Literacy Shifts in Content
Areas: P-2
Network Team Institute
July 7, 2014
Think about your grade…
What do you need to teach
students so they will be
successful independently
reading literary nonfiction?
K -2? How can you begin to
prepare children to meet this
standard?
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Reading to Learn, the 6 Shifts
Balance of Informational
and Literary Texts
Knowledge in the
Disciplines
Staircase of Complexity
Text-Based Answers
Writing from Sources
Academic Vocabulary
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RI Standard K.10
K Actively engage in group reading activities with
purpose and understanding.
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RI Standard 1.10
K With prompting and support, read informational texts
appropriately complex for grade 1.
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RI Standard 2.10
K By the end of the year, read and comprehend
informational texts, including history/social studies,
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science, and technical texts, in the grades 2–3 text
2 complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as
needed at the high end of the range.
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Condensing for Conversation at the Early Level
Listen to Complex text with rich
vocabulary and academic language.
Be able to talk about the text using
the text to support opinions.
Be delighted by text.
Be engaged enough in the text to do
the work required to comprehend it
when listening to it.
Build background knowledge
through exposure to – not mastery
of – texts that have rich themes
based in Science and Social Studies.
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License.www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
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The CCSS Requires Three Shifts in ELA/Literacy
1. Regular practice with complex text and its
academic language
2. Reading, writing and speaking grounded in
evidence from text, both literary and
informational
3. Building knowledge through content-rich
nonfiction
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Shift #1: Regular practice with
complex text and its academic
language
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Regular Practice With Complex text and Its
Academic Language: Why?
•
Gap between complexity of college and high school texts is
huge.
•
What students can read, in terms of complexity, is greatest
predictor of success in college ( 2006 ACT study).
•
•
Too many students are reading at too low a level.
•
Standards also focus on building general academic
vocabulary so critical to comprehension.
Standards include a staircase of increasing text complexity
from elementary through high school.
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Determining Text Complexity
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Which text is more complex?
Text 1
Text 2
Lincoln was shaken by the presidency.
Back in Springfield, politics had been a
sort of exhilarating game; but in the
White House, politics was power, and
power was responsibility. Never before
had Lincoln held executive office. In
public life he had always been an
insignificant legislator whose votes
were cast in concert with others and
whose decisions in themselves had
neither finality nor importance. As
President he might consult with others,
but innumerable grave decisions were
in the end his own, and with them came
a burden of responsibility terrifying in
its dimensions.
According to those who knew him,
Lincoln was a man of many faces. In
repose, he often seemed sad and
gloomy. But when he began to speak,
his expression changed. “The dull,
listless features dropped like a mask,”
said a Chicago newspaperman. “The
eyes began to sparkle, the mouth to
smile, the whole countenance was
wreathed in animation, so that a
stranger would have said, ‘Why, this
man, so angular and solemn a moment
ago, is really handsome.’”
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What are the Qualitative Features of Complex
Text?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Subtle and/or frequent transitions
•
•
Longer paragraphs
Multiple and/or subtle themes and purposes
Density of information
Unfamiliar settings, topics or events
Lack of repetition, overlap or similarity in words and sentences
Complex sentences
Uncommon vocabulary
Lack of words, sentences or paragraphs that review or pull things
together for the student
Any text structure which is less narrative and/or mixes structures
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Close Analytic Reading
•
Requires prompting students with text-dependent questions to
unpack complex text and gain knowledge.
•
Text dependent questions require text-based answers –
evidence.
•
Not teacher summarizing text, but guiding students through the
text for information.
•
Virtually every standard is activated during the course of every
close analytic reading exemplar through the use of text
dependent questions.
•
Supports fluency
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Scaffolds for Reading Complex Text
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Chunking
Reading and rereading
Read aloud
Strategic think aloud
Scaffolding questions
Heterogeneous small groups
Recording
Pre-prepping struggling readers to support confidence and
participation
• Annotation strategies
• Cornell notes
• Paraphrasing and journaling
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Shift #2: Reading, Writing and
Speaking Grounded in Evidence
From Text, Both Literary and
Informational
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Reading, Writing and Speaking Grounded in
Evidence from Text: Why?
•
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Most college and workplace writing requires evidence.
