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.