Common Core Literacy Throughout the Content Areas - West Ranch Professional Development

Common Core Literacy - All Group in Library - 8:30 a.m.

We are not only teachers of our content. We are teachers of literacy as well.

How do experts in your field approach content?

• Discussion about what social scientists (historians) look for in their job AND
• How do social scientists communicate their findings

The Common Core is not so much about changing the content. It is about focusing on the way in which we teach the skills to, and expect results from, our students.

Complex Literacy Tasks

• Common Core requires students to perform complex reading and writing tasks
• Prepare students for the rigor of these literacy tasks
• Give students cognitively-demanding and grade-level appropriate reading and writing tasks
• CC gives a guide to make sure that the reading tasks are appropriately rigorous
• Complex Tasks + Complex Texts

Depth of Knowledge (DOK) is like Bloom's Taxonomy and Costa's Levels of Questioning

• We can stair-step students to success
• Four levels, each of increasing complexity and rigor
• Rigorous reading and writing activities
• Complex Texts
• Quantitative complexity - how complex the language is, "level of fanciness"
• Lexile score?
• Dang this presentation is going quickly
• Qualitative Complexity - Different levels of meaning - kid humor vs. adult humor in a kids' movie
• Purpose of levels of meaning
• Vocabulary and vernacular
• Assess carefully!
• Different text excerpts can have wildly different reading levels
• Huck Finn may be written at a "7th grade reading level," but it is more complex than that
• Keep in mind your special pops too
• Common Core is about pulling away the scaffolding and increasing a student's independence
• Examine your current strategies
• Scaffold for independence
• Evaluate ancillary texts for complexity and grade-level appropriateness

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing

Room 408 - 10:00 a.m.

Top Ten Writing Wrongs in Secondary Schools (from Teaching Adolescent Writers, Gallagher, 2006)

• Students need more writing practice
• Ss need teachers who model good writing
• Ss need the opportunity to read and study other writers
• Ss need choice when it comes to writing topics
• Ss need to write for authentic purposes and for authentic audiences
• Ss need meaningful feedback from both T and other Ss

What is a good writing task for the Common Core?

• To write a good task, we must know what elements make a good task in the first place
• A good writing task has:
• Context - background of the task
• Expectations - clearly states the directions of the task
• Purpose - Why are we writing this?
• Audience - Who is the reader?
• Format that is clearly understood
• Argumentative essay, project, poem, letter, etc.
• In addition, the prompt should use language from the CCSS that stimulates critical thinking
• "Beefing up" a sample writing task to meet CCSS
• Original: "Describe what life would be like in a society free of social norms."
• Beefed-up: "In order to learn about government over the course of this semester, the first thing we need to establish is why rules and laws exist to begin with. Imagine you are an assistant principal and you have recently assigned double Saturday School to a student who has just been caught throwing water balloons across the quad at brunch--water balloons that didn't end up causing any serious bodily or property damage, but which had the potential to be harmful. Write a 3-5 paragraph e-mail response to the child's angry parent explaining why the student has received this consequence. In your e-mail message, demonstrate your understanding of the principle of the rule of law, and logically convey to the parent what school might look like if such rules did not exist."
• Cuyahoga River Fire

Questions:

• When was this?
• Where is the Cuyahoga River?
• How can a river catch on fire?
• How do you put out a fire that's on water?
• What steps can we take to ensure that rivers don't catch fire in the future?

Select a pairing text: The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

The Lorax was written by Dr. Seuss in 1971 in response to environmental catastrophes like the Cuyahoga River Fire. Write a short story, in the style of Dr. Seuss, in which you organize evidence of the positive impact of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and include a call to action that encourages children of today to respond to a modern environmental concern.

HW: Look at the first unit you're actually teaching one of your classes. Convert a writing prompt that you would have had, and now come up with a Writing Task that aligns with CCSS. In your PLC's, you will be analyzing the student created results of this task on September 26.

Taking my "Four Leaders on Government" YouTube lesson, here is the writing task:

Different leaders have differing views on what the role of government should be. Write a 3-5 paragraph letter to President Obama explaining to him why you agree or disagree with his view of the role of government. In your letter, examine President Obama's speech, along with the speeches of Congressman Paul, President Kennedy, and President Reagan. In your letter, demonstrate an understanding of the concept of limited government, the "Necessary and Proper" Clause of the Constitution, and the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" as they relate to modern American politics.