Licensure #
Professional Development Dossier (PDD)
Vicki Cornejo
Submitted to:
Dr. Rick Meyer
Dr. Penny Pence
Dr. Yoo Kyung Sung
In Partial Fulfillment of Masters in
Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies
University of New Mexico
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Strand C: Professional Learning
I. Examining and Implementing Change
A.
In the fall of 2013, I began a master’s degree program at the University of New Mexico
in Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies (LLSS) with a focus in Literacy. Throughout
the program I have learned many things that have influenced my teaching. In the beginning of
this program, I took a course that discussed a variety of issues that the LLSS program covers. In
this course, I was introduced to the idea of critical literacy. Critical literacy is the ability to read
texts in an active, reflective manner in order to better understand power, inequality, and injustice
in human relationships (Coffey 2008). I was very intrigued by critical literacy, and though we
discussed it in this course, I knew I needed to know more about it and how I could use it in my
kindergarten classroom. The following semester I enrolled in a class that was dedicated to
critical literacy. This class was an in-depth look at critical literacy and the various aspects of it.
We spent a significant amount of time looking at the different components of critical literacy, as
well as exploring critical literacy in our own lives. After learning more about critical literacy, I
knew that I needed to incorporate it into my classroom. During this course I was encouraged to
begin to use critical literacy in my classroom
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My goal during and after taking this class was to incorporate critical literacy into my
everyday practices. As I incorporate it more into my classroom, I feel that I am getting more and
more comfortable at using it.
B.
Through my journey with critical literacy, I learned that sometimes you just have to try
things out in your classroom and figure it out while doing it to be able to learn from what you did
and how it went. That is what I had to do with critical literacy. I just had to dive in head first and
figure it out as I went. I was very nervous to try it in my classroom at first, but my advisor told
me that it can be as simple as asking the question, “What do you think?” And that’s exactly what
I did; I started from that question and then I was able to inquire more with the students based on
their answers from that very simple question. I also was able to find some examples of questions
to ask when discussing a book using a critical literacy framework (Illustration 3). These
questions have also helped me to negotiate through a text.
After reading the article, Using Read-Alouds with Critical Literacy, Literature in K-3
Classrooms (Author, Date) (Resource 1), I learned that it is important to be conscious of the
books that you bring into the classroom. Teachers need to choose books that explore differences,
give voice to those who are traditionally silenced, explore social issues, and question dominant
systems of meaning. This article was helpful for me to read because it gave me some good ideas
on how to structure a read-aloud. It is definitely helpful to be prepared with a list of questions
that you want to ask the students, but also to be flexible enough to change up the conversation if
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the students are going in a different direction. It is very important to understand that the students
are the most important part of critical literacy and to choose books based on what is going on in
your classroom as well as your classroom culture.
C.
My practice has changed in a variety of ways since being introduced to critical literacy. I
have brought in different books that I hadn’t read to my students before (Illustration 1), books
that start discussions about a variety of topics. If I notice a topic that I would like to discuss in
my classroom, I try to seek out books that relate to that issue. For example,, I overheard manyof
my studetns discussing what girls and boys are “supposed” to do. I then brought in books that
raised questions about gender norms and discussd these stories with my students (Illustration 2).
Another part of my practice that has changed is my questioning strategies . When we read a
book, I don’t just ask surface level questions; I ask questions that make students reflect and think
about what is going on in the book.
Teachers who use critical literacy can be divided into three categories, newcomer, novice,
and expert (Lewison, Flint & Van Sluys 2002). I consider myself to be a novice of critical
literacy, having been exploring it for the past two years in both my classroom and in my studies.
I still feel that even though I consider myself a novice and have been able to incorporate critical
literacy into my classroom, I still see a lot of room for growth to become an expert. Critical
literacy can also be looked at through four dimensions which include: 1) disrupting the
commonplace; 2) interrogating multiple viewpoints; 3) focusing on sociopolitical issues; and 4)
taking action and promoting social justice (Lewison, Flint & Van Sluys 2002). The fourth
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dimension of critical literacy is one component of critical literacy that I feel I still need to better
understand and implement better in my classroom. It is something that I am trying to make sure
that I incorporate into my use of critical literacy, but as of right now I haven't figured out a way
to negotiate my students and me through this dimension. I plan to continue looking at a variety of
ways other teachers address social justice in their classrooms, as well as diving into it myself,
based on the issues that come up in the years to come.
D. Illustrations of Change
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Illustration 1: Examples of books that I have brought into my classroom.
