Shifting to Common Core Literacy

TO COMMON CORE

LITERACY

Teach & Lead

—Robert Rothman, Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education and the author of Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education

K–12 school and district administrators, professional development providers, and CCSS coaches will: Learn the history behind the Common Core and compelling reasons for deep implementation

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Follow practical examples and stories that make complex content understandable

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Examine relatable hot-button issues most schools face during implementation

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Explore the necessary shifts in roles for students, teachers, principals, and leaders to ensure successful implementation ISBN 978-1-936763-29-0 90000

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9 781936 763290

Visit go.solution-tree.com/commoncore to access materials related to this book.

CHERYL ZINTGRAFF TIBBALS VICTORIA L. BERNHARDT

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LITERACY

The Common Core State Standards present educators with a dynamic change: a shift to 21st century learning. No longer can schools merely tweak the existing system to enact reform. Rather, to ensure lasting change, they must develop new philosophical and pedagogical approaches to learning. However daunting the task of implementation may seem, the standards provide an evidence-based road map to lead students to success. Shifting to Common Core Literacy provides a straightforward process and protocol for reading this map and developing a shared vision to effectively implement the CCSS schoolwide.

CO M M O N CO R E

“The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) lay out an ambitious set of goals for student learning. Students will only reach those goals if schools transform themselves to support those aims. Fortunately, Cheryl Zintgraff Tibbals and Victoria L. Bernhardt are here with tools to help school leaders get started. Their road map will be invaluable as educators take on this vital challenge.”

SHIFTING TO

SHIFTING

Reconceptualizing How We

SHIFTING TO COMMON CORE

LITERACY Reconceptualizing How We

Teach & Lead

C H E R Y L Z I N TG R A F F T I B B A L S V I C TO R I A L . B E R N H A R DT

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tibbals, Cheryl Zintgraff.

Shifting to common core literacy : reconceptualizing how we teach and lead / by Cheryl Zintgraff Tibbals and Victoria L. Bernhardt. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-936763-29-0 (perfect bound) 1. School improvement programs--United States.

2. Common Core State Standards (Education) I. Bernhardt, Victoria L., 1952- II. Title.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

I n t r o d u c t i o n We’re Not in Kansas Anymore . . . . . 1 Intended Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Purpose—A Time to Rethink CCSS Implementation Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Chapter Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Tools and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Bon Voyage! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

C h a p t e r 1 Where Are We Now? Standards Déjà Vu . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Technological Advances: Anyone Know What a Zettabyte Is? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Where the United States Stands: Closing the Thinking Gap—Can We Be What We Were? . . . . . 10 College Readiness: Stuck in College and Can’t Get Out? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The Need for Knowledge Workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Out of the Old World and Into the New . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Moving Out of the Teaching Factory: Robots for Sale, Thinkers for Hire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 We Are What We Learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The Global Race to the Top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

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C h a p t e r 2 Back to the Future: Road to the Core . . . . . . . . . . 19 The 1980s and Moving Beyond the Bubble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Poetry of Logical Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 A Nation at Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Discontent in America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 The 1990s and the Fall of the Wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 National Education Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 National Education Goals Panel: From Inputs to Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 A Nation at Risk Is No Longer a Nation at Rest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Discrepancies in Evaluating State Standards: My State’s Standards Got an F, Really? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The Dot-Com Crash and the Start of a New Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Into the New Millennium With No Child Left Behind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Narrowing the Curriculum and Making All Students Proficient by 2014 . . . . . 28 NCLB and Closing the Achievement Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Addressing Teacher Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Gaming the System—Voodoo Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 The Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The Great Recession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 A Perfect Storm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 The Common Core and a Race to the Top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 In a Time of Drastic Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

C h a p t e r 3 International Benchmarking: Go East, Young Man! Far East! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 While America Took a Nap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 A Global Report Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Can U.S. Students Access, Retrieve, Integrate, Interpret, Reflect, and Evaluate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Can We See the CCSS in a PISA Task? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 How Have U.S. Students Performed on the PISA? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 What Can We Learn From the PISA? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Inequity—The United States Has Work To Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Some Good News! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 A Sample PIRLS Released Item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 What Can We Learn From the PIRLS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Tab l e of Con te n ts How Can the PIRLS Data Inform the Common Core? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The American Education Roller Coaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The Nation’s Report Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 How Does the NAEP in Reading Compare to the CCSS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Can We T alk Write Our Way Out of This? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 How Does the NAEP in Writing Compare to the Common Core? . . . . . . . . . . . 58 NAEP Resources for Teachers and Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 And the Point Is? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

C h a p t e r 4 Ready, Set, Shift: Three Seismic Shifts to Move Us Into the 21st Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Shift 1: Regular Practice With Complex Text and Its Academic Language—Changing the Learning Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 An Academic Bermuda Triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Text Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 The Quantitative Measure of Text Complexity—Anchoring Text Complexity to College Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Text Selection—Setting College and Career Examples Starting in Kindergarten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Are We There Yet? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Shift 2: Reading, Writing, and Speaking Grounded in Evidence From Both Literary and Informational Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Shift 3: Building Knowledge Through Content-Rich Nonfiction . . . . . . . . 72 “But I Teach Literature,” Says the English Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 “I Teach Content, Not Reading,” Says the Science Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Deep Data Dig Into the Shifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

C h a p t e r 5 A Core That’s Not So Common—Are the CCSS Really That Different From Recent State Standards? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Anchor and Grade-Specific Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 How Are the Grade-Specific Standards Grouped? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 The Content-Literacy Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Interconnectedness of the Standards—More Bang for the Buck . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Out of the Silos—A Call for Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

