Answering the Question: Common Core

It’s time again to revisit the ELA Common Core standards. In case you haven’t spent much time yet exploring the standards, let me clarify its organization. There are six categories of language arts standards: Literature, Informational Text,  Foundational Skills, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language. Unpacking the Common Core standards is continuing to prove to be a complex feat. When unpacking a standard, I  examine it from Kindergarten-5th grade. Since the standards build upon each other by grade level, I must really examine what the purpose of the standard is at each level, and how that builds toward upper grade.

This week, I decided to explore the literature and informational text standard 1 about questions, answers, and key details. This standard seemed straightforward at first, but since it is in two types of genres, I soon realized there was a lot that needed to be clarified. For this standard, students need to understand the difference between narrative and expository text, be able to identify features and structures of the text, determine importance in order to identify key details, and develop their questioning strategy. Furthermore, students need to understand the difference between topics and main ideas, and how main ideas vary by genre. Also, as you explore the category of key ideas and details, the standards delve further into features and structure.  Although this seemed very convoluted at first, I slowly dug my way out of the abyss to find some clarity. Below is one way you could map out this unit using a whole-part-whole philosophy. This unit will imbed a variety of reading standards and two comprehension strategies (determining importance and questioning).

WHOLE: Genres
Narrative vs. Expository: The depth of this lesson would depend on the grade level. Perhaps K-2 would just define the difference as stories and informational text, and further define narratives by their story elements and expository by topic and key details. In this lesson, teachers would examine short pieces of both types of text and chart similarities and differences. This could be through modeling, or textual analysis as a class. Students may need repeated experiences with this lesson.

PART: Narrative Structure & Features & Author’s Study

Make a unit chart to add on to for each book that you read. On this chart include: title, genre, structure, features, main idea, and key details. The structure and features will repeat as long as you are in narrative, but this repetition is intentional for students to notice what changes and what does not.

• Author Exploration: Choose an author or two to study. Explore the author. Choose resources about the author for the students to get to know the author and what motivates that author as a writer. (Tie in with Point of View standard as well.)

• Determining Importance: Key Details vs. Minor Details – Use the comprehension strategy of determining importance to help decide what is most important in the story and what is not. You can story map each narrative on your unit chart in the structure & features column. When you get to the events parts, stop and examine key vs. minor details. One way of approaching this is to have the students retell the story and you type down each sentence. In collaborative groups or as a class, you can sort the details as key or minor. As you are building this sort examine what each detail tells us about the story. How do we know if this detail is important or not? What is important in the story? I read online that a student once likened determining importance to a pot of pasta. When you strain the noodles (or the details), all the water goes through (the minor details), and what is left is the pasta (key details). Another comprehension strategy that I strongly encourage you to embed and read up about it synthesizing. Elements of synthesizing require determining importance and lead to inferential thinking about the text. Debbie Miller discusses synthesizing in Reading with Meaning and Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis discuss synthesizing in Strategies That Work.

• Other Story Elements: Each grade level has increasing complexity of examining story elements in Literature Standard 3, from  simply identifying characters, setting, and major events (K-1)  to  examining the interaction between the characters and the events (2-3), to deeper examination of these elements (4th), and comparison among texts (5th). You can also embed Literature Standard 2, which is related to themes. I recommend using the same text for a week or two to explore in depth. Therefore, you may spend 2-3 days on determining importance, and then further explore that text for the story elements, mapping out their thinking based upon your grade level standard.

• Main Idea: For 3rd grade on up, examine the main idea of narrative. This is the point of the story. Often determining who, did what, and how or why that was important and summing that up in one sentence, will offer the gist of the story. This is important for developing summaries as the children get older. It also serves as a platform for comparing main idea in expository text.

PART: Expository Structure & Features

Continue your unit chart from earlier to add-on to for each book that you read. As students progress through the grades, the type of  text structure should change so students become familiar with the six formats (Description, Sequence, Compare/Contrast, Cause & Effect, Problem/Solution, and Question & Answer).

• Text Selection: Some possible resources for this section include your social studies or science texts,  guided reading books, content readers, and/or primary sources.

• Text Structure & Features of Text: Examine text such as Time for Kids. How is this structure e a narrative? How do we need to prepare our brains differently? Where do we start? Does it matter? Identify features of expository text (headings, subheadings, captions, illustrations, photos etc).

• Determining Importance: How are these key details going to be different from in narratives? Think about organization (structure) of the text. We are looking for a topic and supporting key details. If you are familiar with step-up to writing, I have used this in the past to break down expository text. If not, model how you would determine the topic and key details. Examine key vs. minor details. How do we determine what is most important. Think about the hierarchical organization of the text.  Here is a great resource for lessons I found online for examining different types of expository text and determining importance.

PART: QUESTIONING

• Based on your grade level’s standard and objectives, scaffold lessons to teach the strategy of questioning. Follow the gradual release of responsibility. Use both narrative and expository texts. Focus on asking relevant questions about key details and finding the answers to their questions.
  

WHOLE: REVISITING CONCEPTS

• Reexamine and chart what they have learned about the difference between narrative and expository, their structures and features, how they as readers approach each text, how they determine importance, and questioning. Reexamine how the approach to reading is both similar and different for the two genres.

Teaching with the Common Core standards is much like teaching with differentiation. You don’t throw out everything you know, but rather, carefully examine what students need to know, be able to do, and understand. Then look at your resources to determine next best steps, and research new resources for what you don’t have. Instead of starting with your  planning time with lesson plans and files, you finish with them.

