K-6 ELA COMMON CORE instructional resources

teachers in a district can use FineTune to work toward calibrating their assessment of students’ writing to match up with a comprehensive rubric, the Common Core standards, and each other.

Teachers choose from a database of hundreds of actual student essays and evaluate each essay based on a five-category rubric aligned with the Common Core. They receive immediate, category-by-category comparative scoring and analysis for each essay they score. The, they take built-in assessments to measure the quality of their scoring from the company’s assessment product, Assessments21.

Once they pass these assessments, teachers become approved “readers” for common writing assignments and exams. Supervisors or mentors in the district can use the assessment data to provide focused professional development in support of teachers. The company also acts as a liaison to the district to analyze results and offer suggestions for additional training, as needed.

Misconception 1: Definitions do the trick.

knowing a word's definition is important, it's not nearly enough.

To know a word well and use it appropriately and effectively, students need to be aware of its multiple dimensions (Bromley, 2012).

Most students will best learn the many dimensions of words through direct instruction that includes the definition and the etymology, or origin, of the word.

begin by showing students the word in print along with a picture or drawing. Then, connect to students' prior knowledge by asking what they know about the word or what they notice about its structure

Provide a definition that builds on what students have supplied. Point out the word's structure and idiosyncratic spelling. Identify related words. Encourage students to use the new word in speaking. You might have student partners share sentences with each other. If students keep vocabulary notebooks, have them write the word in their notebooks and draw a picture or add a short definition for future reference.

To get ideas for innovative and engaging vocabulary lessons, visit some of the websites listed in "Selected Online Vocabulary Resources."

Misconception 2: Weekly vocabulary lists are effective.

Unfortunately, this age-old method of vocabulary instruction continues in many classrooms.

rote memorization does not support word learning (Allington, 2012; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986). Learning anything, including new words, involves connecting or integrating the new information with what you already know. If students have little background knowledge about new words or see no connections between what they know and what is new, they will not learn effectively.

different ways of organizing words for vocabulary exploration are readily available.

Misconception 3: Teachers should teach all hard words, especially those printed in bold or italics.

Many teachers preteach every difficult word identified in the basal manual or highlighted in the textbook. The problem with this approach is twofold. First, students may already be familiar with some words, so teaching them is a waste of time. Second, some words are not important enough to teach because although they appear in one selection, they will not appear frequently in future readings.

ask the following questions: Do students know the word already? Is the word essential to understanding the selection at hand? Will the word appear in future readings?

When you reduce the number of words to teach, you avoid cognitive overload (Bromley, 2007).

It's probably a good idea to teach no more than 3–4 new words per selection in grades 1–3 and 5–7 new words per selection in grades 4 and up.

Some highlighted terms absolutely need to be taught, and some should be ignored. It's also beneficial to teach students how to find the meanings of these words for themselves if they don't know them.

Misconception 4: The study of Latin and Greek roots is too hard for young learners.

More than 60 percent of academic words have word parts (also called morphemes or roots) that always carry the same meaning (Nagy, Anderson, Schommer, Scott, & Stallman, 1989). Knowing that words can be broken down into meaning units is a powerful strategy for vocabulary development (Ayers, 1986; Baumann, Kameenui, & Ash, 2003; Harmon, Hedrick, & Wood, 2005).

Until recently, teaching Latin and Greek word roots occurred only in upper-grade or content-area classrooms. But a growing body of research tells us that this strategy should be introduced in the primary grades (Mountain, 2005; Rasinski, Padak, Newton, & Newton, 2011).

Roots have two features that make them easy to teach: They represent simple, familiar concepts, and their meaning is stable—for instance, port means "to carry" and graph means "to write." Once students understand the linguistic principle that words with the same roots are related in meaning, they can use words they know to unlock the meaning of new words.

One of the most commonly encountered roots in the English language is the Latin base mov- / mot-, which means "to move." Even the youngest learners know words like motor, motorcycle, or move. When they meet cognate academic words like promotion or motivate, students can apply the concept of movement to figure out the new words.