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S H I F T I NG TO CO MMO N CO RE LIT E RACY The Ubiquitous Nature of Research, Media, and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Learning Progressions—Avoiding Learning Potholes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Power Standards? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Impact Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Reading Anchor Standard One—The “Show Me the Money” Standard . . . . . 91 Reading Anchor Standard Ten—The Accessibility Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Have an Opinion! Can You Support It? Prove It!—Writing Anchor Standards One and Nine and Speaking and Listening Standard Four . . . . . . 92

Additional Resources for Comprehending the Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Changing Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

C h a p t e r 6 A Deep Dive Into the CCSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Parts-Is-Parts Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Engaging Students in Work Worth Doing and Tests Worth Taking . . . . 102 Teaching the Whole Standard or Not? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Standards Study—Digging Into the CCSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Reading to Build Content Knowledge—Vision or Lottery? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 In Summary—A Lesson on Standards From the Big Box Stores . . . . . . . . 109 Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

C h a p t e r 7 Centering CCSS in CSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 The Gorilla in the Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 A Shared Vision—Getting to Where We Want to Get To . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 A Protocol: Developing a CCSS Shared Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 1: Kick Off the Collaborative Work—Large Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 2: Review the Big Picture of Creating a Shared Vision—Large Group . . .

Step 3: Create Individual Values and Beliefs—Small Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Step 4: Merge Individual Thinking on Values and Beliefs in Small Groups . . . .

117 118 118 119 119

Step 5: Merge Small-Group Thinking on Values and Beliefs Into the Whole Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Step 6: Agree on the School’s Purpose in the Large Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Step 7: Develop a Mission Statement in the Large Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Step 8: Review Core Values and Beliefs, and Record Individual Thoughts About Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Tab l e of Con te n tsďťż Step 9: Merge Individual Thoughts of the Vision to Small-Group Visions . . . 123 Time to Change Ships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

C h a p t e r 8 Role Over! New Roles in the CCSS School . . . . 135 A Teacher With a Vision of What Learning Should Look Like . . . . . . . . . 138 On Being Transformers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 A Change in Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Out-of-Role Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 A Protocol for Developing CCSS Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Sharing the Small-Group Role Descriptions Charts With the Large Group . . . 160 Melding the Small-Group Role Descriptions Into a Schoolwide Role Description Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Developing the Student Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Developing the Teacher Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Developing the Principal Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Developing the District Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Transforming Role Descriptions Into Action Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Using a Professional Learning Plan to Support the Shared Vision . . . . . . 175 The Cost of Transforming and Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Questions for Reflection and Collaborative Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Thinking Outside the Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Leaping Over the Rainbow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

References and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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heryl Zintgraff Tibbals, educational consultant, has extensive experience in standards-based reform at the school, district, state, and national levels. Cheryl’s experience ranges from teaching and school and district leadership to developing an all standards-based and performancebased assessment system for the state of Kentucky, working with the state of California on developing Golden States Examinations, building national leadership networks, and leading the State Leadership Center at the Council of Chief State School Officers with a focus on education policy, leadership, and standards-based reform. Since 2003, Cheryl has served as a consultant to districts, including Los Angeles Unified School District, nonprofits, and education businesses.

In 2010, she served as a reviewer and evaluator of state applications for the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top program. Cheryl is a fervent believer that all students can learn to high standards and has worked with teachers and leaders around the United States to bring this potential to fruition.

Cheryl’s recent work has focused on the effective implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), including speaking and presenting at conferences, institutes, and symposia; working with school districts; and serving as senior advisor to education businesses.

Cheryl received her BA from the University of California, Riverside, with a major in social sciences and a minor in English. She received her master’s degree in educational administration from California State College, San Bernardino.

For more information about Cheryl’s work, please go to www.21stcenturyschooling.com. xiii

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ictoria L. Bernhardt, PhD, is executive director of the Education for the Future initiative, whose mission is to build the capacity of learning organizations at all levels to gather, analyze, and use data to continuously improve learning for all students. She is also a professor (on leave) in the College of Communication and Education at California State University, Chico.

Victoria has worked for more than twenty years with learning organizations all over the world to assist them with their continuous improvement and comprehensive data-analysis work. She is the author of several widely recognized data-analysis and school-improvement books, including the bestseller Data Analysis for Continuous School Improvement (third edition).

Victoria is passionate about her mission of helping educators continuously improve teaching and learning by gathering, analyzing, and using actual data—as opposed to using hunches and gut feelings. She continues to provide consultations, professional development, and keynote addresses for schools and the agencies that serve them on the topics of comprehensive data analysis and continuous school improvement.

She received her doctorate in educational psychology research and measurement, with a minor in mathematics, from the University of Oregon. To learn more about Victoria’s work, visit http://eff.csuchico.edu.

To book Cheryl Zintgraff Tibbals or Victoria L. Bernhardt for professional development, contact pd@solution-tree.com.

INTRODUCTION

e’re Not in Kansas W Anymore

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n literature, roads frequently serve as metaphors for significant life journeys. What would the classic book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900) have been like without the yellow brick road? After all, it was along this road that Dorothy met the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. It was also along this road that Dorothy and her Ozian colleagues encountered and overcame a plethora of dangers, hazards, and perils. The yellow brick road was not just a road.

