Thinking about Key Details

As the first cluster of standards for both literature and informational text fall under the umbrella of key ideas and details, it is clear that they are important concepts. But what exactly are the key details students should adhere to? In literature, the elements of narratives are delineated for primary grades, along with questioning. However, aren’t the details students need to highlight relative to the task? If students are trying to unpack the characters, then perhaps the most significant details would be different from those that depict the setting. And while significant plot points should reveal elements of the character, they may not give a complete picture. This got me thinking about how to teach key details so that we understand the gist of what we read, but also have clarity in dissecting different elements of what we read. Although the standards do not mention minor details, students must also be able to distinguish between the details that represent the crux of what they are examining and the cursory details that enhance the story. Perhaps we can examine stories with a whole-part-whole approach. What are the key details that disclose the plot? What details illuminate the characters? What details paint the setting? Which details support the theme? Were these details related to the plot, characters, setting, or all? Can we pull from those key details to determine the theme? Which details are key to answering text-dependent questions? Perhaps through our process of close reading, we can read for each purpose, map out the important details for each area, and then analyze how they cross over. Perhaps then, we could all develop more clarity! Below is an idea of how to organize a class chart examining these different elements. Of course, there are still key details to think about for informational text, but I will save that for another day!

Examining Key Details

Title of Story:

Focus	Plot/Events	Setting	Characters	Theme	Questions
Key Details

Understanding Genre

Common Core explicitly outlines different, yet overlapping standards for both literature and informational text. This is a significant change in focus, demanding us to evaluate how the two differ, how they overlap, and what types of text we are being called to use. The literature standards within Common Core relate to fictional works. Traditionally, we have spent a heavy emphasis on narrative stories. However, the multiple standards explicitly outline the use of poetry . The focus of using complex text allows us to open the doors to a variety of literature that will demand students to inspect the content and structure in depth. Fictional literature may include narratives, poems, letters, dramas, plays, and essays. Literature that is nonfiction is addressed in the informational text standards, and may include biographies, recipes, how-to books, facts books and so forth. Artwork and illustrations should also be examined as they can reveal information or a story.

Therefore, while we are teaching standards for literature and informational text that mirror each other, we must also be cognizant of strategically teaching the genres as they require different mindsets for reading. As shown in the table below, these genres have different text structures and features, which overlap and need to be made explicit for students. Although the literature and informational text standards are similar in many ways, the way students approach reading should depend on the type of text they are reading. A narrative is a story. A poem is a written piece with a sense of musicality and entrenched with literary devices. Dramas and plays involve conflict and are created with a performance in mind. Expository text tells information. Generally the primary purpose of a narrative is to entertain, the purpose of poetry is to describe, the purpose of a drama or play is to entertain, and the primary purpose of expository is to inform. Therefore, it is critical that educators explicitly teach students how to identify the genre they are reading and keep track of information based on that text’s structures and features.

Analysis of Genres

Genre	Literature: Narratives	Literature: Poetry	Literature: Drama/Plays	Informational Text: Expository
Definition	Story	A piece written with a sense of musicality	A story that is intended for performing that focuses on character dialogue & conflict	Non-fiction, informational text used to explain, describe, or inform
General Author’s Purpose	Entertain	Describe	Entertain	Inform
Structure	Beginning, Middle, End Paragraphs	Stanzas Can take on a shape	Beginning, Middle, End Dialogue	Description Sequence Compare/Contrast Cause/Effect Question/Answer Paragraphs
Features	Story Elements	Line Breaks, White Space	Story Elements	Topic & Supporting Details
Descriptive Literary Tools	Poetry features literary tools, however, they can be used in all types of Fictional Literature. These tools include rhythm, rhyme, repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia, similes, metaphors, sensory images etc			Generally not used

Why Change?

Reading is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among the reader’s existing knowledge, the information suggested by the written language, and the context of the reading situation. (Michigan State Board of Education, 2002)

When you reflect upon your childhood reading instruction, what stands out? Was it memorable? Exciting? Meaningful? Did you love to read and devour books? Did you know how to grapple with difficult text? Did anyone show you how to get deeper into the text? Did you spend time exploring the depth and wonders of stories? Unfortunately for me, the answer to all these questions was no. I don’t recall reading being challenging or purposeful beyond the task at hand. I remember independent reading tasks where we plowed our way through the SRA leveled text box. We started at a specific color of story, read the stories and answered the questions, and when we got enough right, then we moved on to the next color. This was of course self-corrected with an answer key, self-monitored, and self-reported. I remember getting stuck on brown, and being frustrated that I was on a level while others were passing me. I also remember eventually cheating to move on. I didn’t have the comprehension strategies to help me when things got tough, but I did have an answer key. I also remember that we did have reading groups, and I was stuck in the middle one and couldn’t get out. I always felt I belonged in the highest group, but didn’t have a way of moving.