Teaching the meaning of prefixes is especially helpful because a few prefixes are used in a large number of words. When the prefix re- appears in return, replace, and refund, for example, it always means "back." Figure 1 presents roots that can easily be taught in the primary grades.

Misconception 5: Word learning can't be fun.

Writing words multiple times, copying definitions, completing worksheets, drilling with flash cards, and taking weekly tests—students and most teachers consider this drudgery. As a result, students may come to abhor vocabulary study.

Think about the games your family plays at home. Many of them probably involve words. Scrabble, Boggle, Balderdash, Buzzword, Pictionary, crossword puzzles, and word jumbles are just a few of the many games involving words that individuals and families have played and enjoyed for years.

we have found gamelike activities to be a wonderful way to inspire interest in and develop knowledge about words. Many great word games can easily be integrated into a word study curriculum. Just a few of the many online resources for word games and puzzles are MindFun Gamequarium Funschool.com Vocabulary.co.il MyVocabulary Have you ever noticed that when you play a word game for a while, you get better at it? That's learning! And when students engage with word games in the classroom, they too will improve their word knowledge.

memorizing definitions alone does not lead to word learning. Students need multiple opportunities to see, write, and use new words. Consequently, teaching fewer words and connecting these new words with familiar words or concepts will facilitate learning.

Focusing at least some vocabulary instruction on roots, especially those deriving from Latin and Greek provides students with tools they can use to unlock the meaning of unfamiliar words. And finally, word study can—and should—be interesting, interactive, and fun!

Selected Online Vocabulary Resources

Figure 1. A Beginning List of Roots

If anyone questions you, point to page 8 of Appendix A of the common core.

Myth #2: All prereading activities are inappropriate.

Common-core training materials (like this exemplar, for instance) include some not-so-subtle suggestions that "prereading" activities and discussions are a bad idea.

we began referring to the "just start reading" strategy as a "cold read," and we struggled with whether cold reading was always an effective instructional approach.

I tried to understand the meaning behind this message about prereading activities. Ultimately, it was about making sure students built comprehension by actually reading a text rather than listening attentively to what others are saying about that text.

a teacher who says, "We've read memoirs before. What are some of the rhetorical devices we might find in a memoir? Ok, now let's read the first two pages of this memoir together. When you see one of these devices, put a checkmark beside it. Then we will stop to discuss what is going on in this text. Be ready to discuss at least one spot you've marked."

the first teacher's preview of the plot doesn't create a need to read, and actually makes it easy for students not to read. That teacher is also missing an opportunity to set up the expectation that students should read closely, to analyze the text.

the second teacher activates students' background knowledge and provides students with a beginning framework to help them read closely and analyze the structure of the text. Neither of these teachers is choosing to do a "cold read," but only one of them is setting students up to do a "close read." Over time, the second teacher's approach is much more likely to develop students with the capacity to "just start reading."

"Cold reading" is an instructional approach, not a standard. Experiment with cold reading for the sake of building independence in your students,

Myth #3 Answering text-dependent questions is what teaches students to be analytical readers.

we want students to be able to demonstrate their comprehension by responding to questions that drive them back to the text for answers. But let's not forget the steps that teach students how to answer text-dependent questions.

The focus on text-dependent questions in the instructional shifts documents that accompany the core seems to affirm that approach. But these documents omit modeling and processing, which should come in between assigning and assessing.

invite students to the reading through purpose and show students how to read for that purpose through a think-aloud or other modeling strategy.

It's the middle—the modeling and processing—where students actually get a clue as to how to be better readers. The questions tell us that they got there (or not).

Myth #4: The common core abandons fiction.

the whole of the complaint as voiced above is not accurate.

long before the common-core standards came on the scene, reading specialists like Harvey and Goudvis were already arguing that we have wandered too far from analytic, nonfiction reading and writing.

