Diagnosing Breakdowns in Comprehension

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

It a video discussion for Reading Rockets, panelists Isabel Beck, Nanci Bell, and Sharon Walpole discuss the components for reading comprehension and share strategies to promote student learning with this outcome. At minute 3:27, Dr. Walpole explains where breakdowns in comprehension typically occur. They include

  1. A child’s knowledge of the world is inconsistent with what the author expects a reader to know.
  2. A child’s vocabulary knowledge is inconsistent with the word choices an author has made for a text.
  3. The syntactic demands are great and
  4. A child lacks strategies to work through complex text.

At minute 10:27 Dr. Warpole suggests helping with these breakdowns by a) making sure students know how to decode easily and well b) teach concept knowledge and c) build vocabularies. Dr. Beck, at minute 21:22 later substantiates the claim that vocabulary instruction is “essential” and that the youngest students should be working with “big words.”

You can watch the video through the link here.

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Session 3 of Core Task implementation Project

Posted on December 2, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Session 3 of the Core Task implementation Project continued to take well-vetted instructional materials through the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. The session allowed for opportunities to reflect with peers, share ideas and resources, and have conversations around “focus” students. Teachers reviewed the In Common writing resource and watched a lesson demonstration from kindergarten teacher Angela Bibby.

The session also included a video (linked in the PowerPoint) of Dr. Timothy Shanahan, former President of the International Reading Association, sharing the limitations of single factor tests—i.e. standardized reading tests.

Session 3 PowerPoint Grades K-2/3 (here)

Session 3 PowerPoint Grades 3-5 (here)

In Common—lessons and examples of writing in three genres in K-12 (here)

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110 Core Knowledge Teacher Created Supplements Added to 63000resources.com

Posted on November 25, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

If you are implementing Core Knowledge, consider visiting the Core Knowledge section, from the ELA tab, at www.63000resources.com. These are the resources currently in the Edmodo group but feedback, from Core Task implementation Project sessions, consistently included a request to find a more user-friendly way to navigate the materials.

The supplements include graphic organizers, vocabulary documents, flipcharts, PowerPoints, notebooks, and lesson ideas. A HUGE thank you to all the teachers who shared resources.

CK Materials

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10 Websites, with Free resources, to Assist with CCSS Implementation

Posted on November 23, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

If you are looking for help with the implementation of Common Core, the websites listed below will help. Most include free curricular resources, well matched to the CCSS, that any educator can opt into and/or they can be used to assist with your Common Core efforts

  1. www.projecttahoe.org. Awesome. Period. A terrific set of free social studies and history resources including close reads, document based questions, and discussion tasks.
  2. www.readworks.org. All the resources are free and you can get a feel for how many were constructed by clicking here. In short, the Annotated Question Sets provide professional learning on a process to scaffold students through a text.
  3. If you want to keep the classroom discussion going in the home, consider texting parents through www.remind.com. (Jessie Beck teacher Jolene Hamilton gets credit for directing me to this resource.)
  4. www.education4500.com has learning for the secondary educator matched to the instructional shifts.
  5. www.nonfictionminute.com provides great texts around important historical topics. The authors have found subjects that are engaging and informative. Read this piece about Hard Tack to be sold.
  6. www.textproject.org has a number really helpful resources to assist with implementation. Consider looking over Talking Points, texts aimed at getting kids engaged in discussion, and FYI for Kids, high quality magazine articles for students, when you visit.
  7. www.achievethecore.org. Too obvious? Close reading exemplars, mini-assessments, professional development modules, fluency packets… and nothing has a copyright.
  8. www.studyjams.com has free videos to build content knowledge for students. (Thanks Katy Scherr for sharing this one with us!)
  9. www.edmodo.com. Specifically, we support eight Edmodo groups to assist with literacy implementation with topics on close reading, professional development, early learning, leadership, formative writing and the instructional shifts. Angela Orr and Katie Anderson support two other groups with social studies/history close reading exemplars and units. You can find all of our Edmodo groups here and our Core Knowledge group here.
  10. www.63000resources.com. The companion website to this one where all of the blog entries go to be reasonably well organized.
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Literacy Unit Project, Session 3

Posted on November 20, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Third through fifth grade teachers continued to make progress on developing literacy units, mapped to essential understandings, that stretch across all three grades. Those EUs have been finalized and include:

  • How does conflict and compromise shape culture?
  • How does setting influences the culture?
  • Why do some values, points of view and ideas change over time?
  • How do recurring patterns of interactions help to make predictions and understanding our world?

Session 3 focused on professional learning from Robert Pondiscio (video here and here) who emphasizes building knowledge coherently to increase reading comprehension. This was followed by exploring the finalized Literacy Unit Template and populating it with vetted resources. You can review all of the session materials in the links below.