I am sharing this story because I often hear people lament about change. “Why do we need to change education? It worked for me.” And while yes, I am technically a success story because I did stay in school and become an educator myself, I disliked school growing up. I loved my teachers, but counted down the years until I would be finished. Ironically, I have now learned that I will never be finished. Now I do love learning, but when I was a child, school was not about learning, but rather about finishing. I was not a critical thinker, and it was not demanded of me. If I regurgitated what was taught, then I was awarded good grades. I never thought about reading comprehension until I became a teacher. Reading is so internal, it is just what you do, or so I thought.

So much research has come out about reading in the past 20 years, which has often been lost in implementation in the last 10 years due to scripted lessons. Many teachers across America have been forced into following set programs in published textbooks, rather than examining the needs of the students in their classrooms. These texts, such as Open Court, give little time to differentiation, reading aloud, or access to higher level texts. Instead of student learning being the focus of each reading lesson, the script created by someone far outside the classroom dictates what should be taught. Clearly this is counterintuitive to what teaching should be. The strongest supported reading program by the government, Reading First, is another example of a highly scripted program. These types of programs were developed based on the recommendations of a highly researched based practices found in the National Reading Panel’s (NRP) Report from 2000. Scripted lessons became the result of the NRP, although many flaws have since emerged from the summary of the findings within the report (Yearian, 2011). Since implementation of Reading First in thousands of classrooms, it has been found that while phonics skills improved, comprehension did not. (Gamse et al., 2008).

With the adoption of Common Core Standards, there is a much needed refocusing back on reading comprehension. Teachers are encouraged to examine their students’ needs within school sites and develop instruction that will be most meaningful for those students. For many teachers, this will be a huge shift from the current culture and practices within their schools and districts. While you may or may not agree with how Common Core came about, and how it was written, it seems to me that some change could really do us good.

References

Gamse, B.C., Jacob, R.T, Horst, M., Boulay, B., and Unlu, F. (2008). Reading First Impact Study Final Report Executive Summary (NCEE 2009-4139). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Yearian, S. J. (2011). Empowerment of Teachers and Students through Innovative Literacy Practices. (Doctoral Dissertation) Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. AAT 3474300).

Perception and the Truth

Many credit Lee Atwater with the quote, “Perception is reality.” And when viewing your own life, does this not ring true? One would never consider a turtle to be a speedy creature, but then again, that depends on who is doing the considering.

Perspectives have much to do with experiences, schema, and interpretation. Author’s bring their own unique perspectives to the texts they write. They select what they will reveal to the reader explicitly and implicitly, how the text will be organized, and how their point of view will be carried out. Often the author’s own ideas begin as incomplete thoughts, twisting and turning through the process of writing, changing and evolving until they come out the other side into a cohesive whole. At times, the characters of novels reveal themselves to the authors through the storytelling, and take on a life of their own, and yet, the author still has command over what will be revealed through the character’s dialogue, actions, and thoughts. Despite all this control, readers develop their own interpretation based upon the evidence within the text, but also their own personal perspectives. Other experiences with texts, the world, and other people affect how they view what the author reveals. Therefore, readers apply their own connections to develop their own perspective, but must also examine the evidence within the text to understand what the author directly reveals as well as infer to gain meaning from underlying messages, ideas, and themes.

Common Core emphasizes the importance of point of view, devoting standard six for Reading Literature and Informational Text to this concept. Why is it so significant? Understanding the role of point of view allows the reader to think critically about a piece. What are the author’s motives and purposes in writing a text? What context or historical background does the author emerge from? How does this affect the portrayal of events? Readers must understand the effects of their own perceptions and the author’s point of view in order to get at the truth of what they are reading. Even then, that gets us to a deeper question – what is the truth?

