ELA Instructional Leadership Cadre

6th – 12th Grade

Shift 3: Building Knowledge

What have you tried?

On your notecard provide a short answer to the following:

Side 1: What strategies and shifts have you tried in your classroom?

Side 2: What information from the Leadership Cadres have you shared with you co-workers?

The CCSS Shifts Build Toward College and Career Readiness for All Students

Nine Specific Advances in the PARCC ELA/Literacy Assessment Demanded by the Three Core Shifts. . .

What Are the Shifts at the Heart of PARCC Design (and the Standards)?

Engage with

Complex Text

1. Complexity: Regular practice with complex text and its academic language.

Text Complexit

yClose

Reading

Academic Vocabular

y

What Are the Shifts at the Heart of PARCC Design (and the Standards)?

Extract and

Employ Evidence

2. Evidence: Reading and writing grounded in evidence from text, literary and informational.

Text Depende

nt QuestionsWriting to Sources

Narrative Writing

3. Knowledge: Building knowledge through content rich nonfiction.

What Are the Shifts at the Heart of PARCC Design (and the Standards)?

Build Knowledge

ELA

Content Area Literacy

Informational Text

Shift 3: Building knowledge through content rich nonfiction

8. PARCC assesses not just ELA but a full range of reading and writing across the disciplines of science and social studies.

9. PARCC simulates research on the assessment, including the comparison and synthesis of ideas across a range of informational sources.

ELABuilding Knowledge

Comprehension skills fallacy: you can’t simply teach students how to answer particular question types, such as main idea, vocabulary, inferencing, supporting details, drawing conclusions, etc.

Low scores in

Comprehension

Decoding Word Meaning Fluency Comprehens

ion

What do proficient readers do?

• Make connections to prior knowledge• Generate questions• Create mental images• Make inferences• Determine Importance • Synthesize, evaluate, summarize• Monitor reading

Teaching basic skills…

• Basic skills are enabling skills – they allow students to read for meaning

• Teach them with a clear purpose, they improve reading comprehension

• Phonemic awareness• Phonics • Fluency• Vocabulary

• Explicit comprehension instruction should not be delayed until students are able to read grade-level text independently. • Read-alouds and the use of text-based discussions are

opportunities to help students learn from complex informational text, especially when students are just learning to read or if students struggle to read informational text independently (Beck & McKeown, 2001; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).

– From K-12 Teachers: Building Comprehension in the Common Core

“Reading to learn”

• Students who struggle with reading can successfully handle informational text when instruction includes• explicit teaching of text structure, • procedural facilitators such as think sheets, prompt cards, and

mnemonics, and • the use of teacher modeling and guided feedback

(Gersten & Baker, 2000, 2001; Williams, 2008)

– From K-12 Teachers: Building Comprehension in the Common Core

Students who struggle

Reading comprehension can be taught explicitly• Instruction can help students to think more effectively

while reading (to understand/remember more)

• Reading Comprehension ≠ Listening Comprehension

• Unfortunately, teachers of older kids often replace reading with listening lessons because of the difficulty of the books• This gets you through the books, but doesn’t teach reading • Students need to read materials that are challenging, but

not TOO hard to read

Reading ComprehensionReading requires students to think about meaning while decoding

Skill vs Strategy

Reading Comprehension

Skillquick & easy,

without conscious attention

Strategy

intentional & complex

Skills vs Strategies

Skills

• Automatic• Over-learning• Immediate• Simple/single step• Certainty of success• Accuracy

Strategies

• Intentional• Metacognitive• Reflective• Complex/multi-step• Probability of success• Approximation

Reading Comprehension Skills

• Cause and effect• Classify and categorize• Compare and contrast• Draw conclusions• Fact and opinion• Main idea• Important details• Inferences

• Sequence• Bias and propaganda• Problem and solution• Identify theme• Literal recall• Tone• Mood

Reading Comprehension Strategies

• Summarizing • Questioning • Story mapping • Monitoring • Question answering • Graphic organizers• Mental imagery• Prior knowledge

NRP found that instruction in combined sets of strategies (such as

reciprocal teaching) were generally more effective

than teaching single strategies

Clear explanations matter

• Studies show that how well teachers can explain mental processes makes a difference in student progress

• Students need to learn the what, when, how, why of strategies

• Strategies are about taking intentional mental actions to understand a text

Gradual Release of Responsibility

• Modeling and explanation• Guided practice and explanation• Independent practice

• I do it• We do it• You do it together• You do it

Improving the reading lives of children• Create a classroom culture that emphasizes meaning• Ensure all children have enabling skills that allow

comprehension

• By teaching student the most effective research-proven ways to think effectively about the ideas in the text and guiding their practice with these strategies across a wide range of text

Content Area ReadingBuilding Knowledge

Define & Debate

Who’s role is what when it comes to

the literacy standards?

Informational SourcesBuilding Knowledge

What is Informational Text?

Informational text is text whose primary purpose is to convey information about the natural or social world, and that has particular linguistic features to accomplish that purpose.

• In Reading standards (RI 1 – 10, RH 1– 10, RST 1– 10)• In Writing standards• Students conduct research, draw evidence to support

arguments and analyses, compare texts, etc.

• In Speaking and Listening standards• Students prepare for conversations and collaborations,

present findings and supporting evidence, etc.

