, has been as essential in colleges and K-12classrooms, creating cohesion in the teaching of writingthat has not existed in the teaching of reading – acrossK-college. The writing workshop has been the acceptedforum for teaching the skills and strategies of effectivewriting.

“The CCSS and Composing Narrative Texts”

Writing anchor standard 3 states: “Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences”

The structure of the writing standards present helpful learning progressions

If you read the narrative writing standards, the best way to understand the progressions would be to start with the kindergarten description and then the description for each ensuring grade level (K, 1, 2,….). You will be able to see the descriptors for each skill in progression, noting the “new work” which is added at each subsequent grade level. You’ll come to understand the trajectory along which the writers can travel.

For example, the kindergarten standards for narrative writing asks writers to do the following:

Narrate a single event

Provide a reaction to what happened

By second grade the standards include all skills from k and 1, plus the following:

Elaborate events

Include details for actions, thoughts, and feelings

Provide closure

By grade 4, the standards include the following additional skills:

Establish a situation

Orient the reader

Introduce the narrator and/or characters

Organize a sequence of events that unfolds naturally

Describe actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences or events

Use dialogue to show the response of characters

Use concrete and sensory language to convey experiences precisely

Use words and phrases that show movement of time

Create a conclusion that follows from the events

Remember, this is a list that fourth graders should be able to demonstrate, but it doesn’t mean every narrative must contain all of these characteristics

Grade 8 standards ask writers to do everything already described in K-7, as well as:

Establish context and point of view

Consider pacing

Signal shifts in time and place

Reflect on events in the conclusion

Looking at anchor standards 1-3 you will notice the cohesion. As you move from teaching one type of writing to teaching another, you should remind students of the strategies they already learned.

The authors of the Pathways book have said that as they researched the effect of the CCSS in classrooms, they’ve seen two ways in which to harness the writing standards to raise the level of student writing. The first is to lean on teachers’ familiarity with narrative writing as astarting point for studying the CC writing standards and becoming an expert with the grade level expectations and skill progressions. The second is to launch writing habits and structures – the writing process and writing

workshop – that will sustain students across all types ofwriting.

James Popham, professor emeritus at UCLA an expert on assessment and testing research, explains that “a learning progression is a carefully sequenced set of building blocks that students must master en route to mastering a more distant curricular aim…. This sort of backward analysis can isolate the key tasks a student must accomplish on the way to mastery” (2007).

The authors of Pathways suggest collecting student writing samples as exemplars and study them within and across grades so the student progress can be monitored and move them into writing high-level text.

John Hattie (Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (2009)) says “Teachers need to know the learning intentions and success criteria of their lessons, know how well they areattaining these criteria for all students, and know whereto go next in light of the gaps between students current knowledge and understanding and the success criteria of: “Where are you going?”, “How are you going?”, “Where to next?”

Pathways to the Common Core Chapter Summaries-3

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