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FIVE ESSENTIALS TO TEACHING WITH NEXT-GENERATION STANDARDS
The Common Core and other next-generation standards are neither the salvation nor the destruction of education. As standards go, the Common Core and other newer standards frameworks are okay. They are better than most previous standards, to be sure; they are not, however, perfect. But standards don’t need to be perfect; they only need to be useful to teacher work—all of the things teachers do to ensure their instruction is up to standard. The Common Core or any other standards framework is, after all, not an initiative; standards are just learning objectives, occasionally vague, and by no means comprehensive. Most importantly, they are nothing without great teaching. The only initiative in the CCSS is what you or others push to do with the standards.
While your literacy standards likely dictate very little about what classroom instruction should look like, they’re organized and articulated in ways that, when read closely, provide a framework for what instruction could be. Grab your standards: let’s get to work! We will begin by exploring five key ideas for teaching with next-generation standards.
1. Defining daily instruction
2. Reading closely versus close reading
3. Prioritizing critical reading
4. Prioritizing writing
5. Integrating language standards into reading and writing
Remember that the guidance in this chapter is built around the Common Core. If you are not using the CCSS, you can also review your own standards with the following key ideas in mind.
Key Idea 1: Defining Daily Instruction
The first thing to locate in your standards and organize curriculum around are the articulations that address literacy every day in your classroom. In the Common Core, these are Reading standard ten, the text-complexity standard, and Reading standard one, the evidence standard; responding in writing using evidence, Writing standard nine, supports this reading work. Reading anchor standard one invokes both process (“read closely”) and product (“determine what the text says”); it identifies both explicit and inferential comprehension as the result of reading, and text evidence as the means by which students demonstrate such comprehension. It also calls for students to have repeated opportunities to read closely to “support conclusions drawn from the text.” The kinds of conclusions they draw are encompassed in Reading standards two through nine, which detail the particular kinds of analysis and evaluation students must do to understand complex texts. Picture, if you will, a ladder: the sides of the ladder are Reading anchor standard one and Reading anchor standard ten, which set the foundation that coursework is based on engaging complex texts, and that students do so by using evidence from these texts to demonstrate their comprehension. These sides support the rungs, anchor standards two through nine, which address certain kinds of evidence and uses of evidence in order to demonstrate more sophisticated levels of understanding (NGA & CCSSO, 2010).
The use of the word analysis in the grades 9–10 and 11–12 standards of Reading standard one illustrates this ladder relationship: it means students are to regularly engage in identifying evidence, understanding the meaning of that evidence, and using that evidence to explain accounts, processes, concepts, and so on. From this foundation, teachers can then focus on the standards at the highest cognitive level of Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy or Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (2002):
о Analyzing and strategic thinking (CCRA.R.2–6, CCRA.W.2)
о Evaluating (CCRA.R.8, CCRA.W.1)
о Synthesizing or extended thinking (CCRA.R.7, 9; CCRA.W.7–8)
What are the implications of this structure for instruction? Look to the title of this book, Texts, Tasks, and Talk, to help build your instructional ladder. Start with the text—grade-appropriate complexity in language and content, with the goal of helping students read proficiently and independently (CCRA.R.10). Concurrently, align tasks to help students ascertain and analyze the specific features of the text (CCRA.R.2–9) to literally and inferentially comprehend; finally, use deliberate talk to help students articulate this comprehension in discussion (CCRA.SL.1) and writing (CCRA.W.9).
Key Idea 2: Reading Closely Versus Close Reading
The chatter surrounding close reading—the intensive multiday study of the language and meaning of a single text—would suggest it is the de facto method of implementing the Common Core. But neither the term nor the lesson concept is anywhere in the standards themselves. What the Common Core does say, although a bit simplistically, is useful: high school students should “read closely” (CCRA.R.1) and, as stated in the introduction to the CCSS, “comprehend as well as critique”—that is, they should be reading to literally, inferentially, and critically understand the text itself (NGA & CCSSO, 2010).
Reading closely, then, means students are constantly being taught how to engage rich content and then use these methods and the texts to solve content-area problems; it means that multiple ways of integrating, understanding, and applying texts are needed to meet the standards, including but not limited to close reading. In fact, all of the things expected in a close reading—the focus and intensity of looking closely at a text, applying the passage, discussing the content among peers—becomes the essential work of the classroom, not a separate or obligatory task. Learning to read complex content-area texts is the mechanism for, not the supplement to, developing disciplinary literacy. In other words, literally every day has to be a close reading day.