Using Close Reading and Questioning

Earlier in the year I wrote about the importance of close readings and what they entailed. As close readings are an essential part of Common Core standards, teachers will need to rethink how they spend their shared reading time block. Teachers accustomed to using textbook models are comfortable with following the steps outlined in the text for a single reading of the story. Some teachers may have extended the reading a second time. Teachers familiar with comprehension strategy instruction may spend several days or a week on one story to focus on a specific comprehension strategy. Lifting the text and examining the text for evidence may be a norm. However, close reading goes beyond both of those. It certainly has elements of comprehension strategy instruction, but demands more time on text, and certainly more student time with challenging texts. Teachers may read the same text for 1-2 weeks for a variety of purposes, sometimes as a whole, other times in small parts. Teachers will need to strategically map out this time, selecting texts with depth, and focusing lessons around content that students need to understand. For example, if a third grade teacher was focusing on the comprehension strategy of questioning, with the objectives of readers ask questions about unknown words, parts, and key details, as well as readers find answer to their questions using the text, background knowledge, inferring, or outside source (with some questions being unanswered), a close reading of The Princess and the Beggar by Anne Sibley O’Brien may look like the following:

Day	Lesson	Charting/Activity	Standards Addressed
1	Read story aloud with students. Stop and pause throughout the reading.	Students write questions on post-it notes throughout the reading, including unknown words and phrases. Have students share and chart their deepest question.	RL 1, RL 4
2	Classifying questions: What type of questions do we ask? (e.g. clarifying, character motives/traits, unknown words or phrases (vocabulary), predicting etc.)	Analyze the questions from day one for how they relate. Group questions and determine categories. Have students work in collaborative groups to determine how they can categorize their questions. As a class discuss questions that didn’t fit into your categories and create any new ones that they may need.	RL 1
3-4	Chart story elements students remember from the day before. Read story aloud again. Discuss the categories from the day before. Tell them today they will examine the category for character traits/motives. As we reread the story, we will examine how the princess, the king, and the beggar think, speak, and behave. Then we will revisit those questions	BEFORE READING: Chart story elements (characters, setting, major events). Chart questions students have about the three different characters. DURING READING: Chart character traits’ motives along with the evidence from the text. Examine how those traits relate to the sequence of events. Revisit questions throughout the reading as they are answered. AFTER READING: Examine which questions were not answered. Can we answer them now? If not, why? Which questions seemed to get at the heart of our characters? Which types of questions got us deeper into understanding the characters? (For example, how and why vs. who)	RL 3
5	Examine just the poem within the story. What is the poem about? Pull the poem apart to determine meaning and infer the point/lesson of the poem. What does this poem reveal about the princess?	Have the poem written up separately from the story so you can pull it apart and discuss meaning as it unfolds and how it relates to the story as a whole. Include questions they have about the poem, and work to find the answers through pulling it apart. Examine the literal and nonliteral language within the poem.	RL 4, RL 5
6	New Words and Phrases: Examine their questions that related to vocabulary. Take words/phrases from day 1 that have not been addressed. Students should have text so they can look closely for evidence.	CHART: Write the new words/phrases, evidence or clues for determining meaning, and images to help us remember the meaning. Give students their own chart too. As the class discusses the words, they should write their thinking on their page and share out. For words without context, provide context (either sentences or pictures) for them to help support inferring for word meaning.	L4
7	Shared Inquiry: Examine a specific text-dependent question, such as, “How does pride play a role in the princess’s decisions?”	Students brainstorm their thinking first, citing text evidence for their answers. Class discussion starts with this question, but then probes beyond based on the conversation. Students have text to use for evidence. Ultimately, the class examines the data of their discussion and revisits their answers from before.	RL 1
8	Revisit Questions from Day 1: Answer and Sort	Whole Class: Examine some questions from day 1: Discuss the questions and their answers, citing evidence. Sort questions by the types of answers (Text, Background Knowledge, Infer, Outside Source/Unanswered)	RL 1
9	Answering Questions and Sorting by T, BK, I, and U/OS	Students work in collaborative groups to find the answers to the questions they sorted on day 2. Where did their answers come from? Cite evidence when answering and sort questions in the end by the categories from day 8.	RL 1
10	Recount	Students write a recount of the story using the brainstorm organizer. Students also determine the lesson of the story. Students share recount with a partner.	RL 2
11	Lesson Discussion	Examine the lessons students wrote from the day before. Organize by teams of similar thinking. Have them get into groups and develop an argument as to why that lesson matches the story. Have a class debate.	RL 2, W 1

Effective close reading should draw students deeper into the nuances of the text. Students should feel empowered and develop a greater understanding of the importance of exploring texts. Close readings should build students’ stamina and drive, and ultimately build a passion for reading, which is one of our foundational goals to begin with.