• In Language standards• Students acquire academic and domain-specific vocabulary,

use context to determine meaning, etc.

Informational text prominent in CCSS

28

Increased quantity of materials and instructional time devoted to

informational text

English Language Arts

Literature

fiction, drama, poetry

Literary

Nonfiction

Social Studies, Science, Technical

Subjects

Other informational Text

• Literary nonfiction. For purposes of CCSS, • Biographies, memoirs, speeches, opinion pieces• Essays about art, literature, journalism, etc.• Historical , scientific, technical, or economic accounts written

for a broad audience• Distinguished by literary techniques and artistic vision

• Emphasis is on text structure other than narrative• Arguments (such as those in the Founding Documents)

are emphasized throughout the Standards.

What is informational text in ELA?

Informational Text

Exposition, argument, &

functional text

Literary nonfiction

Exposition, argument, & functional text

Topics

• History• Social studies• Science• Arts• Technical subjects

Forms

• Books• Magazines• Handouts/brochures• Journal articles• Technical texts• Internet resources

Technical Texts: directions, forms, or information displayed in graphs, charts, or maps

Literary nonfiction

Topics

• Art• Literature• Journalism• Historical• Scientific• Technical• Economic

Forms

• Autobiographies• Biographies• Memoirs• Personal essays• Speeches• Opinion piecesaccounts

Follows a narrative text structure

• Read through the K-5 continuum of several of the Reading Informational Text standards (#1 – 10) on the Handout “CCSS Reading Informational Text Standards K-5.”

• Remember that each “step up” in task difficulty is matched by a “step up” in text complexity.• Identify the “step up” in task difficulty at each grade K-5 for several

standards. (Begin with Standard 9.)

33

Activity: Progression of difficulty

How informational text is addressed in the 6-12 classroom

• Integration of knowledge•Cross-strand emphasis on info text (speaking and listening, writing)•Content-specific application found in Reading Standards in Science & Technical Subjects

In the 6 – 12 classroom maybe break apart

Drawing from Research

Content-area reading

Disciplinary Reading

Teaching Reading in the Disciplines

Content Area LiteracyGeneralizable routines, generic comprehension strategies intended to be taught by reading and content teachers alike and applied across the curriculum

Disciplinary Literacy• specialized ways

of learning and communicating in each specific discipline

• Includes the language differences across disciplines

VS.

Science and technical subjectsShow students the close connections among alternative

representations of constructs (e.g., prose, graphs, charts, formulas).

Explicitly teach how to use abstracts, endnotes, etc.Explicitly teach specialized vocabulary (e.g., common words

with highly specialized subject area meaning).Analyze syntax (e.g., apposition: “animals that eat plants,

herbivores, may be .…”).Teach the knowledge required to develop a full understanding of

experiments or processes.

Disciplinary literacy examples

History and Social Studies• Demonstrate (model) and discuss how authors and

sourcing are central in interpretation.• Contextualize time and place.• Use multiple texts.• Evaluate information across sources.• Explicitly teach how to read historic documents (e.g.,

deconstruct complex sentence, pre-teach arcane or archaic vocabulary).

Discipline-specific examples

Instructional StrategiesContent Area Literacy for Science, Social Studies & Technical Subjects

Two-Column Notes

• Students divide a sheet of notebook paper in half.

• While listening or reading, students record evidence in the right column.

• In the left column, students can make inferences, ask questions, or draw pictures to clarify their evidence.

Two-Column Notes con.-

• In the left column, students can make inferences, ask questions, or draw pictures to clarify their evidence.

Discussion on Making Inferences• What is my inference? • What information did I use to make this inference?• How good was my thinking? • Do I need to change my thinking?

Think Alouds

• Teachers verbalize their thought processes while reading a selection orally. • Verbalizations include describing things they are doing

as they read to monitor their comprehension.

Semantic Feature Analysis

• This technique uses a matrix to help students discover how one set of concepts is related to another set. • Introduce a Semantic Feature Analysis graphic organizer

as a tool for recording reading observations

Discussion Web

• The student/small group will note the pros/cons of the reading as well as their final conclusion.

• The group will also place their conclusion on an index card.

Discussion Web

• Teachers distribute a selected reading that elicits clearly defined opposing viewpoints.

• A discussion web graphic organizer can be used by the student/small group to identify the main question of the text.

• Collect the cards and tally the responses. Share the results with the class.

6-12 Classroom….Look Fors

• Explicit instruction with generic comprehension strategies• Student use of generic comprehension strategies• Teacher model/explicit instruction of discipline-specific

comprehension strategies• Explicit subject-specific vocab instruction• Multiple texts• Precision partnering• Task-based accountability• Engagement to structure discussions• Collaboration• Emphasis on subject-area reading strategies

Precision Partnering

• Student partner discussions• Designated 1st speaker• Use of sentence starters• Accountable listening• Teacher monitoring

New Resources on The PROE sitewww.theproecenter.info

Evaluating our Progress

Re-assess your understanding and comfort with the Common Core

Standards for Math using the Foundational

and Basic Needs Assessments

Commitment

Select something from today’s presentation that you are willing to try in your own building.

Record your commitment on a sticky note and post it on the commitment board before your leave.

Thank You

Peoria Regional Office of Education

Cindy Dollman, Assistant Reg. Supt.

cdollman@peoriaroe48.net