Texts, Tasks, and Talk. Brad Cawn
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