Does Comprehension Strategy Instruction Fit in with Common Core?

This was my first thought when I surveyed the standards. Although there was clear evidence that questioning was a valued strategy, what about the rest? Is it still important for students to visualize? make connections? predict? infer? determine importance? synthesize? Because I believe comprehension strategy works on multiple levels, I was intent on answering these questions, and in my quest have found ways of connecting the standards to strategy instruction although many of the terms are omitted.

There was a bold statement made early on about the frivolity of making connections – how it leads readers into themselves instead of the story, and a backlash against personal response. My initial reaction was to cringe. Isn’t reading always personal? Even technical manuals make sense only through processing relationships and connecting to what you understand. That is why my husband can spend hours reading his airplane manuals and they make sense, and all I see is a bunch of random pieces of information that have little meaning to me. He has the schema, or background knowledge, to make sense of all the bits of information. He relates new data to what he already knows and revises his thinking for new airplanes. He possesses the technical (or tier 3) vocabulary terms to relate to the data, and most likely visualizes the cockpit and how the information is used to fly the airplane.

To me, reading is a process of constantly making connections to, within, and across the texts, so why wouldn’t it be included in the standards? According to Louise Rosenblatt (as cited in Pardo, 2004) there are four components to reading: the reader, the text, the social cultural context, and the transaction. Readers bring their own background knowledge, interact with the features of the text and the author’s intent, and develop meaning based on what they bring to the text that day. It is in this transaction that readers apply a variety of comprehension strategies to determine meaning. As we know, our understanding of text changes over time because we change over time, along with what we are reading for in a text. This personal relationship with text is foundational in how we make meaning.

Although making connections has been contested (and New York has balked at this by adding an eleventh standard on personal response), a case can be made that upon a closer look, there are clear ties to connections within and across texts. And although personal connections are clearly de-emphasized, there are standards that need scaffolding to be attained, and students need to understand how to articulate how they relate  to texts to delve deeper into ideas, emotions, and events within texts.

One of the biggest critiques of making connections is that it promotes students to parade their ideas off topic, which leads them further away from the text, rather than closer. However, learning and the integration of ideas are deeply entrenched in making connections. With Common Core, we are being asked to refocus our attention on how we teach connections to make sure students are bringing their knowledge about the world to really explore the “four corners of the text” rather than the corners of their lives. Therefore, instead of abandoning the strategy, we need to make sure we guide students through the text and reexamine the different facets of connections.

Connections examine both the relationships of the reader to the text, but also the relationships of what exists within and across the texts. When thinking about the strategy of making connections, it may be helpful to think about different categories. The first type of connections is the personal relationship between the reader and the text. At this level, readers become aware of how ideas and details within the text relate to their own lives and other stories in their background knowledge. They become purposeful in developing these relationships by categorizing them by text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world. An essential essence of this foundation is for the reader to become active in the process of relating to texts, and become cognizant of the interaction between the reader and the text. The second type of connections entails readers developing understanding of textual structures and features, and making connections across texts according to these elements. This type of connection is clearly articulated in the Common Core Standards. Some examples may include genre, writing style, author’s purpose, themes, writing style, and literary tools. Teachers may purposefully select texts by author’s study to examine connections across texts, or writing styles to compare different authors. The third level of making connections examines the relationships within a text. How do the parts relate to the whole? How are the images related to the text? How does understanding the text structure allow the reader to understanding relationships within the text. Connections entail building relationships with texts at a variety of levels. Therefore, when reading the standards, words such as the integration of ideas, relationships and connections may all point towards a comprehension strategy that appeared overlooked – making connections.

Reference
Pardo, L. (2004). What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Reading Comprehension. The Reading Teacher. Vol. 58, No. 3.