It was a map to a destination—the Emerald City, the place where the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy would, through their own efforts, attain what they were looking for: a brain, a heart, courage, and an express ticket home to Kansas. The yellow brick road, in itself, was not magic. It was through the journey down the yellow brick road that Dorothy and her friends shared hope, acquired trust, and developed a collaboration that, in the end, enabled them to take on a witch, a wizard, and even their own self-perceived deficiencies.

Intended Audience This book is for all of those educators in the field who are continuously trying to create magic for their students and could use a little help after struggling for some years to move students to higher levels of performance. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects are not magical standards, but they do provide us with a unique road map of evidence-based knowledge and skills, laid out in learning progressions that hold the promise, if learned, of preparing 1

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students for success in college and careers in this 21st century. Couple this with a blueprint for developing a shared vision of a CCSS school that gives growth to new roles for students, teachers, principals, and district leaders, and what we accomplish might seem almost magical.

The authors hope that this book will assist all of those involved in implementing the Common Core State Standards in their state, district, or school, including the following.

• Teachers • District and school leaders • Professional learning providers • District and school support staffs • College education professors and their students • Nonprofit organizations that are professional learning providers • Policymakers whose work influences the implementation of the Common Core

The Purpose—A Time to Rethink CCSS Implementation Efforts The purpose of this book is to help state, district, and school staffs that may feel that their Common Core implementation efforts could benefit from a re-examination or that they are not exactly on track, are out of sync, or are losing momentum. The Common Core brings with it significant shifts in how students learn, teachers teach, and leaders lead. From the Core arise new challenges that can be both exciting and daunting. After only a short period of implementation, schools now face new and demanding assessments for which they most likely do not feel ready. The fact that almost every state in the United States adopted these new standards has increased public attention and focus on both the CCSS and the new assessments. While the majority of Americans seem solidly behind the standards, some places are experiencing a backlash that can be disheartening to educators who are trying very hard to create and implement CCSS programs that will prepare their students for the global workplace they will enter.

While most district and school staffs across the United States realized from the start that the CCSS were more rigorous than past state standards, until they got deeper into the implementation of the Common Core, they probably did not realize just how much more demanding these standards are. The sample items and tasks

We ’re No t i n Kan s as Anymore

from the new assessments bring focus to this. States that did crosswalks of their state standards with the CCSS may have underestimated the differences between them. Districts and schools who believed that just tweaking their past instructional programs would suffice are probably realizing that tweaking isn’t enough.

Chapter Descriptions For those leading, as well as those supporting, the district or school transformation to the Common Core and 21st century learning, this book provides the kind of information and resources required to reconceptualize what and how students learn.

Chapter 1, “Where Are We Now?” highlights some of the economic, societal, and educational demands of U.S. society today. In this chapter, the authors discuss the needs of the 21st century workplace, the explosion in digital information, the rise of the knowledge worker, the mismatch between secondary and postsecondary education expectations, and the need to move out of the 20th century factory model of schooling into the information age. Understanding the shifts in American society since the 1960s helps us understand the shifts in the Common Core.

Chapter 2, “Back to the Future,” offers educational leaders a snapshot of the educational, historical, and political context from which the Common Core arose. Key events, reports, and studies provide insights into why and how these standards were developed. With knowledge and context about how the CCSS arose, educational leaders, teachers, professional development providers, and policymakers will acquire a deeper understanding of the standards themselves and the kind of instructional programs they are designed to support.

Chapter 3, “International Benchmarking,” discusses briefly how U.S. students perform on international assessments and on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It provides teachers, leaders, and professional development providers sample questions and tasks from two international assessments, tasks that pose difficulty for many U.S. students. Why is this information valuable to classroom teachers and instructional leaders? It is valuable because the Common Core was benchmarked internationally. These sample items offer us insight into the content and demands of the CCSS. Chapter 4, “Ready, Set, Shift,” takes readers deep into the three major shifts reflected in the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and literacy and discusses the significant implications of these shifts for leadership, curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This chapter reveals the connections between the shifts and the demand to be college and career ready in the global workplace.

Understanding these shifts provides teachers and leaders with a deeper understanding

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of the instructional implications of the standards, as well as an effective way to explain the CCSS to their publics. It helps district and school leaders to reconceptualize leadership in a CCSS world and provides them with the knowledge they need to help their staffs effectively implement the CCSS schoolwide.

Chapter 5, “A Core That’s Not So Common,” walks leaders, policymakers, and professional learning providers through an informative review of the Common Core’s organization, content, design, and intent, pointing out the relationship between the college and career readiness anchor standards (CCRA) and the grade-specific standards and the interconnectedness of the standards within and across CCSS strands and content areas. For district and school leaders and professional development providers, routine re-examination of the structure and content of the CCSS is an important part of checking for understanding to ensure the district’s and school’s implementation efforts are on track. We can get lost in the standards if we don’t remind ourselves continually of how the CCSS collectively represent something much grander than each standard alone.

Chapter 6, “A Deep Dive Into the CCSS,” discusses why the parts-is-parts standards-based instruction of the past (teaching primarily to isolated pieces of deconstructed standards) is insufficient in preparing students to be 21st century knowledge workers. Unpacking the CCSS has advantages for both the teacher and student, but the standards must eventually be repacked and assessed holistically so students realize the full impact of the standard in the context of relevant work. This chapter discusses the value of a more holistic approach to standards-based instruction and assessment that readies students for the kinds of work they will be expected to do in college and beyond. For teachers, district and school instructional leaders, and professional development providers, this requires rethinking lesson selection and design to avoid the type of decontextualized instruction we have too frequently seen in the past.