•
Ability to cite evidence differentiates strong from weak
student performance on NAEP.
•
Being able to locate and deploy evidence are hallmarks of
strong readers and writers.
Evidence is a major emphasis of the ELA Standards: Reading
Standard 1, Writing Standard 9, Speaking and Listening
standards 2, 3 and 4, all focus on the gathering, evaluating
and presenting of evidence from text.
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Distribution of Communicative Purpose
Writing
Speaking and Listening
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Content Shift #2
Text-Dependent Questions
Not Text-Dependent
Text-Dependent
In “Casey at the Bat,” Casey strikes out.
Describe a time when you failed at
something.
What makes Casey’s experiences at bat
humorous?
In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr.
King discusses nonviolent protest.
Discuss, in writing, a time when you
wanted to fight against something that
you felt was unfair.
What can you infer from King’s letter
about the letter that he received?
In “The Gettysburg Address” Lincoln says
the nation is dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created
equal. Why is equality an important
value to promote?
“The Gettysburg Address” mentions the
year 1776. According to Lincoln’s
speech, why is this year significant to
the events described in the speech?
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Sample Informational Text Assessment
Question: Pre-Common Core State Standards
High school students read an excerpt of James D. Watson’s The
Double Helix and respond to the following:
James Watson used time away from his laboratory and a set of
models similar to preschool toys to help him solve the puzzle of
DNA. In an essay discuss how play and relaxation help promote
clear thinking and problem solving.
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Sample Informational Text Assessment
Question: Common Core State Standards
High school students read an excerpt of James D. Watson’s The
Double Helix and respond to the following:
By the end of this article, James Watson felt that "the
answer to everything was in our hands."
What was the answer? What problem was Watson
trying to solve? What steps or process did he use to
discover the answer?
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Sample Literary Question: Pre-Common Core
Standards
From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Have the students identify the different methods of removing
warts that Tom and Huckleberry talk about. Discuss the charms
that they say and the items (i.e. dead cats) they use. Ask
students to devise their own charm to remove warts. Students
could develop a method that would fit in the time of Tom
Sawyer and a method that would incorporate items and words
from current time. Boys played with dead cats and frogs, during
Tom’s time. Are there cultural ideas or artifacts from the
current time that could be used in the charm?
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Sample Text Dependent Question: Common
Core Standards
From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Why does Tom hesitate to allow Ben to paint the fence? How
does Twain construct his sentences to reflect that hesitation?
What effect do Tom’s hesitations have on Ben?
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Shift #3: Building knowledge
through content-rich nonfiction
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Building Knowledge Through Content-rich
Nonfiction – Why?
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Students are required to read very little informational text in
elementary and middle school.
•
Non-fiction makes up the vast majority of required reading in
college/workplace.
•
Informational text is harder for students to comprehend than
narrative text.
•
Supports students learning how to read different types of
informational text.
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Content Shift #3
Content-Rich Nonfiction
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50/50 balance K-5
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In grades 2+, students begin reading more complex texts,
consolidating the foundational skills with reading
comprehension.
•
Reading aloud texts that are well-above grade level should be
done throughout K-5 and beyond.
70/30 in grades 9-12
Students learning to read should exercise their ability to
comprehend complex text through read-aloud texts.
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Distribution of Literacy and Informational Texts
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All Teachers Support Literacy
• This interdisciplinary approach to literacy stems from extensive research
establishing the need for college and career ready students to be proficient
in reading complex informational texts, independently, in a variety of
content areas.
• Most of the required reading in college and workforce training programs is
informational in structure and challenging in content
• Postsecondary education programs typically provide students with both a
higher volume of such reading than is generally required in K–12 schools
and comparatively little scaffolding.
• The 2009 reading framework of the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) requires a high and increasing proportion of informational
text on its assessment as students advance through the grades.
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Shifts Mean a Change in Practice!
From…
To…
Content knowledge
primarily from
teacher-led lecture
Content knowledge
comes from a balance
of reading, writing
lecture, and hands-on
experience
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“Process the Shifts” Activity
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Processing Prekindergarten Ocean
Unit
How do students who cannot read draw
evidence from text?
How do students who cannot read get regular
practice with complex text and academic
vocabulary?
How do they do these things…and have fun?
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