Key Idea 3: Prioritizing Critical Reading
While next-generation assessments such as the PARCC and SBAC place significantly greater emphasis on the most cognitively demanding learning standards than did previous state assessments (Herman & Linn, 2014), teachers I observed while researching for this book often told me they were challenged in finding time to effectively address the intertextual analysis (CCRA.R.7, 9), argument evaluation (CCRA.R.8), and research inquiry (CCRA.W.7–8) work so prominent on the new assessments.
So, why not start with the most rigorous anchor standards? In the Common Core, these are the Reading anchor standards under the domain Integration of Knowledge and Ideas and the Writing anchor standards under the domain Research to Build and Present Knowledge. To integrate is synonymous with to synthesize, and, indeed, in two of these three anchor standards for each strand, students are expected to derive new understanding by comparing multiple treatments of a topic or text. The verb evaluate, the most cognitively demanding work in the original Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy, appears in two out of the three of these anchor standards in the Integration of Knowledge and Ideas domain. This is true across text type (Literary and Informational) and subject area (ELA, social studies, and science and technical subjects). These standards emphasize formation of “coherent understanding” of essential disciplinary concepts (RH.11–12.9, RST.11–12.9) and “address a question or solve a problem” (RI.11–12.7, RST.11–12.7, RH.11–12.7; NGA & CCSSO, 2010). To do so, students in all high school grades and in all content areas need to make sense of “various accounts of a subject” (RI.9–10.7) or “multiple sources of information” (RI.11–12.7, RH.11–12.7, RST.11–12.7). Nearly every standard for grades 9–10 and 11–12 in this strand asks that students engage in multiple cognitive demands to demonstrate proficiency. The same is also true of Speaking and Listening anchor standards two and three, which involve texts as well (albeit multimodal ones or with the original intention of being seen or heard rather than read).
Traditionally, a teacher might position such learning objectives as the culmination of comprehension work; however, it’s best to think of them as a foundation or template for your task design, underlying all the work you do in your classroom. To start, your instructional activities should either “address a question or solve a problem” (RI.11–12.7, RH.11–12.7, RST.11–12.7); evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning of texts (CCRA.R.8); or compare and synthesize multiple texts as a means of deepening understanding of the key concepts and skills of the content area (R.9; NGA & CCSSO, 2010). Starting with one of these processes not only makes critical thinking primary but also centers the work of your classroom on learning how to read in critical and complex ways, moving away from teaching generic comprehension strategies (such as summarizing) and toward helping students navigate the specific complexities of content-area problems and texts.
Key Idea 4: Prioritizing Writing
Most guidance on teaching writing defaults to organizing instruction by genre, as the Common Core and other next-generation standards are themselves organized. The results are unit plans and curriculum maps in which genres are taught in isolation, as if argumentation, for example, is only to be used in October and April, expository writing in November, narrative in September, and so on. This is an arbitrary and counterintuitive organizing principle, most especially because the common forms of high school writing—the literary analysis essay, the lab report, the document-based question (DBQ)—incorporate both expository and argumentative components. Furthermore, in college and career, students will be asked to solve tasks authentic to the discipline or professional context in which they are situated, not based on genre. Writing standards one through three, which dictate students should compose responses in the three core academic genres (argumentative, expository, and narrative), provide useful guidance on the features and structure of students’ written responses, but they do little to clarify the thinking and tasks necessary to produce that writing.
Luckily, there are writing standards that do just that. In the Common Core, the Writing anchor standards in the Research to Build and Present Knowledge domain focus equally on building and presenting knowledge—in other words, understanding and responding to sources. Reading and writing here are deeply intertwined; in fact, the Reading and Writing standards largely demand the same kinds of reading, reflecting, and responding from students. Note the following connections.
о CCRA.R.7, CCRA.W.7: Engage texts and research to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem.
о CCRA.R.7, CCRA.R.9, CCRA.W.7, CCRA.W.8: Synthesize multiple sources on the subject to demonstrate understanding.
о CCRA.R.8, CCRA.W.8: Evaluate the evidence and reasoning of texts and sources.