The standards even recommend a full 50/50 split between fiction and nonfiction in the elementary grades, giving way to an 80/20 proportion in the secondary grades.

Secondly, the common core does value creative and fictional reading and writing,

the common core is clear that its recommendations span the reading expectations for all core subjects. As a result, it is not advocating for us ELA teachers to dump poetry and novels except for, say, two months out of the 10 in our school year. Rather, we’re encouraged to partner with our colleagues in a substantive way, and work together to help kids approach nonfiction texts with critical and active minds.

the common core does make some mystifying genre distinctions. All creative reading and writing is lumped under the "narrative" umbrella, implying it is always a description of logical, sequential events, usually personal

Teachers will need to approach this particular facet of the core with the same critical thinking that the core itself advocates.

The standards are pushing us to examine our practices, and examine them we must. We must push ourselves in the same way we are being expected to push our students. We educators must thoughtfully read the complex common-core documents in their entirety, write rigorous lesson plans, and listen critically to those who are trying to help us learn and change.

covers the development of the two pieces of the test that will yield students' summative scores in mathematics and English/language arts and be used for accountability purposes: a computer-based end-of-year test and a performance-based assessment given toward the end of the year. The scope of work also includes developing midyear formative assessments that are part of PARCC's system but are optional for states.

A preliminary blueprint of PARCC's English/language arts exam shows that the performance-based assessment, spread over two days, would involve a "research simulation" that asks students to read a suite of texts, including an "anchor" text such as a speech by a prominent historical figure. They would have to answer questions that require them to cite evidence from the text for their answers and write an essay. Another aspect of the performance-based test would require students to "engage" with literature (grades 3-5) or conduct literary analysis (grades 6-11) using a combination of shorter and longer texts. The end-of-year exam would employ six literary and informational texts and ask students to respond to machine-scorable questions, including ones that demand comparison and synthesis of the readings. The end-of-year test in English/language arts would yield at least half of a student's points in that topic. One-third to one-half would come from the performance-based test, according to the preliminary blueprint.

ARCC's math test will include three types of questions: "innovative," machine-scorable, computer-based items; items that call for written arguments or justifications; critiques of mathematical reasoning, or proof that students "attended to precision" in math; and items involving real-world scenarios. The performance-based assessment in math will count for 40 percent to 50 percent of a student's points in that subject, and the end-of-course exam will yield 50 percent to 60 percent of the points. The math exams will focus on solving problems in the "major content areas" at each grade level, as well as demonstrating conceptual understanding, fluency and mathematical reasoning, and applying knowledge to real-world problems. At the high school level, PARCC will develop two series of end-of-course math tests: a traditional one—Algebra 1, geometry, and Algebra 2—and one that integrates those topics. Those parallel pathways reflect choices educators can make about how to design math courses from the common standards. The solicitation document answers a question that had been circulating among some educators of young children. PARCC said that its tests will be given by computer to students in grades 6-11, but those in grades 3-5 will answer questions with pencil and paper because of concerns about younger children's keyboarding skills.

PARCC has contracted with the Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin to build prototype assessment tasks in math, and with the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Learning to generate such items in literacy. Those items are slated for release this summer.

The new standards instead propose that teachers move students purposefully through increasingly complex text to build skill and stamina.

What Makes Text Complex?

teachers need to answer the question, What do we mean when we say that a text is difficult?

look at these factors along with several others that also affect readers' ability to comprehend text.

Vocabulary

If you ask students what makes reading hard, they blame the words.

Studies show that higher-order thinking in reading depends heavily on knowledge of word meanings.1

Often, textbooks and teachers focus their attention on teaching students the vocabulary words that describe central concepts

However, these words are usually surrounded by other essential but more general academic terms, such as exerts, estimates, determines, distributed, resulting, culminates, and classify. These words, every bit as much as those in the first list, are used in particular ways in the various disciplines and warrant instructional attention.