Chapter 7, “Centering CCSS in CSI,” addresses one of the biggest misconceptions related to the CCSS—that just tweaking an existing continuous school-improvement (CSI) plan to accommodate the CCSS is enough. The authors suggest that the intent of the CCSS cannot be realized without staff developing a shared vision of what a CCSS school ought to look like. It is from this shared vision that the CSI plan should grow. This chapter provides processes and a protocol to develop a transformational shared vision of a CCSS school—what it looks like, what students are doing, what teachers are doing, what core values and beliefs the school reflects, and whether the students are doing relevant work that reflects 21st century skills akin to the Framework for 21st Century Learning (Partnership for 21st Century Learning, n.d.). A sample CCSS shared vision is included in the chapter.

We ’re No t i n Kan s as Anymore

Chapter 8, “Role Over!,” outlines a process that district and school leaders and professional learning providers can use to guide staff through the reconceptualization of their roles based on the school’s shared vision of what a CCSS school ought to be. This chapter provides a protocol for identifying the roles of students, teachers, principals, and school and district support staff members in a CCSS-true school. The process starts with the student’s role. The student’s role defines the roles of teachers, school leaders, and district leaders. As with any major change, schools will require professional development and other resources to support the role changes that must occur to sustain the staff’s shared vision. The authors provide a template that can be used in developing a professional learning plan to support role changes.

Epilogue The epilogue briefly describes how some of America’s top innovators used out-ofthe-box thinking and encourages educators at the school and district levels to apply this kind of thinking as they implement their new roles. For district and school leaders and professional development providers, the shared vision, role descriptions chart, role-implementation plan, and professional learning plan form the start of a new CCSS continuous school-improvement plan designed to prepare students for the global workplace they will enter. The Epilogue ends with some thoughts about what makes students want to come to school to learn and how effective implementation of the CCSS can help our students achieve their 21st century dreams.

Tools and Resources At the end of each chapter, there are questions to stimulate deep discussions in collaborative work groups, schoolwide communities of professional practice (CoPPs), or professional learning communities (PLCs). The questions grow out of the concepts and tools introduced and discussed in each chapter.

Visit go.solution-tree.com/commoncore to download the following reproducibles described in this book.

• Shared Vision Templates: Blank Shared Vision Chart Templates for Instruction, Curriculum, Assessment, and Learning Environment for staffs to use to develop their own shared visions • “CCSS Role Descriptions Chart”: A template for developing the new role descriptions for students, principals, and school and district support staff • “CCSS Role-Implementation Plan”: A template for describing the kinds of instructional supports, facility modifications, and technology required to implement the new role descriptions

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• “Professional Learning Plan”: A template for determining the professional learning required to implement the CCSS roles successfully Following is a list of additional essential CCSS reference tools readers can also access as indicated online.

• Hess’ Cognitive Rigor Matrix & Curricular Examples is a tool for studying standards, developing CCSS-centered lessons, and designing student assessment items and tasks. This tool combines Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge into one useful matrix for analyzing levels of critical thinking (Bloom) and complexity (Webb). Visit http://static.pdesas .org/content/documents/M1-Slide_22_DOK_Hess_Cognitive_Rigor.pdf for this matrix.

• The Framework for 21st Century Learning identifies student outcomes related to key expectations for student success in college and careers in the 21st century. The outcomes addressed in the framework include life and career skills; learning and innovation skills; information, media, and technology skills; and core subjects. Also included are descriptions of support systems for learning these skills that include learning environment, professional development, curriculum and instruction, and standards and assessments. Visit www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework for a more extensive explanation of these skills, which informed CCSS development.

• Student Achievement Partners is an open source type nonprofit organization that does not compete for state or federal contracts and does not accept money from publishers. Its goal is to provide educators with effective and quality CCSS ELA/Literacy and Mathematics resources to use in their schools and classrooms. It provides research and white papers, CCSS exemplar lessons, videos, professional development tools, and publications such as the Revised Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy Grades K-2 and Grades 3-12. The Student Achievement Partners was started by several of the writers of the CCSS. Visit http://achievethecore.org/about-us to view these resources.

Bon Voyage!

The CCSS present us with a dynamic change, a shift to 21st century learning.

While it may seem daunting at times, as we fathom our way through this new terrain on the road to successful implementation of the CCSS, it might be helpful to remember that these standards provide us with an evidence-based road that is built logically and skillfully along progressions constructed to lead us deeper into a knowledge-rich century. There will be bumps, hurdles, and times of frustration along

We ’re No t i n Kan s as Anymore

the road to CCSS implementation, but that should be expected. All we have to do is look around at the 21st century, and we will understand the importance and urgency of our work. Then, like Dorothy when she landed in Oz, we will realize that we’re not in Kansas anymore.

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CHAPTER 4

P

eople who live in earthquake zones understand what a seismic shift is. Anyone who has lived awhile in such a zone has probably experienced an earthquake that caused her or him to dash for cover, crawl under a strong wood table, or get under a door frame to avoid falling debris. While some earthquakes are so small that they are hardly noticed, others will rattle your home, knock a few things off shelves, and then send aftershocks for several hours or even days afterward.

A larger earthquake can cause buildings to fall, sections of a freeway to split and collapse, public utilities above and below ground to crumble, huge chasms to open in the ground, and landslides that take away a piece of a mountain.