о All Reading and Writing anchor standards, but especially CCRA.W.9: Draw on and integrate evidence from texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Notice the pattern? Students engage with and incorporate multiple sources. They gather, draw, synthesize, and integrate evidence—whether from a Google search or texts supplied to them—to solve content-area problems. This is precisely what the performance tasks on both the SBAC and PARCC assessments demand of students, and it’s exactly the kind of work students should be doing all of the time in class. In fact, chapter 6 (page 77) makes the case that your curriculum should be built around offering students as many opportunities as possible to respond to rich content-area readings and problems—this will maximize your opportunities to teach, practice, and assess the argumentative and expository skills your students need.
Key Idea 5: Integrating Language Standards Into Reading and Writing
In the CCSS ELA, the Language standards are the last strand listed, and it’s all too easy to cast them aside—especially if you’re a social studies or science teacher—or address them in isolation, seeing them as merely grammar or vocabulary. Don’t dismiss them. They need to be integrated into your reading and writing instruction; in fact, several of these standards are critical to reading and writing well. Indeed, the standards must be applied during reading and writing if students are to, say, “apply knowledge of language … to make effective choices for meaning or style” (CCRA.L.3), “use context … as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase” (L.4.4.A), and “demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances” (CCRA.L.5; NGA & CCSSO, 2010).
What the Language standards demand, then, is to be taught in tandem with the Reading or Writing standards they best support. For example:
о Making effective choices for meaning or style in their writing (CCRA.L.3) should be supported as students are developing and organizing their ideas in response to the specific demands—content, audience, format, and so on—of a written task (CCRA.W.4).
о Demonstrating command of written conventions of grammar (CCRA.L.1) and spelling (CCRA.L.2) should be supported as students are preparing to complete or publish their writing (CCRA.W.5).
о Applying an understanding of syntax to the study of complex texts when reading (L.11–12.3) should be supported as students analyze and assess the role of structure and syntax in both literary and informational texts (CCRA.R.5).
о Determining the meaning of academic vocabulary in context (CCRA.L.4, CCRA.L.6) should be supported as students identify and analyze the figurative, connotative, and technical meanings of key words (CCRA.R.4); in fact, CCRA.L.4 and CCRA.L.6 essentially provide the how to Reading anchor standard four’s what.
о Analyzing figurative language (CCRA.L.5) should be supported as students read for craft and structure (CCRA.R.4–6); it is the “missing” literary analysis standard, in that it does not appear in the Reading standards proper but is as vital to understanding the language and ideas of a text as organization (CCRA.R.5) and point of view (CCRA.R.6).
One thing that becomes abundantly clear in this key idea is that Reading standards, and especially any act of reading closely, are incomplete without language benchmarks, which are critical to analyzing the nonliteral and rhetorical components of texts. The Language standards in the Common Core, for instance, fill in missing components of literary analysis (for example, figurative language and syntax), and provide further clarity on how to engage in word study. Indeed, when analyzing and preparing texts for instruction, keep your Language standards side by side with your Reading standards as you determine what is complex in a text and your standards-aligned teaching points, those complexities on which you’ll focus your instruction.
Prioritizing Standards
Throughout this book, you’ll read that the task—what students are asked to do—is the most important element. Such an emphasis is not at the expense of the standards; it is because of them. You might have noticed, in fact, that, save for some of the Speaking and Listening standards (see chapter 8, page 111), almost all of the Common Core literacy standards were addressed in the previous section. This was possible because each standard or standard cluster was given a purpose; they were not seen as obligations. Certain standards were not prioritized over others; they were not apportioned out across a year. As shown in the previous section, standards are dependent on one another; they are not sequenced, but symbiotic. They need to be organized accordingly.
To see this in action, read across the strands of your standards, looking for patterns that cut across the Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language standards. Do you notice the repetition in language and concept? The standards are linked. No individual standard is emphasized over others; what is emphasized are certain kinds of skills. For example, consider the following skills that appear in various standards.
