Navigating the Common Core with English Language Learners. Sypnieski Katie
and Structure: Focusing on what a text looks like and analyzing the way language and structure are used to shape its meaning.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Looking at how a text connects to others, including visual/multimedia texts, and evaluating the validity and reasoning of the claims and evidence presented in the text.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity: Being able to do all of the above independently with a wide variety of complex texts.
Reading Don'ts and Do's
Don't discourage students from tapping prior knowledge while reading. Don't do the reading and thinking for students by going line by line and explaining every word and concept. Don't simplify or translate complex texts for close reading.
Do help ELLs navigate difficult texts by accessing and building background knowledge, chunking the text, modeling, and using other appropriate scaffolds. Model the reading strategies you use to make sense of text so that these processes are made explicit to students. Choose texts that relate to the teaching goal and that are at an appropriate level of challenge for your students. Provide scaffolding to support students as they work both collaboratively and independently to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate texts.
Anchor Standards for Writing
Text Types and Purposes: Writing clear, well-reasoned arguments supported by evidence. Clearly and accurately presenting information and explaining complex ideas. Narrating real or imagined experiences in an interesting and coherent way. In other words, being able to produce good argumentative, informative/explanatory, and narrative writing.
Production and Distribution of Writing: Producing writing where the development, organization, and style are appropriate to the writer's task, purpose, and audience. Using a process (planning, revising, etc.) to improve one's writing and using technology to collaborate, produce, and publish writing.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Conducting both short and more extensive research projects. Finding information from multiple print and digital sources and assessing its relevance and credibility. Incorporating information without plagiarizing.
Range of Writing: Having practice with writing in both shorter time frames and extended ones and writing for a variety of tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Writing Don'ts and Do's
Don't simply “assign” writing to students and expect them to produce anything good. Don't teach writing in isolation from reading and speaking. Don't ask students to produce claims about unfamiliar topics or issues and come up with evidence to support them.
Do remind students of the argument, informative, and narrative skills they already use in their everyday lives. Give students multiple opportunities, collaboratively and independently, to practice the thinking and the academic language involved in building arguments. Provide students with the support they need in order to read several texts on a topic so they can build knowledge and formulate evidence-based claims. Use mentor texts (models of good writing) so students can identify the features of effective argument, informational, and narrative writing.
Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening
Comprehension and Collaboration: Being a productive member of academic discussions (whether it be whole class, group, partner) means effectively communicating one's own ideas and being able to build upon, connect, and evaluate the ideas of others.
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas: Presenting one's findings and supporting evidence in a logical way appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. Using digital media and visuals to enhance the presentation of one's ideas. Using formal English when appropriate.
Speaking and Listening Don'ts and Do's
Don't place a lower priority on the Speaking and Listening standards. Students need this type of practice daily!
Do give students lots of opportunities to share their ideas with one another. Provide structure and support for conversations so students can practice using academic language in an authentic, engaging way. Post sentence frames for academic discussions on the wall and circulate during group work to ensure students are using them. Help students incorporate digital media when presenting their ideas – this increases the engagement and mirrors the standards.
Anchor Standards for Language
Conventions of Standard English: Having a command of grammar and usage in writing and speaking, and of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling in writing.
Knowledge of Language: Using what one knows about the way language works in various contexts to communicate more effectively and to better comprehend when reading or listening.
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use: Being able to figure out new words and phrases on one's own by using context clues, looking at word parts, and consulting reference materials when appropriate. Being able to make sense of figurative language and words with multiple meanings. Acquiring and effectively using both academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a way that shows “college and career readiness” when reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Language Don'ts and Do's
Don't assign students huge lists of isolated vocabulary words and expect them to learn to use them by simply looking up the meanings and copying them down. Don't teach grammar and conventions in isolation or out of context. Don't expect students to acquire grammatical structures and apply them in their own writing and speaking if they're only doing grammar drills and worksheets.
Do evaluate the text types that students will be reading and writing and teach them the academic words and structures they will need to access these tasks. Provide opportunities for students to practice this vocabulary through meaningful interactions with their peers and in authentic reading and writing situations. Teach students the grammatical structures associated with specific text types in context, identifying both “good” and “bad” examples to help students identify and then apply the desired structures in their own writing.
Chapter Two
Creating the Conditions for English Language Learners to Be Successful in the Common Core Standards
Farmers and gardeners know you cannot make a plant grow … What you do is provide the conditions for growth.
If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.
These two opening quotations illustrate the important role that Social Emotional Skills (also known as noncognitive skills, along with many other labels75) can play in students learning the academic skills listed in the Common Core Standards. In this chapter, we discuss why students developing these Social Emotional Skills can improve their ability to master the knowledge described in the Standards and how teachers can support that process.
It's important to note that this notion is not one that is just coming out of our heads. In fact, it's being promoted by the originators of the Common Core Standards and education researchers.
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), along with the National Governors Association and the school reform group Achieve, developed the Common Core Standards.76 One of CCSSO's initiatives is the Innovation Lab Network, a group of 12 states that is focused on piloting what they consider particularly innovative school practices.
CCSSO issued a report from the Network in 2013 titled “Knowledge,
Teachers are like gardeners. (2010, August 19).
Popova, M. (n.d.). Pioneering scientist Rachel Carson on wonder, parenting, and why it's more vital to feel than to know.
Kamenetz, A. (2015, May 28). Nonacademic skills are key to success. But what should we call them?