Text Structures and Features

When I was growing up, there was little thought to the type of text we were reading. I followed assignments, read the stories in the primer, and answered questions. It did not occur to me that we should read differently for different types of text. To be honest, this thought did not occur to me until I became a teacher, and more specifically, when I first taught third grade. I remember doing a STAR practice test the week before doomsday (the actual STAR test), and my students performed horribly on an informational passage. The questions seemed really difficult unless you read the passage for the structure of expository text. Once you pulled out the supporting details each paragraph detailed about the topic, the answers were clear. This required the reader to identify the type of text, understand how the text was organized, examine the relationships within and among the paragraphs, and then relate them to the questions being asked. From then on out, I made understanding genres part of my reading instruction along with learning to distinguish among them, and determining what types of organizers would help the reader unpack the text. Common Core has clearly identified the need for students to understand diverse genres and their elements. This emphasis seems very appropriate to me given my experiences with working with students. While the fact that we have two separate categories of standards to elucidate the importance of explicitly teaching types of text, today I want to look at standard 5.

Craft and Structure: College and Career Readiness Anchor Standard 5:

Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. (CCSS)

Students are expected to know how different types of texts are organized, distinguish among types of genres, and determine how the separate parts relate to the whole. When examining standard 5 for grades K-5 for literature, the types of texts mentioned include stories, poems, dramas, and prose. Traditionally, these categories were easily distinguished by stories/prose being in paragraph format, poems being written in stanzas, and dramas including a speaker before the sentence. Modern writers certainly blur these lines and can make classifying text more challenging. However, for the elementary classroom, teachers can easily select text that keeps these categories clear to build basic building blocks. The venn diagram  examines some of the basic features that distinguish poetry and narratives. Dramas are similar to narratives except that the organization is related to the speaker rather than paragraph format and that white space may be used to signify the change in characters.

Standard five for informational texts specifically examines text features and structures. Students are expected to differentiate among the different types of texts as early as kindergarten. Throughout the grade levels, students increasingly become more responsible for understanding the structure of texts, the significance of their impact on the development of the text, and the dissection of the relationships between parts, wholes, and the text progression. The set of differentiated task cards to the left support instruction and independent practice of expository text features for primary grades. These skills are essential building blocks since students in fourth and fifth grades need to be able to identify the type of text organization or structure– i.e. cause and effect, problem/solution, comparison, etc). Although some literature standards do not examine the relationship between narratives to expository text, this distinction is later made in the informational texts standards. Therefore, it is critical that students understand the features and structures that distinguish different types of texts from a basic to more complex level throughout the grades.

So how does standard 5 impact our instruction in the classroom? Students need to analyze texts from an early age, identify features that genres have in common. Primary teachers may begin the year by having students sort books as they read them aloud, then delve into the library and examine how the books can be sorted by genre. Text identification should become part of every story that is read. Perhaps instead of scaffolding the story before reading, the class can examine the text structures and features to determine what they are reading for. What type of organizer would work to keep track of our thinking about a text? What can we expect to find in the text? Thinking about comprehension strategy instruction, this relates to predictions. Rather than just predicting events, readers can predict the type of text they will be reading. Readers of all grade levels will benefit from examining texts closely to understand and determine the features and structures to improve comprehension. And, as with all vocabulary, the language of the discipline needs to be part of their every day discussions so that it becomes how they articulate their ideas.

Tiering Vocabulary

When considering the significance of language and words, it is  important to note the three-tiered analysis outlined in Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards. These tiers represent different types of words students need to grapple with, and although some are more complex than other, requiring more support, all types of words are important for students.

Tier one is everyday language that young learners develop. Although English Language Learners students will need support in this area, most native speakers naturally develop this category of words. Tier two, or general academic words, are words of precision that are found within and across texts. They are not specific to a particular area of study, but are exacting in their selection to convey a message. Teachers need to examine tier two words carefully in text, as they are often the least supported by instruction and often don’t have enough context clues to support their meaning. Tier three, or domain specific words, is particular to a field of study. Often found in expository text, they are often clearly defined and documented in a glossary. These are the technical terms students learn for a specific area of study. Students learn these words best over time when applied in multiple settings. Table 3 examines the gist of these three different categories of words. For a more in-depth analysis, Appendix A of Common Core Standards gives more examples of these types of words within context.

Synopsis of Three-Tier Leveled Words

Tier	One	Two	Three
Types of Words	Everyday Language	Vocabulary that is precise and more advanced	Language of the Discipline: Specific to a field of study
Examples	Sad, happy, angry	Devasted, elated, infuriated	Geologist, sedimentary, metamorphic

Vocabulary and Multiple Meanings…Not So Uncommon

The Common Core Standards have a renewed focus on vocabulary development across the grade levels. While this is not a new concept, there is certainly more clarity and dissection in approaching the variety in the type of words students should learn, as well as the skills students should develop to become proficient at their grade level. Certainly one of the prevailing  themes within the Language Acquisition and Use standard 4 for grades K-5 is that students should be able to determine the meaning of unknown and multiple meaning words. Clearly this should reflect an increase in the complexity of language students encounter as texts become more complex, but students of all levels should be grappling with these concepts.