Just as earthquakes hold the potential for changing the physical landscape significantly, the three major shifts reflected in the for ELA and literacy Common Core State Standards have the potential to make seismic shifts in schooling. Each of the three shifts portends significant changes in how students learn, what students learn, and the way in which students will demonstrate what they know and are able to do. These three major shifts, if implemented with fidelity, should produce significant alterations in the learning landscape.

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Ready, Set, Shift: Three Seismic Shifts to Move Us Into the 21st Century

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Shift 1: Regular Practice With Complex Text and Its Academic Language—Changing the Learning Landscape

Shift 1 is challenging for both teachers and students, as it truly demands a reconceptualization of how we have taught reading and how students have learned to read for at least half a century. Shift 1, along with the other two CCSS shifts, should prepare students for success in college and 21st century careers by shifting the focus of reading instruction from being primarily skills based to a greater emphasis on comprehension that enables students to extract meaning from complex texts. As stated in the journal The Future of Children, which Princeton University and the Brookings Institution jointly produce, “reading instruction in the primary grades focuses too much on improving students’ word reading skills and too little on vocabulary, and conceptual knowledge” (Murnane, Sawhill, & Snow, 2012, p. 2).

Successful implementation of shift 1 means re-envisioning K–12 reading instruction. Elementary teachers in CCSS classrooms should be redesigning how they facilitate the learning of reading, moving away from the traditional curriculum and organization of reading instruction. For teaching Common Core Reading standards, this means providing all students with regular access to the grade-level text and transitioning from heavy skills-based instructional programs to learning that emphasizes comprehension, vocabulary development, and conceptual knowledge. This does not mean that reading skills are not taught. It means that just being able to read a string of words isn’t reading. Reading skills should be taught in the context of reading and comprehending complex text and building knowledge.

For organizing elementary reading instruction, this implies changing the focus and structure of the traditional reading groups—the groups from which students, once assigned, rarely escape. The green bird, orange bird, red bird, and blue bird groups of the past should morph into fluid reading groups whose constituents change constantly based on specific reading needs discovered through daily lesson-embedded formative assessment. These new groups are designed to teach specific skills, build academic vocabulary, and provide targeted level 1 response to intervention (RTI) to everyone in the classroom as needed to help all students access grade-level texts.

These groups do not house permanent reading residents.

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Shift 1 should cause the greatest impact of the three shifts on literacy and the most sweeping changes in learning and instruction. This shift will probably also be the most challenging to implement. If shift 1 is not implemented as the CCSS writers intended, the major goal of the CCSS—to prepare students for 21st century college and careers—will not be realized.

Re ad y, S e t, S h ift

In the CCSS school, all teachers become teachers of reading, writing, and speaking in the subjects they teach. Through the teaching of literacy skills in their disciplines, content-area teachers are enabling all students to become active participants in learning the content they teach, constantly expanding students’ reservoirs of knowledge.

They are also helping students build habits of mind that will enable them to think, read, write, and speak like those who practice the disciplines—historians, scientists, mathematicians, doctors, nurses, attorneys, bankers, and others from various professional fields.

An Academic Bermuda Triangle It is important to periodically remind ourselves of what makes this shift so unique and demanding and why it is so critical that students master it before graduating high school. If it wasn’t obvious before that those who are unable to understand and extract information, ideas, and concepts from complex text by the end of high school are at academic risk in college, then we need to review again the evidence in Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness in Reading (ACT, 2006). According to this report, the skills that make the biggest difference in students being successful in college, as well as being able to obtain and hold a 21st century job, are the abilities to read, decipher, and extract information from complex text. Being a fluent reader who can master college-level text is a skill that basically distinguishes the students who do well in college and those who will face significant trouble, often resulting in dropping out of college without a degree, or paying for a more costly education that includes additional years of remedial catch-up classes.

College is not the only place this skill is required, as employers in the 21st century workplace are looking for workers with increasingly more postsecondary education.

They need workers who can comprehend complex text, follow complicated written directions, and apply thinking skills to solve problems they will encounter in their work.

Some may ask, “Haven’t we been educating our K–12 students to read complex text proficiently?” Shocking as it might be, the answer is no. The research supporting the ACT report indicates that teaching students to read complex text has not

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

The significant change in instruction that shift 1 brings for content-area teachers is that they are now required to teach literacy skills in their disciplines, providing all students in their classrooms with strategies for comprehending complex text in their content domains. Content teachers who are teaching a CCSS curriculum are providing instruction in how to read, write, and speak in their specific disciplines.

In CCSS classrooms, it is no longer acceptable for students who are not able to read a textbook proficiently to just do poorly in the class, as teaching literacy is no longer the sole purview of the English teacher.

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Text Complexity What makes text complex? How do we define text complexity? If you asked people on the street, some might say that it is hard to describe—that they know it when they see it. Others may say that complex text is complicated, hard to understand, uses words a lot of people don’t know, contains long and confusing sentences, and is sometimes set in places and times that are unfamiliar. But what are the characteristics or features of complex text that actually render it complex?

The three-part model that the CCSS writers use to determine text complexity includes: 1. Quantitative measures 2. Qualitative measures 3. Reader and task considerations Several CCSS publications explain these three dimensions in detail. These publications can greatly assist teachers in implementing the Common Core ELA and Literacy Standards. Each offers the reader another opportunity to explore text complexity and its implications more deeply and offers great tools for collaborative study in PLCs. Three examples of such publications are as follows: 1. Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History / Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects: Appendix A—Research Supporting Key Elements of the Standards (NGA & CCSSO, 2010b) 2. Supplemental Information for Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy: New Research on Text Complexity (NGA & CCSSO, 2012) 3. Revised Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades K–2 and Grades 3–12 (Coleman & Pimentel, 2012) The more we study text complexity, the better we will be at designing instruction that provides students with strategies for tackling text complexity successfully.