о Constructing evidence-based arguments: CCRA.W. 1, CCRA.R.1, CCRA.W.9, CCRA.R.7, CCRA.SL.2, and portions of CCRA.W.7 and CCRA.W.8
о Synthesizing multiple sources: CCRA.R.7, CCRA.R.9, CCRA.W.7, CCRA.SL.2
о Evaluating arguments: CCRA.R.8, CCRA.W.8, CCRA.SL.3
о Accessing information: CCRA.W.7, CCRA.W.8, CCRA.L.6
о Analyzing and applying academic vocabulary: CCRA.RL.4, CCRA.RI.4, CCRA.L.4, CCRA.L.5, CCRA.L.6
This list represents the core of the intellectual work prioritized by the CCSS ELA: that students ought to be analyzing and arguing about texts, in writing and in discussion, from the very first day of every class. If that’s the non-negotiable the standards present, students can’t learn Reading anchor standard one or Writing anchor standard one only in August and January. Nor can they experience these standards singularly or in isolation from one another. The priority, in other words, is not so much addressing the standards on any given day, but rather ensuring that students have learning experiences (reading across multiple texts, analyzing and inquiring into content-area issues, and responding formally and informally in writing and speaking) that address the multiple standards. This is the core knowledge in the standards and is precisely what the next-generation assessments such as the PARCC and SBAC do—address more than ten standards in a single task. This is also what you must attend to in the design of your instruction.
It is, then, progression and not prioritization that truly matters. Prioritization emphasizes individual standards; progression, however, focuses on addressing all or many of the standards and varying the supports—the kinds and complexity of the texts, tasks, and depth of performances—used to assist students. Progression is a necessary mindset when applying the standards because, as an end-of-the-year benchmark, the Common Core can only articulate for you what students should know and do after a year in your class; the responsibility to articulate what that knowing and doing means in September, October, and so on is your own. This progression requires a map of how students might learn the essential skills and knowledge of the standards, a kind of hyper-focused scope and sequence map that could support teaching points and serve as a rubric for students to monitor their progress toward proficiency toward the standards.
Table 1.1 provides a visual representation of such a progression for analyzing and assessing arguments (CCRA.R.8; one of the key critical-thinking benchmarks in the Common Core) and evaluating point of view and reasoning using evidence (CCRA. SL.2; an objective that cuts across all content areas). The example models the grades 9–10 band. Here, the explicit language of the standards serves as the fourth-quarter benchmark. Specifics about the texts analyzed (CCRA.R.10) and the kinds of performances students will complete to demonstrate proficiency (CCRA.W. 10, CCRA. SL.4) clarify what it means to succeed independently over time. Teachers deconstruct the standards into individual skills and then backmap these skills across the year so that students continually engage with the standards in ways that increase the quality and complexity of the work in step with their development. At the same time, however, teachers also map out developmentally appropriate performance opportunities with the whole standard to ensure practice opportunities remain complex. Teachers sequence texts, too, so that Lexile complexity, a quantitative measure of the difficulty of the text’s language and syntax, increases over the course of the year (1080L–1305L) and that students are exposed to increasingly complex kinds of texts. Differentiation can occur in both skill and text, depending on student readiness.
Table 1.1: Sample Learning Progression for Analyzing and Assessing Arguments, Grades 9–10 (RI.9–10.8, SL.9–10.3)
Visit go.solution-tree.com/commoncore for a reproducible version of this table.
Because the literacy standards are organized and articulated similarly across the content areas, a progression like the one in table 1.1 can be leveraged by the entire school with minor adaptions—such as changing the text types—to ensure students are getting consistent practice in these skills and performances in all of their coursework. By honing in on specific skill clusters that address multiple standards, teachers remove the need to obsessively unpack or sequence individual standards; rather, by focusing on the most complex and worthy learning skills across the standards—such as argumentative writing—you identify the teaching points that could enhance student learning in all aspects of their literacy.
Next Steps: Creating Learning Progressions
For a learning progression to be useful to instruction, the process of creating it needs to be instructive. For that to occur, three elements are necessary: (1) all educators enacting the learning must be involved, (2) there must be time to fully develop the progressions and then monitor and revise during and after implementation, and (3) there must be a process that leverages the key tools for teaching—the standards, student work, and the texts—for making strategic decisions. Such a process ensures everyone understands the expectations for students and also builds buy-in for actually enacting practice that supports students in achieving the expectations. What’s described in the following six steps is a continual process.
Determine Priorities
Using the guidance provided earlier in the chapter, home in on the critical areas students need to master in order to be college and career ready: for example, analyzing ideas and language in texts, synthesizing evidence from multiple sources in order to solve problems, reading grade-level texts independently, and so on. Identify the literacy standards that address this skill area and place these in the Q4 column of your progression—these represent the priorities for the year. (Visit go.solution-tree/commoncore for a blank reproducible version of table 1.1.)