Illustration 2: Example of field notes taken during critical literacy discussion
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
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William’s Doll by Charlotte Zolotow
The book, William’s Doll, is about a boy who wants a doll as a toy despite the disapproval of his father. I first hold up
the front cover and then ask the kids what they think he is doing. Playing basketball and jumping is what most respond. I then
read the title and ask if the picture and title match. Comments made (B-boy, G-girl):
“He’s got a doll on the back cover.” -B
“Maybe the boy is a doll.” -G
“He’s doing a boy thing, but he really doesn’t want that, he wants to be like are girl.” -B
I start to read the story and it gets to a part where his friends are coming over and I ask if they saw him playing with a doll what
would they think. Comments made:
“They might think he’s weird.” -B
“They would probably laugh.” -B
“They don’t want to see him doing it, they wouldn’t believe their eyes.” -B
“They would think he’s like girl or something, they wouldn’t know what to think.” -B
We read on to the part where the dad does not want to get William a doll as a present. I the kids why they think the dad doesn’t
want to buy him a doll. Comments made:
“The dad doesn’t want to get him a doll.” -B
“Maybe the dad thinks that dolls are only for girls.” -G
At the end of the story William’s grandmother gets him a doll and I ask the students what they think about it. Comments made:
“You don’t have to be a girl to have a doll.” -B
“Maybe she gave it to him because she’s a girl and its okay for her to give it to him.” -G
“There’s boys dolls too.” -B
After the last comment I ask what kind of boys dolls there are. The boys started naming them out loud: Woody doll,
Buzz doll, Spider Man, Batman, Iron Man, Hulk doll, legos. After they say these dolls a girl responds, “Hey, you guys have a lot
more dolls than we have. That’s not fair!” I ask if girls could play with those dolls too. The class all agreed that they could. It is
time for the students to go to their pull-out for the day so the conversation comes to an end.
Illustration 3: Example of critical literacy questions that I use to help me guide discussions
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E. Resources
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Coffey, H. (2013). Critical Literacy. K-12 Teach and Learning from the UNC School Of
Education. Retrieved from: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4437?ref=search
Lewison, M., Flint, A. S., & Van, S. K. (May 01, 2002). Taking on Critical Literacy: The
Journey of Newcomers and Novices. Language Arts, 79, 5, 382-92.
Meller, W. B., Richardson, D., & Hatch, J. A. (November 01, 2009). Using Read-Alouds with
Critical Literacy. Literature in K-3 Classrooms. Young Children, 64, 6, 76-78.
Patel, S. L., & Bean, T. W. (2007). Chapter 2: Why we need critical literacy. Critical literacy:
Context, research, and practice in the K-12 classroom. Thousand Oaks: Sage
Strand C: Professional Learning
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II. Collaboration
A.
There are a variety of ways that I incorporate collaboration into my daily routine. I
collaborate with colleagues at different grade levels and at other schools. . In the past year, I
have served as a mentor to a first year teacher. I was able to help her with anything she needed
during her first year of teaching. I have also helped out a veteran teacher who had been moved
down to kindergarten, a grade she has not taught before. I took the initiative to assist her with
any questions that she might have concerning the kindergarten curriculum..
One way in which collaboration among teachers occurs is through the use of Professional
Learning Communities (PLCs). PLCs are used to accomplish a variety of goals such as ways to help
student growth, opportunities for professional development, and in most recent years, how to use the
Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Grade level PLCs meet on a weekly basis to discuss these types of
issues and any other issues that may come up.
In the previous school year, we had a specific goal that we wanted to achieve in the
second half of the school year. It concerned a district wide initiative of looking at the CCSS and
coming up with 15-20 Essential Standards for both English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. The
idea of the essential standards is not to exclude the other standards, but to make sure that there
are a set of standards that need to be addressed with fidelity so that students go to the next grade
level with a good base of skills. It was the district's intent that we had an idea of what standards
we wanted to be included as essential when we met district wide with teachers from our same
grade levels. Though this was the district's goal by the end of the year, our kindergarten team felt
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is necessary to come up with the essential standards before the end of the year and before the
meeting, that way we could discuss them with the first grade teachers to see if they agreed that
these were skills the students needed to be successful in first grade. We also wanted to make sure
that we had Common Formative Assessments (CFAs) made so that we would be ready to use
them for the following school year.
Throughout the second half of the school year we met each week to discuss with each
other the standards we felt the students needed to master before going on to first grade. We
excluded any of the standards that contained the phrase “with prompting and support,” because
first grade had the same standard just without the phrase. After sorting through the standards
with the members of the kindergarten team as well as our school’s academic coach, we were able
to agree upon 17 standards for ELA and 14 standards for Math (Illustration 1). After agreeing
upon the standards when then met with the first grade team members to see how they felt about
the standards that we deemed essential.
After conferring with the first grade team they felt that the essential standards that we
agreed upon were needed to have a good base for going from kindergarten to first grade. The
next step was then to create CFAs for each essential standard with would be assessed three times
throughout the year (Illustration 2). We wanted to make sure that these CFAs would give us
enough information about our students so that we could use the data to drive our instruction as
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well as create intervention groups. We created the CFAs as a group and then I created electronic
copies for the whole group (Illustration 3).
