Secondary Teacher Institute:
Reading In the Time of the
Common Core State Standards
July 31, 2012
Essential Questions
• How can I utilize reading strategies to enhance
the understanding of all students within my
discipline?
• How is being capable, curious and confident
related to students’ abilities to use reading
strategies independently?
• How does content literacy prepare students for
their next educational challenges?
Outcomes
Knowledge of:
• raised expectations for reading across the
curriculum
• the CCSS Reading Informational Text Standards
• tools to evaluate text complexity
• several strategies to scaffold close reading of
complex text across the disciplines.
Raised Expectations for Reading
Across the Curriculum
Gap Analysis
Parkway’s Strategic Plan: All students will take
the ACT and achieve a composite score above
the national average, with the district average
ACT composite score rising to at least 25.
How are we doing in reading?
Parkway EXPLORE Data
District EXPLORE - Reading
100
% Meeting Benchmark
90
60%
scored
15 or
higher
80
70
60
District
50
N
40
Total N
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
59
54
54
58
60
784
794
734
773
793
1320
1414
1350
1336
1312
District
30
20
10
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Parkway EXPLORE Data
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
54
54
58
60
784
794
734
773
793
1320
1414
1350
1336
1312
District EXPLOREDistrict
- Reading
59
100
N
% Meeting Benchmark
90
Total N
80
70
60
60%
scored
15 or
higher
50
40
30
20
District
For ALL to be ready to reach 25 or higher in Grade 11, students
should aim for a 19 or higher in Grade 8 on the EXPLORE.
10
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Parkway – PLAN Data
District PLAN - Reading
100
90
66% of students
met the
benchmark of 17
% Meeting Benchmark
80
70
60
District
50
40
30
20
10
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Parkway – PLAN Data
District PLAN - Reading
100
90
66% of students
met the
benchmark of 17
% Meeting Benchmark
80
70
60
50
40
30
For ALL to be ready to reach 25 or higher
in Grade 11, students should aim for a 21
or higher in Grade 10 on the PLAN.
20
10
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
District
Parkway ACT Data
District ACT - Reading
100
90
% Meeting Benchmark
80
61% met the
benchmark
70
60
District
50
40
30
20
10
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Parkway ACT Data
District ACT - Reading
100
90
% Meeting Benchmark
80
61% met the
benchmark of
21
70
60
50
40
30
20
District
Our goal is 100% of our students achieving
a 25 or higher on the ACT by the end of 11th
grade.
10
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Reading in the Disciplines
General strategies:
•
•
•
•
•
asking questions
making predictions
testing hypotheses
Summarizing
monitoring understanding & deploying
fix-it strategies.
Supporting Transaction with Text
Together
Reading as
Transaction
• Pre-reading
• During reading
• Post-reading
A–M-T
Reading as
Transmission
Pre, During, and Post-Reading
Strategies
Inside > Curriculum > Secondary Communication Arts >
Diversity & Equity:
“Francis Howell RTI Comprehension Strategies”
Explanations
“Francis Howell Fidelity Implementation
Spreadsheet”
Planning Tool
Discipline –Specific Reading Demands
A Sampling…
ELA – navigating non-linear narrative structures,
recognizing how diction impacts tone
History – recognizing the partial and value-laden
perspectives in primary documents
Math – the logic of stipulated definitions, how
theorems and proofs are worked through examples
Science – use of embedded clauses to define
technical vocabulary, conceptual relationships
embedded in taxonomic reasoning
Measuring Text Complexity
• Quantitative Measures
• Qualitative Measures
• Reader/Task Considerations
To Obtain the Lexile for a piece
of Text
•
•
•
•
Go to Lexile.com/analyzer/
Create an account (free)
Follow Steps 1 – 5 on the left
TIP: Type a piece of the text into Word
then save as plain text.
• Upload the text, when prompted
Quantitative Measures
Qualitative Measures - RUBRIC
• Levels of Purpose
• Structure and Layout
– Compare/Contrast, Problem/Solution,
Cause/Effect, Chronological, Climactic, Simple list,
Subordination (Key idea, supporting details)
– Text features like font, graphics, headers, gaps…
• Language Conventionality
• Knowledge Demands
Reader and Task Considerations
• Reader
o Readiness
o Learning Profile (Preferences)
o Interests
• Task – Rigor
Gradual Release of Responsibility
I Do It
We Do It
Ya’ll Do It
Balance?
You Do It
High Yield Strategies
• Summarizing &
Note-Taking
• Reading for Meaning
• Using the Standards to Unpack
Text
Summarizing & Chunking
Large effect size (Hattie, Marzano)
http://www.netc.org/focus/strategies/summ.php
• Annotating
• Note-taking
Gombrich piece
Reading for Meaning
Topical EQ
How is knowing the break-even point critical for
staying in business?