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

been a skill addressed in past state standards and was, generally, not represented in most secondary curricula (ACT, 2006). Entering college and lacking the ability to read closely and comprehend complex text is like entering an academic Bermuda Triangle—it is academically perilous. Students unable to read and comprehend complex text will take a longer time to graduate, a costly proposition that puts them behind in the race for the best knowledge worker jobs, and too many of those who take remedial classes in college will be lost, dropping out before attaining a degree.

Both of these options are unacceptable.

Re ad y, S e t, S h ift

The Quantitative Measure of Text Complexity—Anchoring Text Complexity to College Expectations The first thing a teacher implementing the Common Core ELA/literacy standards must know about text complexity is how to identify a text’s complexity rating. This is particularly important because research indicates that text complexity in schools has declined considerably, a situation that we must remedy to meet the CCSS requirements. As appendix A of the CCSS ELA/literacy reports, “Jeanne Chall and her colleagues (Chall, Conrad, & Harris, 1977) found a thirteen-year decrease from 1963 to 1975 in the difficulty of grade 1, grade 6, and (especially) grade 11 texts” (NGA & CCSSO, 2010b, p. 3). Similarly, Gay L. Williamson’s (2006) research reveals a “gap between the difficulty of end-of-high school and college texts—a gap equivalent to 1.5 standard deviations and more than the Lexile difference between grade 4 and grade 8 texts on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)” (as cited in NGA & CCSSO, 2010b, p. 3). To reverse this trend, students must be required to read texts of the level of complexity identified in their grade-level text-complexity band. Teachers must provide students with a text complexity diet that will prepare them for success in college and 21st century careers. To do this, teachers must be familiar with the three elements to determine text complexity: (1) quantitative measures, (2) qualitative measures, and (3) reader and task considerations.

Quantitative Measures

Quantitative measures for determining text complexity deal with aspects of text that would be difficult for a human to evaluate, so computer programs perform this task. In the original release of the CCSS ELA/literacy, the standards only identified one text-complexity rater. Subsequent research in the Supplemental Information for Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy expands the number of text-complexity raters and puts them on a common scale for comparing across text-complexity rating tools (NGA & CCSSO, 2012).

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

The Common Core resources on text complexity can help us create the appropriate scaffolding to help students wade through difficult literary, nonfiction, and informational text and assist them in building a repertoire of skills and strategies that they will eventually employ without the need for scaffolding. This can open new worlds for students, enabling them to do such things as extract information from content-based texts, understand how an author uses syntax and figurative language to create mood and tone, and grasp meaning from classic novels that contain archaic text. As mastering complex text opens gates for students to success in college and careers, it is important for us as educators to understand the features of complex text that shut too many students out.

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Teachers now have a variety of rating tools to choose from to measure text complexity: ATOS Readability Formula, Degrees of Reading Power Analyzer, Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests, Lexile Framework for Reading, Reading Maturity Metric, and SourceRater. Some of the aspects of text that these computer models use to measure text complexity include the following.

• Length of sentences • Grade level of vocabulary • Paragraph structure • Degree of academic orientation • Semantic coherence • Text cohesion Although the tools differ in how they produce a text-complexity rating, each is anchored to the level of text complexity in first-year college-level texts in courses that produce credits toward graduation: “While there is variance among the measures about where they place any single text, they all climb reliably—though differently— up the text complexity ladder to college and career readiness” (NGA & CCSSO, 2012, p. 3). The Updated Text-Complexity Grade Bands and Associated Ranges From Multiple Measures chart (table 4.1) provides the text complexity range in twoyear intervals beginning at grade 2. Table 4.1 shows updated text complexity grade bands and associated ranges from multiple measures. Notice that there is some overlap in the range of text complexity between two-year grade levels. For example, the text complexity range for Degrees of Reading Power for second and third grades is 42–54, and the range for fourth and fifth grades is 52–60. The Flesch-Kincaid range for grades 2 and 3 is 1.98–5.34, and the range at grades 4 and 5 is 4.51 to 7.73.

While the range within a text-complexity band provides teachers with options, students are expected to continue to move up the text-complexity levels, by grade level and within grade level bands, so that by time they graduate from high school, they will be prepared to handle the text complexity expected of college students and knowledge workers.

Qualitative Measures

Educators, rather than a computer, determine the qualitative measure of text complexity. Qualitative measures, designed for use along with quantitative measures, capture elements of complexity that may not have been caught quantitatively. To assist teachers in assessing a text’s qualitative aspects, a focus group of teachers, representing a wide variety of teaching backgrounds, created a tool for evaluating the qualitative aspects of text complexity. Based on the dimensions of complex text

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

• Word frequency

Re ad y, S e t, S h ift

67

Table 4.1: Updated Text-Complexity Grade Bands and Associated Ranges From Multiple Measures

Reading Source­ Maturity Rater

Grades 2–3

2.75–5.14

42–54

1.98–5.34

420–820

3.53–6.13

0.05–2.48

Grades 4–5

4.97–7.03

52–60

4.51–7.73

740–1010

5.42–7.92

0.84–5.57

Grades 6–8

7.00–9.98

57–67

6.51–10.34

925–1185

7.04–9.57

4.11–10.66

Grades 9–10

9.67– 12.01

62–72

8.32–12.12

1050– 1335

8.41–10.81

9.02–13.93

Grades 11–CCR

11.20– 14.10

67–74

10.34–14.2

1185– 1385

9.57–12.00

12.30– 14.50

Source: NGA & CCSSO, 2012, p. 4.

