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Common Core content shift | What this is not | What it is and what it means | Instructional shifts |
Balancing informational and literary text | Reading nonfiction during content areas; always teacher-directed; adding more nonfiction to your library. | More student opportunity to choose text; differentiation; student-interest centered; teaching students how to match strategic thinking with informational text. | More rigor; higher-level questioning; increased teacher emphasis on metacognition; explicit instruction on organization of text. |
Building knowledge of the disciplines | Lecture-based, isolated instruction; telling the facts. | More integration of thinking; purposefully integrating the disciplines; more student processing/inquiry; authentic investigations. | Metacognition; understanding organization of text; asking high-level questions; student application of thinking. |
Staircase of complexity | Surface-level reading or more difficult words with low-level understanding; just harder books; limiting students to their Lexile level all the time. | Increase in deeper understanding and thinking; all learners involved in reading at complex levels; the thinking someone has to do in order to comprehend the text. | Scaffolding; more thoughtful questioning; high-level questions; modeling; differentiation; monitor and repair (and monitor combinations of strategies). |
Text-based answers | Recall, surface questions. | Student-generated discussion about their thinking around content; how readers authentically use text to explain the change in their thinking. | Modeling; gradual release; higher-level questions to facilitate discussion. |
Writing from sources | Copying information from a source; writing conventions; teacher-selected topics and students following an outline to guide their writing. | Knowing process of thinking behind the writing; mentor texts; authentic writing situations; monitoring their writing; research process. | Mentor text (examples); specific resources to push their thinking; model: how am I going to write from a variety of sources? |
Academic vocabulary | Isolated word lists, copying definitions from a dictionary. | Words encountered in texts as students read; using strategies to build meaning within context. | Monitor and repair when you read; rereading; cross-curricular connections; strategies that help us learn words. |
What’s Missing is Essential
Course outline |
Common Core:
What students will do |
Learning focus:
What students will learn |
Focus questions | Recommended resources |
Read with accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Read on-level text with purpose and understanding. Read on-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings. |
Students will learn how to monitor their comprehension when reading independently by identifying how they know they are confused. |
How do you know when you are confused when you’re reading?
What do you do when you realize that you are confused/you have stopped understanding what you have read? How did using context clues help you decode unfamiliar words? How did using context clues help you repair your understanding? |
Variety of fiction, nonfiction, prose, and poetry. |
Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing professional practice: A Framework for Teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
National Research Council. (2000). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Pearson, P.D. & Gallagher, M. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 317-344.
Learning Forward is the only professional association devoted exclusively to those who work in educator professional development. We help our members plan, implement, and measure high-quality professional learning so they can achieve success with their systems, schools, and students.
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