Students' ability to comprehend a piece of text depends on the number of unfamiliar domain-specific words and new general academic terms they encounter.

Sentence Structure

Sentence structure matters, too, because it determines how the words operate together.

aspects of sentence structure can determine how hard it is for readers to make sense of text. Shorter sentences, for example, tend to be easier to read than longer sentences; presumably, they put less demand on the reader's working memory. Longer sentences are likely to include multiple phrases or clauses, so they tend to include more ideas that have to be related to one another. They also have a greater density (longer noun or verb phrases) and more embedding (more complex relationships).

In some cases, complex sentence structures are necessary to communicate the complexity of the information itself—thus the long noun phrases common in science. In literary passages, long-sentence writers like William Faulkner or Evelyn Waugh may be trying to get readers to slow down and explore the architecture of the thoughts and feelings being expressed.

If students are to interpret the meanings such complex sentence structures convey, they need to learn how to make sense of the conventions of text—phrasing, word order, punctuation, and language.

Coherence

Another challenge concerns how particular words, ideas, and sentences in text connect with one another, a feature referred to as coherence. Authors use pronouns, synonyms, ellipses, and other tools to connect the ideas across text.

Younger students often have difficulty making such connections, especially if the ideas are far apart or the referents don't get restated frequently. Distant or complex cohesive links can also be challenging for second-language learners or for older students reading about an unfamiliar topic.

Organization

some kinds of text—such as a science experiment or a recipe—order events in a time sequence. This would also be true of some fiction or historical stories, but not all of them. You will most likely never see a writer play around with a time sequence in presenting a science experiment, but flashbacks in literature and nonsequential presentations of events in historical writing are common and important.

Other organizational structures include compare-contrast and problem-solution.

Similarly, problem-solution structures are evident in both science and social studies

Some organizational structures are used to organize particular text features;

Students who are aware of the patterns authors use to communicate complex information have an advantage in making sense of text.

Background Knowledge

A final determinant of text difficulty, however, depends on the reader's prior knowledge.

Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is often recommended for use with adolescents. Hemingway's language is spare and plain; he uses common words, and his sentences are often short, without embedding or complexity. A text gradient analysis would place this text at a 6th grade reading level. Yet many students at this age would have difficulty understanding this beautiful book. The reason is obviously not in the book itself but in the interaction between the reader and the book. Few preteens have had the emotional experiences that would prepare them to understand the old man's determination to maintain hope and dignity in the face of overwhelming odds. Students' background knowledge, including developmental, experiential, and cognitive factors, influences their ability to understand the explicit and inferential qualities of a text.

What Can Teachers Do About Text Complexity?

Knowledge of text complexity can help teachers design three important components of literacy instruction: building skills, establishing purpose, and fostering motivation.

Build Skills

Some students can't make sense of a complex text because they can't decode it. Any older student who still struggles with decoding needs intervention to address this difficulty.

But even students who have basic decoding skills sometimes struggle to deploy these skills easily and accurately enough to get a purchase on challenging text. To help these students develop reading fluency, teachers should give them lots of practice with reading the same text, as well as instruction to help them develop a stronger sense of where to pause in sentences, how to group words, and how their voices should rise or fall at various junctures when reading aloud.

Fluency instruction becomes more powerful when it's taught not as an end in itself, but rather in the context of students' attempts to make sense of a particular text.

True fluency is not merely lining up one sentence after another and reading them aloud quickly; it's also maintaining understanding across a text. Therefore, fluency instruction should emphasize sentence structure and meaning. Teachers should have students pause to discuss the meaning of the text. They should pair repeated readings of the same text with questions that require the student to read closely for detail and key ideas.

Ongoing, solid vocabulary instruction is another essential component to help students develop skill in reading complex text. This instruction should focus not just on domain-specific words and phrases that describe the central concepts in the subject area, but also on general academic words.