suggested in appendix A of the CCSS (NGA & CCSSO, 2012) and elaborated on in the supplement to that appendix (NGA & CCSSO, 2012), the four qualitative dimensions necessary for determining text complexity include: 1. Structure 2. Language conventionality and clarity 3. Knowledge demands 4. Levels of meaning for literary texts or purpose for informational texts The teachers who created this tool see the four qualitative dimensions as lying on a continuum of difficulty, rather than being a series of separate stages or steps (NGA & CCSSO, 2012). The continuum of difficulty for these four qualitative dimensions ranges from easy to difficult within the grade band. It is expected that few authentic texts will rate at either end of the qualitative scale in each category. In other words, it is not likely that any one text will score beginning of lower grade or end of higher grade in each of the four dimensions. In addition, the tool’s creators believe that “some elements of the dimensions are better suited to literary or to information texts” (NGA & CCSSO, 2012, p. 4). Figure 4.1 (page 68) shows the continuum for each qualitative dimension of text complexity.

Reader and Task Considerations

The third approach used in determining text complexity, reader and task considerations, is not specific to the actual complexity of the text. These considerations deal with reader motivation and the purpose and difficulty of the tasks students are to do using the text. They also deal with the demands of the text-based questions students are expected to answer (NGA & CCSSO, 2012).

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

ATOS

Degrees of FleschLexile Reading Kincaid Power

Common Core Band

S H I F T I NG TO CO MMO N CO RE LIT E RACY

68

Category

Notes and Comments on Text and Support for Placement in This Band

Where to Place Within the Band?

Beginning of lower grade

End of lower grade

Structure (both story structure or form of piece) Language Conventionality and Clarity (including vocabulary load) Knowledge Demands (life, content, cultural, or literary) Levels of Meaning Literary Texts or Purpose for Informational Texts Overall placement

Justification

Source: Adapted from NGA & CCSSO, 2012, p. 6.

Figure 4.1: Qualitative dimensions of text complexity.

Beginning of higher grade

End of higher grade

Not suited to band

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

The CCSS writers believe that classroom teachers should be the ones to assess the reader and task considerations as “teachers employing their professional judgment, experience, and knowledge of their students and the subject are best situated to make such appraisals” (NGA & CCSSO, 2012, p. 7). For example, when students are interested in a particular text, they are more motivated to fathom through unfamiliar vocabulary and learn how to figure out complex sentence structures or syntax atypical of what they have been accustomed to reading. Teachers are better at determining whether their students would be motivated to tackle a particular text than those who are not familiar with them. Reading is more than a skill. It is a door opener. When students want to know what lies behind a door, they will be motivated enough to master the complex text required to unlock it.

Re ad y, S e t, S h ift

Text Selection—Setting College and Career Examples Starting in Kindergarten In selecting texts for students to read, there are considerations that teachers must make related not only to the quantitative, qualitative, and reader and task considerations, but also to text quality and coherence. Textual quality refers to the kinds of texts that students should read that represent the best of the writing craft in literary fiction and nonfiction, as well as informational text. As the CCSS state: To become college and career ready, students must grapple with works of exceptional craft and thought whose range extends across genres, cultures, and centuries. Such works offer profound insights into the human condition and serve as models for students’ own thinking and writing. (NGA & CCSSO, 2010a, p. 35)

The texts students read should be selected to help them grow as readers in literature, literary nonfiction, and informational texts. College-and-career-ready students must be able read and extract information and build knowledge from a variety of high-quality texts across a range of eras, cultures, and genres. Part of a teacher’s responsibility in designing instruction is to select texts that will systematically do this. While this has implications for shift 3, building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction (to be discussed later in this chapter), this particular reference focuses on the teacher’s role in selecting texts for specific purposes as part of preparing students for college and career.

Are We There Yet? Each school in a Common Core state is in a different place in implementing the standards. Many schools and districts are still in the early stages of figuring out what is needed to implement them successfully. The reason shift 1 requires the most study

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

The qualitative approach to rating text complexity and reader and task considerations are particularly important when evaluating the text complexity of poetry.

Poetry is difficult to rate using quantitative measures, so it is suggested that teachers use the other two approaches to determine the text complexity of poetry (NGA & CCSSO, 2012). This is also true for kindergarten and first-grade texts, as they frequently contain difficult-to-assess early reader supports, making it hard to judge the text complexity (NGA & CCSSO, 2012). Because the text complexity of poetry and kindergarten and first-grade texts is difficult to assess, appendix B of the CCSS provides a list of text exemplars for poetry and kindergarten through first-grade texts, along with text exemplars for grades 2 through 12 (NGA & CCSSO, 2010b). The list of exemplars can be a valuable resource to classroom teachers.

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Shift 2: Reading, Writing, and Speaking Grounded in Evidence From Both Literary and Informational Text Shift 2 demands that students use evidence from text in responding to questions that are text based and when supporting points, claims, and arguments they make in writing or speech. The premise behind this shift is that students should be reading, writing, and speaking for a specific reason or purpose. To drive students deeper into text and encourage close reading, teachers need to ask students questions that require them to seek out evidence from the text they are reading. This approach is very different from what has frequently been done in the past—asking questions that students can answer from personal experience or personal opinion. Speaking and writing about what students did over the summer, whether they liked the story they just read, or if they ever had to overcome a fear like the heroine of a story, are not effective models for what students will be expected to do in college and careers. These types of questions can be answered with little or no reading of the text. They do not require students to read the text closely and respond to questions with text-specific evidence.