Now that we had that we had developed CFAs for all of the essential standards we were
ready to meet with other district kindergarten teachers to discuss why we had chose those to be
essential standards (Illustration 4). We were able to have good dialogue with the other
kindergarten teachers and most of the standards that we deemed essential were used to help
create the district essential standards. Even though there were some different standards added to
the district’s list, we were told that each site also had the
The goal of this collaboration was to come up with essential standards and to create
CFAs that relate to each standard. Our kindergarten team was able to do that and now at the
beginning of this year we have been able to start collecting data from the CFAs that we created
last year.
B. Illustrations of Collaboration
Illustration 1- Essential Standards chosen for ELA and Math
Bosque Farms Elementary
Essential Common Core Standards
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Grade Level
K
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
ELA Number (# of Groups
with Multiple CCSS [# of
CCSS in Each Group])
17
24
20
17 (2[2,2])
14
21 (2[5,3])
20
Math Number (# of Groups
with Multiple CCSS [# of
CCSS in Each Group])
14
19
15
15 (1[2])
12 (2[2,2])
25 (7[2,2,2,3,3,4,2])
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Kindergarten
ELA
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.10
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.10
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.1.d
Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2.a
Recognize and produce rhyming words.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2.b
Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.2.d
Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme
(consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.1 (This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/,
or /x/.)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3.a
Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the
primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3.b
Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major
vowels.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.K.3.c
Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).
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CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.1
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they
tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or
preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is...).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.2
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts
in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.3
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely
linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to
what happened.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1.a
Print many upper- and lowercase letters.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.a
Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.b
Recognize and name end punctuation.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.c
Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.2.d
Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.
Math
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.1
Count to 100 by ones and by tens.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.2
Count forward beginning from a given number within the known sequence (instead of having to
begin at 1).
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.3
Write numbers from 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0
representing a count of no objects).
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4.a
When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one
and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4.b
Understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted. The number of
objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they were counted.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4.c
Understand that each successive number name refers to a quantity that is one larger.
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CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.5
Count to answer "how many?" questions about as many as 20 things arranged in a line, a
rectangular array, or a circle, or as many as 10 things in a scattered configuration; given a
number from 1-20, count out that many objects.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.C.6
Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the
number of objects in another group, e.g., by using matching and counting strategies.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.C.7
Compare two numbers between 1 and 10 presented as written numerals.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.5
Fluently add and subtract within 5.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.NBT.A.1
Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by
using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or
equation (such as 18 = 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.MD.A.2
Directly compare two objects with a measurable attribute in common, to see which object has
"more of"/"less of" the attribute, and describe the difference. For example, directly compare the
heights of two children and describe one child as taller/shorter.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.G.A.2
Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.
CCSS.Math.Content.K.G.B.5
Model shapes in the world by building shapes from components (e.g., sticks and clay balls) and
drawing shapes.
Illustration 2: Spreadsheet to keep track of Essential Standards for each student
ELA Essential Standards
Standard
Beginning
Middle
End
Letters- RFK1d
Rhyming- RKK2a
Syllables- RKK2b
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BME sounds- RFK2d
Letter Sounds- RFK3a
Vowels- RFK3b
Popcorn Words- RFK3c
Print Letters- LK1a
Capitalize- LK2a
Punctuation- LK2b
Spelling InventoryLK2c,2d
Math Essential Standards
Standard
Count to 100 (1,10)KCCA1
Count from given numberKCCA2
Write Numbers- KCCA3
1-to-1- KCCB4a
Last number said- KCCB4b
One larger- KCCB4c
How many? – KCCB5
Greater than/less than or
= - KCCC6
Compare numbersKCCC&
Addition/SubtractionKOAA5
Compose and decompose
11-19- KNBTA1
Beginning
Middle
End
Measurable objectsKMDA2
Name Shapes- KGA2
Draw Shapes- KGB5
Illustration 3: CFA created for one of the Essential Standards
Add and subtract within 5 fluently. KOA5
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1+1= 2+1= 4+0=
2+3= 1+3= 3+1=
3+2= 5+0= 4+1=
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1-1=
4-1=
3-2=
5-1=
2-2=
2-0=
4-2=
5-3=
4-4=
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Illustration 4: Schedule of district wide grade level meeting to discuss Essential Standards
Delivery of Essential Standards and Proficiency Scales
The Essential Standards Teams will share the process with their grade level of
identification of essential standards. They will walk teachers through the
proficiency scales created for their grade levels or content area.
May 4, 2015
8:15 – 10:15 All Third Grade Teachers
11:00 – 1:00 All Second Grade Teachers
1:00 – 2:00 Second Grade Teachers have 30 minute lunch and return to sites.
2:15-4:15 Fourth Grade Teachers
May 5, 2015
8:15 – 10:15 All Fifth Grade Teachers
May 6, 2015
1:00 – 2:45 All Middle School and High School ELA and Math Teachers
May 11, 2015
8:15 – 10:15 All Kindergarten Teachers
11:00- 1:00 All Sixth Grade Teachers
1:00 – 2: 00 Sixth Grade Teachers have 30 minute lunch and return to sites.
2:15-4:15 All First Grade Teachers
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