Identify Outcomes
Determine the key cumulative behaviors and performances of the skill cluster by articulating what the summative proficiency of this skill should be—for example, an eight- to ten-page research report or engagement with an independent reading text at the high end of the grades 9–10 band for twenty or more minutes. There may be multiple ways of assessment for each cluster. Place these outcomes in the potential work products row.
Note that while Q4 performances are likely to involve formal essays or other longer or larger tasks, that doesn’t mean similar kinds of performances can’t be assigned in previous quarters. For example, students might still write an argumentative essay during the first semester or throughout the year; the difference would be that the demands and expectations for their performance—for example, the number and complexity of texts to be used, the writing components expected, and so on—would be less.
Define Ambiguous Language
The language in some of the standards is not likely to be practice ready; in other words, it may not be clear what engaging in the behavior or performance looks like in practice, for either your instruction or the student’s work. Writing standard one for grades 9–10, for example, has a number of elements in which the descriptors, while generally comprehensible, give us little information about what it would mean to teach these skills. To determine what instruction should look like, first work with your colleagues to identify those words or phrases in the standard that need further clarity (see bolded language in figure 1.1).
Note: The elements that are not practice ready are in bold.
Source for standards: NGA & CCSSO, 2010.
Figure 1.1: Example of non-practice-ready language in the Common Core.
Teacher teams should have a lot of questions about language from this standard: What is a precise claim exactly? What does it mean to create cohesion? How do the standard’s requirements compare to the writing students normally produce? What would be needed for all students to be able to achieve proficiency in these skills over time? The answers to these questions go a long way toward recognizing student needs while learning to write and what that learning might look like over time.
Once the potentially confusing language has been identified, the teams come to consensus on the specifics of what proficient student work would look like in this particular area. For example, a precise claim is a claim directly addressing a specific literary element and its effects, rather than a list thesis indicating several literary elements. When it’s clear what it would mean to perform up to standard in this area, consider the following.
о How does this performance goal compare to that of a typical performance of your students?
о What would it mean to learn and practice this skill over time?
о How might this skill or performance be articulated or taught to students?
Agree on Interim Benchmarks and Expectations
Start with Q1, think about what your students know and can do: what is their starting point, and what, as a result, is yours? Articulate what you think are the essentials of learning in this skill area during the first forty to fifty days of school; write these in the Q1 column of table 1.1 (pages 17–18). To complete the remaining sections of the chart, discuss what you want to teach students thereafter and what you would expect them to be able to do, incrementally, as the school year progresses. As you come to consensus on what it means to demonstrate a partial, developmental, and with-support understanding in the skill area over time, reflect on four considerations: (1) what components students would likely know or be able to do and to what extent, (2) the level of cognitive rigor at which students could complete these components, (3) the kinds of performances or products expected for this level of understanding, and (4) whether students could produce these performances or products independently or with support. Use your answers to compose initial benchmarks for columns Q2 through Q3.
Triangulate With Student Work
Scan portfolios or other collections of student writing over time to determine students’ existing competency or likely competency in the skill areas. What do students, on average, seem to know and what are they able to do in this area? Where do they need additional or different kinds of support? Compare your findings to your initial learning progression and adjust the progression to align with anticipated student needs.
Develop an Initial Plan for Assessments, Texts, and Teaching Points
Use the quarterly benchmarks you articulated to conduct initial brainstorming or decision making about what interim assessments in each quarter might look like, which texts are likely to be at the appropriate level of complexity given the point of year and the task, and what skills you’ll need to teach to students. Continue to modify and expand these components over time.
While progressions are a useful planning tool prior to or at the outset of the school year, you can also develop them during the year in response to student progress. Because many of the skills and concepts to be taught in your selected skill clusters may not have been articulated fully in your team’s previous work, your initial progression is not likely to be fully clear or coherent; it gains clarity as you teach and assess student learning, using the experience of trying out the elements of the progression to revise and improve the working document. As the document becomes more refined and focused, it can serve as a kind of standards-based reporting tool of student progress, enabling you to monitor and differentiate supports based on students’ progress toward proficiency in the selected standards.