Text-dependent questions, while they might start at the comprehension level, should progress up the hierarchy of critical thinking and complexity. Text-dependent questions should cause students to think, to read text closely in search of evidence, and to spend more time in text than out of text. Teachers must ask questions about texts that correspond to the text complexity for the grade level. These questions should link to the subheadings in the grade-specific standards—Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas, Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity. The questions should also reflect a hierarchy of difficulty that builds knowledge, whether about a topic in literature or a topic drawn from nonfiction or informational text.

© 2015 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

by staffs and the most intensive ongoing professional development is because it is not just a huge pedagogical change, it is also, in a sense, a culture shift. The requirement to provide access to grade-level texts to all students is seismic in nature because access means more than all students listening to the reading of a grade-level text. It means that every student, regardless of her or his reading level, is actively engaged in figuring out the meaning of the text; developing an understanding of grade-level vocabulary; digging into text to uncover meaning, inferences, and concepts; and extracting ideas and information to build knowledge in literature or in a content area. This is tough stuff, and most teachers will want deep and extended professional learning to aid them in implementing this shift successfully.

Re ad y, S e t, S h ift

Taking the questioning up a notch, we may ask students to compare and contrast two authors’ approaches to characterization or plot development (literature) or ask students how different authors use reason and evidence to support their points. In each case, we are requiring students to cite evidence from the texts to support their responses and asking increasingly difficult questions that drive students to closer reading of the text and higher levels of critical thinking. An excellent tool to use in determining the critical-thinking skills and depth of knowledge reflected in a question, task, or problem, is Hess’ Cognitive Rigor Matrix and Curricular Examples: Applying Webb’s Depth-of-Knowledge Levels to Bloom’s Cognitive Process Dimensions— ELA (Hess, 2009). This matrix provides a way to ensure that the questions we ask students and the assignments we give them are not always low level but, instead, represent increasingly difficult levels of thinking and complexity.

Remember the zettabyte? Knowledge workers will be required to sort through information not previously conceived of to draw out information for specific purposes, solve a problem, communicate knowledge verbally and in writing, and use information to innovate, create new products and services, or conceive new paradigms and prototypes. Knowledge workers will be required to read complex text and apply higher levels of critical thinking continuously and fluently. They will also need to develop schemas that allow them to sort through the increasingly vast amount of digital data produced. Asking students low-level questions about texts they read or questions that they can answer with little or no reading of the text does not prepare them to be knowledge workers.

Students learn by supporting their work, whether through responding to questions about a piece of text in a classroom discussion, writing an argumentative paper that requires documentation, or debating an issue that necessitates the citing of evidence from research. They learn not only from finding the answers to the questions but from answering the kinds of questions we pose. If they are regularly asked difficult questions and expected to supply evidence from the text in their responses whether verbally or in writing, they learn to think that way. Before sorting through gigabytes of information, students will be able to develop a mental framework of

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Questions that encompass a hierarchy of difficulty, for example, might reflect a grade-specific standard derived from key details, such as asking students to identify the main characters, the theme of a story, or the main ideas in an informational text and provide supporting key details. In every case, students should be expected to substantiate their answers with evidence from the text. Regarding an author’s style and craft, we might ask a question that requires students to explain how the author uses figurative language to create sympathetic characters or how the structure of an informational text facilitates the reader’s understanding and ability to access critical knowledge.

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TO COMMON CORE

LITERACY

Teach & Lead

—Robert Rothman, Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education and the author of Something in Common: The Common Core Standards and the Next Chapter in American Education

K–12 school and district administrators, professional development providers, and CCSS coaches will: Learn the history behind the Common Core and compelling reasons for deep implementation

•

Follow practical examples and stories that make complex content understandable

•

Examine relatable hot-button issues most schools face during implementation

•

Explore the necessary shifts in roles for students, teachers, principals, and leaders to ensure successful implementation ISBN 978-1-936763-29-0 90000

solution-tree.com

9 781936 763290

Visit go.solution-tree.com/commoncore to access materials related to this book.

CHERYL ZINTGRAFF TIBBALS VICTORIA L. BERNHARDT

•

LITERACY

The Common Core State Standards present educators with a dynamic change: a shift to 21st century learning. No longer can schools merely tweak the existing system to enact reform. Rather, to ensure lasting change, they must develop new philosophical and pedagogical approaches to learning. However daunting the task of implementation may seem, the standards provide an evidence-based road map to lead students to success. Shifting to Common Core Literacy provides a straightforward process and protocol for reading this map and developing a shared vision to effectively implement the CCSS schoolwide.

CO M M O N CO R E

“The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) lay out an ambitious set of goals for student learning. Students will only reach those goals if schools transform themselves to support those aims. Fortunately, Cheryl Zintgraff Tibbals and Victoria L. Bernhardt are here with tools to help school leaders get started. Their road map will be invaluable as educators take on this vital challenge.”

SHIFTING TO

SHIFTING

Reconceptualizing How We

SHIFTING TO COMMON CORE

LITERACY Reconceptualizing How We

Teach & Lead

C H E R Y L Z I N TG R A F F T I B B A L S V I C TO R I A L . B E R N H A R DT