Session 3 PowerPoint

Literacy Design Template

Science Statement

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‘How and How Not to Prepare Students for the New Tests’

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

A popular question, since Nevada officially adopted the SBAC Test for the 2014-2015, is how to best prepare students for the coming assessments. I certainly have an opinion and have consistently noted that if you take full advantage of well-vetted resources, including the Basal Alignment Project, Close Read Exemplars, Core Knowledge, We the People curriculum, Document Based Questions, and the resources at www.63000resources and www.projecttahoe.org, you can feel confident that you are headed in the right direction. Yet, some vendors and national consultants outline a different strategy in which you diagnose skill deficits and remediate. Dr. Timothy Shanahan, the former President of the International Reading Association and work team member on the Common Core State Standards, challenges this strategy in a piece for The Reading Teacher. He writes:

Already, new test prep materials are starting to appear on the Internet, and teachers ask me all the time how they can best prepare students to respond to these new items. Many educators assume that, since these tests will be aligned to the CCSS, they will detect which standards the students are meeting: Johnny meets Reading Standard 4 but is still not getting Standard 7.

The problem is that it doesn’t work that way. It hasn’t in the past, and it won’t with these new tests, either.

Dr. Shanahan follows this claim with the research to buttress his assertion and suggestions for how best to prepare for the coming assessments. You can gain access to the full article here.

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Session 3 Materials from DC CTP

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Educators in Washington, D.C. gathered for the third session of the DC Core Task Project. Session three focused on text complexity, text-dependent questions, and crafting questions to the Malcolm Xs speech, Message to the Grass Roots You can access all of the session materials from the links below.

Session 3 PowerPoint

Text Complexity Qualitative Measures Rubric

Practice with High Quality Texts

Brief Guide to Writing Text Dependent Questions

Practice with Text Dependency

Teacher Reflection Form

What are Kids Reading?

Message to the Grass Roots Text with line numbering

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Dr. P. David Pearson: Implementing the CCSS: Comprehension, Close Reading, and the Common Core

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Although Pearson acknowledges he’s had reservations about the implementation of the CCSS, he takes the time to outline specifically what he likes about the standards. You can see the list in the image below and by viewing the video presentation beginning at minute 5:54. He notes that part of the value of teaching with complex texts is that all students will end up with skills and strategies to navigate “Waterloo” texts.

At minute 10:29, Pearson demonstrates what it means to comprehend. He pauses on how words in a text “compel” us to access background knowledge; that unfamiliarity with ideas and words in a text make links to prior knowledge more challenging; and that we make “plausible” links to things we associate with a word or idea.

At minute 27:51, Pearson outlines his concerns about how close reading is being misused and misinterpreted—specifically that text-dependent questions will be reduced to literal recall questions. He also adds his concern that literal recall questions will be seen as a “prerequisite” for inferential and critical comprehension. Finally, he emphasizes the importance of readers attaching text to schema.

Pearson does an historical overview of close reading at minute 34:40 and at minute 40:00 maps elements of close reading onto the standards themselves. At minute 40:30 Pearson shares his definition of close reading and explains the two questions we should be routinely asking of text: What do you think you know and what in the text makes you think so?

You can view the presentation here.

Pearson--CCSS

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November 4th Presentation Materials–with Pondiscio Video Links

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

As part of the November 4th Professional Learning Day, K-3 educators from 18 different sites gathered for a Core Knowledge Rendezvous. The day focused on a taped presentation by Robert Pondiscio (part 1 here and part 2 here) followed by opportunities to share student and teacher artifacts. Teachers were also afforded time to plan with educators from other schools. You can download the session materials from the links below.

November 4th PowerPoint presentation

Pondiscio slides and notetaker

Pondiscio Prezi—57 Most Important Words

You can review some of the great things happening in our classrooms by visiting the Twitter hashtag #TeachNV

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Every Child Reading–Dr. Margie Gillis Presentation

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

In case you missed it, you can access an October 28th presentation by Dr. Margie B. Gillis on helping Kindergarten through 3rd grade students with reading. Dr. Gillis is the president of Literacy How, Inc. and research affiliate, Haskins Laboratories and Fairfield University. Gillis describes the evidence for what teachers need to know to teach reading—specifically, that it has to be systematic and deliberate. Regretfully, I cannot mark minutes from the webinar but highlights include:

  • In K-3, the priority should be on promoting literacy and governance needs to be reflective on what grant efforts assist with this and what efforts do not.
  • The brain is not wired to learn to read. A system has to be developed.
  • The acquisition of the skills of reading and writing requires the interplay of several components (see image below).

Gillis Components

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