Exploring the ABCs

When my son was 2.75 years old, I had a conversation with a friend who is an Early Childhood Specialist. She mentioned that many children know their ABCs by the age of 3. Uh oh… My son had shown no interest in learning the alphabet. He loved to count, and had been doing it for a long time. We counted stairs, food, toys, fingers, cars – he enjoyed it all. He loved counting books, but wasn’t so interested in reading ABC books – not by Dr. Seuss, not Curious George, not even truck or construction books, on the ipad or hard cover. I had let it go because I figured he was young and it would come in time, but now I felt like I needed to do something. So, I took a different route. This time I decided to explore the ABCs through artwork and fine motor work. It started with him cutting and gluing pieces down on letters I wrote on paper. His first letter was a rudimentary A that I had him trace and glue down cheerios. Eventually, we focused more on painting blank canvases with tempera and watercolors, and cutting out letters to glue down on his paintings.

After we finished the ABCs, I wasn’t sure where to go next. He still didn’t know his letters by sight, but had an awareness of letters. I decided to start all over. This time, I started taking old Christmas cards and cutting out the pictures of people he knew and gluing them on the letters that begin with their names. Now he says things like,”I am looking for an A for Elephant!” Sure, he doesn’t quite have the right match, but he is starting to get the idea the letters match words!

Below is a list of materials we use to explore the ABCs:

• watercolors
• tempera paints & paint brushes
• blank construction paper (white and colored)
• markers
• scissors
• glue
• dot-to-dot markers
• foam letter stickers
• coloring books
• stickers
• painter’s tape (for taping pictures on the wall)

Whatever the tool you use, exploring the ABCs with your preschooler can be a fun and rewarding experience. Remember to just have fun!

The Pliability of Numbers

My sister told me in recent years that she doesn’t believe in subtraction – that there is no such thing. I thought she was crazy, and clearly, she had a different interpretation of math than what I was taught.  When I was growing up, numbers were viewed as rigid, set in stone. They were black stamps that etched the pages of math books in their perfectly organized rows. Hardened rules were taught, and if executed precisely, led to exacting calculations. Pages and pages of work droned on until it was declared that you had reached math proficiency and passed, or math despair and had failed. We became perfect little calculators (or not). There wasn’t much room for free thinking. It wasn’t really necessary; you just had to follow the rules. I am a rule follower, so I marched to the beat of the classes, claimed my A’s, and moved on, never reflecting upon mathematical principles until recent years. My sister on the other hand, well, she doesn’t believe in rules imposed by others, she would much rather create her own. Therefore, her supposition about subtraction should not have been a surprise.  In her world, there is no subtraction, only positive and negative numbers – you just have to keep the sign with the number. At first this may sound ludicrous, but in reality, she demonstrates a superior understanding of numbers and operations. It does not match what is taught in traditional mathematics, however, it rings true, even in higher level math. If you have a conversation with mathematicians, they see numbers and operations differently than often what is taught. The traditional algorithms used in the classroom today came from hundreds of years of mathematicians figuring out the shortcuts. In the classroom, we often teach the shortcut that uses the least amount of paper. No wonder students get so confused, they never get a chance to develop the understanding of how that shortcut developed.

I have a theory that there are four categories that most people fit in regarding their experiences with mathematics. The first have an innate understanding of numbers and principles. They see beyond what is taught in the traditional classroom. It just always made sense. The second is like myself, the rule follower/memorizer. They usually get good grades and are seen to be good in math, although they may not really have much understanding beyond following the prescribed steps. The third group understands how to work with numbers and operations, but it may not match how it was taught, which led to frustration and either a distaste for math courses or struggling grades. The last group just hate math. It never made sense and they couldn’t remember all the rules. I realized early on when I became a classroom teacher that the rules seemed to be conflicting, and at times, counterintuitive. For example, If you want to compare numbers, then start with the largest digit. If you want to add numbers, start in the ones place, which, as it turns out, is not how most students would naturally solve an addition sentence. We often feel tied to the way we were taught because it is what is familiar, regardless of what category of mathematician we associate ourselves with.

I am now trying to create a new mathematical path for my students. One where they can see connections and relationships, where numbers make sense. I now realize that numbers and operations are more like clay than rock. They can be molded and shaped into different forms. Their flexibility allows you to reorganize them and shape them into friendly equations that make mental math and everyday calculations simpler. Understanding of operations allows you to estimate and compute in diverse ways. I contend that the mantra in traditional mathematics echoed those of Nike, “Just Do It!” However, I have developed a new mantra, one that can only be used when we are taught to think about the pliability of numbers and operations – “Don’t work for the numbers, make the numbers work for you!”  This understanding took me time to develop. I had to retrain my brain and develop a deeper understanding of numbers and operations. I had to change my perception of math, and that it was more about understanding relationships than following the rules. When working with students now, I focus on how numbers can be represented, what the operations truly mean, and how numbers, strategies, and operations are related. Students are demanded to think, analyze, and make connections within mathematics. Flexibility is the norm rather than the outlier.

If you are anything like I was in my earlier perceptions of math, you may be wondering what this flexibility looks like. I know when I was first introduced to this idea, I could not see outside my box and had someone show me just a few ways of solving other than how I was taught. The rest of the ways, I learned later on either through my students teaching me or through research articles. You can download samples of strategies used by my students over the years. The names I give them are not the official names, but rather, what we have called them as a class. It can be uncomfortable to stretch beyond our own experiences, but once we do, we have an understanding that could never have been reached before.

In America, we live in a culture deeply entrenched in traditional algorithms, and it can be challenging to see beyond, or to help others understand why it is important to teach math in a different way. I spend a lot of time educating the community on how and why I am teaching this way. I often show parents articles on the importance of problem solving for today’s students, such as chapter two from Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding by James Hiebert et al. I encourage you to read the article, The Harmful Effects of “Carrying” and “Borrowing” in Grades 1-4 by Constance Kamii, which I have also shared with parents during conferences. Reading these articles may feel uncomfortable, but change often is.