Gradual Release of Responsibility
I Do It
We Do It
Ya’ll Do It
Which
levels?
You Do It
Using the Standards to Unpack Text
•
•
•
•
Number 1 – 9
Gather in your new groups
Runner collect standards
Examine the Informational Text standard across
Grades 6 – 12 based on your group’s number
• Capture the essence in an image & gesture
with your colleagues. (representing-to-learn)
Using the Standards to Unpack Text
• Read “The Shoot-Out” through the lens of
your standard.
• Share out your representation and
observations.
Gradual Release of Responsibility
I Do It
We Do It
Ya’ll Do It
Which
level?
You Do It
Options for This Afternoon…
• Examine each RIT standard through the
lens of your discipline…
• Jig Saw parts of “Reading in the
Disciplines”
• Create a “Reading for Meaning” Lesson
using a short piece of key expository text
The Future
Can we pull together and do
this thing?...
One school’s story….
Turnaround at Brockton High
Emphasis on literacy brings big MCAS improvement
By James Vaznis Globe Staff / October 12, 2009
BROCKTON - Brockton High School has every excuse for failure, serving a
city plagued by crime, poverty, housing foreclosures, and homelessness.
Almost two-thirds of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches,
and 14 percent are learning to speak English. More than two-thirds are
African-American or Latino - groups that have lagged behind their peers
across the state on standardized tests.
But Brockton High, by far the state’s largest public high school with 4,200
students, has found a success in recent years that has eluded many of the
state’s urban schools: MCAS scores are soaring, earning the school state
recognition as a symbol of urban hope.
LITERACY CHART: READING
MATH
ENGLISH
SCIENCE
READING
SOCIAL
SCIENCE
ELECTIVE
 for content ( both literal and inferential )
 to apply pre-reading, during reading and post-reading strategies to all
reading assignments, including determining purpose and pre-learning
vocabulary
 to research a topic
 to gather information
 to comprehend an argument
 to determine the main idea of a passage
 to understand a concept and construct meaning
 to expand one’s experiences
c Brockton High School, 2002
35
35
LITERACY CHART: WRITING
SCIENCE
MATH
ENGLISH
WRITING
SOCIAL
SCIENCE
ELECTIVE
 to take notes
 to explain one’s thinking
 to argue a thesis and support one’s thinking
 to compare and contrast
 to write an open response
 to describe an experiment, report one’s findings, and report one’s conclusion
 to generate a response to what one has read, viewed, or heard
 to convey one’s thinking in complete sentences
 to develop an expository essay with a formal structure
c Brockton High School, 2002
LITERACY CHART: REASONING
SCIENCE
MATH
ENGLISH
REASONING
SOCIAL
SCIENCE
ELECTIVE
 to create, interpret and explain a table, chart or graph
 to compute, interpret and explain numbers
 to read, break down, and solve a word problem
 to interpret and present statistics that support an argument or hypothesis
 to identify a pattern, explain a pattern, and/or make a prediction based on a
pattern
 to detect the fallacy in an argument or a proof
 to explain the logic of an argument or solution
 to use analogies and/or evidence to support one’s thinking
 to explain and/or interpret relationships of space and time
c Brockton High School, 2002
LITERACY CHART: SPEAKING
SCIENCE
SOCIAL
SCIENCE
MAT
H
ENGLISH








SPEAKING
ELECTIVE
to convey one’s thinking in complete sentences
to interpret a passage orally
to debate an issue
to participate in class discussion or a public forum
to make an oral presentation to one’s class, one’s peers, one’s community
to present one’s portfolio
to respond to what one has read, viewed, or heard
to communicate in a manner that allows one to be both heard and
understood
Just Right vs Rigorous Text?
Need both …
10,000 hours to become expert at anything
Opportunities to read silently 90 minutes a day –
across the curriculum AND
Students need us to model how experts read in
our content area
Reflections on Teacher Leadership
“You don’t have to change the
student population to get
results, you have to change
the conditions under which
they learn.”
Pedro Noguera
Possible Next Steps
• Commit to more summarizing…
• Within BLTs and CLTs, look that the Brockton
examples as a start and make a commitment
to some shared strategies for reading,
writing, or reasoning that work across the
curriculum in your building.
• Create and use Reading for Meaning lesson
scaffolds in units of study you will teach this
year …
Playing Card Discussion
Questions
SPADES: What do you think are the greatest
advantages and biggest challenges to increasing textcomplexity for all students?
CLUBS: What will you do to scaffold text so that all
students can read increasingly complex texts?
DIAMONDS: What do you want to remember about
content area reading and text complexity?
HEARTS: How will the shift to increasing time to
practice content reading using reading scaffolds
change instruction?