Effective vocabulary instruction usually provides a rich exploration of word meanings, in which students do more than just copy dictionary definitions—they consider synonyms, antonyms, categories, and specific examples for the words under study.

Students also explore the connections among words, considering other words in the same category, comparing and contrasting words with similar meanings, evaluating or constructing analogies, and building word webs.

They also have opportunities to use the words in reading, writing, speaking, listening, drawing, and even physically acting them out.

teachers can guide them to think about the meanings that the authors intended to convey (for example, the differences in implication between nosey and curious, or cheap and frugal).

Establish Purpose

Younger children frequently encounter hybrid texts that combine a narrative story with expository information. For example, in the Magic School Bus books, the characters take field trips to learn about electricity, weather, dinosaurs, and other topics. When reading these books, children need to determine whether to focus on the story of the field trip or the information about the concepts. Until they figure it out, they may feel confused.

Older students are confronted with texts from science, history, mathematics, and literature; and they have to grasp the purposes for reading each of these texts so that they can focus their attention appropriately. For example, science texts focus heavily on causation. These texts convey information about what causes what, but they are not typically concerned with the intention behind these events.

In contrast, in reading history and literature, readers need to be concerned with not just the causes of events, but also the human intentions behind these causes.

In clearly communicating the purpose of reading to students, teachers should not convey so much information that it spoils the reading or enables students to participate in class without completing the reading; rather, they should let students know what learning to expect from the reading.

reading for one purpose while performing a task for another would likely result in confusion and even failure. When students struggle to understand the task, they pay less attention to the text itself.

Over time, as students read with purpose, they develop background knowledge and a deeper understanding of the organizational structures authors use to convey information. This understanding gives students access to increasingly complex texts.

Foster Motivation and Persistence

Learning to read challenging text is similar to undergoing physical therapy. Initially, such therapy is often painful and exhausting, and it's tempting to cheat on the exercises a bit.

Similarly, it can be tough for students to hang in there and stick with a text that they have to labor through, looking up words, puzzling over sentences, straining to make connections. Teachers may be tempted to try to make it easier for students by avoiding difficult texts. The problem is, easier work is less likely to make readers stronger. Teachers need to motivate students to keep trying, especially when the level of work is increasing.

You need to create successive successes. Students experience success in the company of their teacher, who combines complex texts with effective instruction.

Over time, they engage in close reading of texts of their own choosing, as well as assigned texts that build their subject-area knowledge. All the while, they set goals with their teachers so that they can gauge their own progress. Forward motion toward a goal matters.

Gone are the days when text was judged as difficult solely on the basis of sentence length and syllable count. We now know that many factors affect text complexity. With this increased understanding, teachers do not have to rely on intuition to figure out which books their students can handle. Instead, teachers can select texts worthy of instruction and align their instructional efforts to ensure that all their students read complex, interesting, and important texts.

rather than being on paper, can be collected with different web tools so that students can collaborate, both locally and globally, around the conclusions that they will ultimately draw from their reading.

Students submit their annotations via their smart phones or other digital devices, and then analyze each other’s notations collectively.  

They could be looking for evidence of connections to other texts, their own experiences, or world issues.

students could reflect on the collective evidence as a metacognitive activity to assess their own learning.

Textual evidence that supports the thinking behind what they are thinking is a gigantic first step into the depth and complexity that the Common Core is asking of students.  Annotexting kicks that up a notch by engaging task specific tools that offer opportunities for strategic thinking and globally connected opportunities.

annotexting offers students the opportunity to value evidence, think critically and engage with different perspectives.  Rather than working independently to read, comprehend and analyze text, annotexting will allow students to engage with other audiences in tasks with an expanded purpose, supporting college and career readiness.

The college and career ready student (on page seven of the ELA Common Core document) is expected to attend to audience, task, purpose and discipline in both reading and writing. The standards also expect students to think critically and value evidence.  The document goes on to explain that the college and career ready student should use digital media strategically and purposefully.  Annotexting is at the intersection of all of these capacities.