Texts, Tasks, and Talk. Brad Cawn
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