The College and Career Readiness (CCR) Standard 4 for Language is as follows:

Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.

CCR 4 examines the role of the reader in actively making meaning while reading. Readers need a variety of skills to support them in attaining this standard, such as knowledge of multiple meanings, affixes, context clues, and how to use resources. Students must become attuned to when they don’t know the meaning of words, and actively apply strategies to determine meaning.  Therefore, teachers must teach the strategy of inferring for word meaning across the grade levels, focusing both on using clues both within the word and within the context to gain insight into meaning.

It is evident that for this standard, students will need to grapple with complex text that allows them to explore the nuances of language beyond the literal.  For example, the word “interesting” can mean a variety of messages as the word alone does not necessarily convey the writer’s or speaker’s intention. It could mean fascinating, it could mean boring, it could mean different. Without further explanation, the word by itself is nondescript. If someone tells a story and the listener nods his head, rubs his chin, and replies, “Interesting,” the word could mean something worth contemplating. If the speaker comments on a how a meal was prepared as, “The meal was…interesting,” he or she may be communicating that it was different, but not necessarily tasty. The pause within the sentence sets a tone, as well as the word choice of interesting. If the meal was delicious, then interesting wouldn’t be an appropriate choice. It is possible the meal was not good at all, but the speaker was looking for a descriptive word that would not be offensive. (This would especially be true if the context included that the chef or host of the meal was someone of respect.) Sometimes the absence of stronger word choice sends a message as well as the selection of powerful words. Therefore, readers must examine words that are selected (and at times, omitted) for their basic meaning, but also analyze the context and tone to determine the essence of the message behind the words.Students need to engage with multiple meanings during reading, but it is also helpful to examine common words students know that have multiple meanings and focus the classroom discussion on how words get their meaning. Sometimes we take for granted that a concept as simple as a “word” can really be quite a loaded discussion. What is a word? Why do we have words? How do words gain their meaning? We have a tendency to talk about words all the time, but not really examine the very essence of its meaning and purpose. Perhaps this can help students refocus their attention on the marvel of words and how finding new words is like opening a treasure chest.

In order to help support teachers, I have created this set of differentiated task cards that focus on the guided or independent practice of multiple meanings. New words give children (and adults!) better access to clear communication, and clarity in expressing ideas. When students understand new vocabulary, and engage with it in meaningful ways, they become empowered. I have often seen kids try out their new words on family and friends, and wear them with a sense of pride. Even my three year old son likes to bring up new words, and through repeated rereading, is able to tell me the meaning of words such as ajar and eider. I hope that as you explore new language with your students, they become entrenched in the excitement and power of vocabulary, as I do with my  son.

The Big Changes with Common Core Standards

I realized that in my posts I have jumped into some of my findings within the standards without stepping back and discussing some of the broader changes brought by the Common Core Standards. I suppose these are the elements that are well documented and discussed frequently at any of the Common Core Support websites. However, I will address them here as well in case you haven’t had the time or energy to research out these changes.

The New York State Department of Education (www.engageny.org) cites five specific instructional shifts in literacy related to the primary grades. The first is the balancing of literature and informational text. By third grade, students should be engaging with 50% of each type of text. Secondly, when reading, students should be focusing on text-dependent questions, which require text-based answers. While skills such as main idea are still relevant, teachers should focus on questions that get deeper into the structure and craft of a particular story.  Third of all, writing should shift from personal response and narrative to writing from sources. Rather than convey feelings, students should write arguments that are deeply grounded with evidence to inform their audience. A fourth critical aspect of Common Core is text selection, demanding that teachers evaluate the quality of text so that they increase with complexity and have enough depth for students to perform close reading. The last significant shift focuses on the importance of students developing academic vocabulary at all ages. This focus on specificity of language should also help support students in accessing complex text.

The Student Achievement Partners (www.achievethecore.org) classify the instructional shifts with Common Core by three major changes, which embody those reported by New York. Essentially, students build their schema through content-rich literature and informational texts, focus both reading and writing on evidence from text, and build complexity in reading through types of text and by developing vocabulary.

While at first glance, these change may not seem sweeping, in actuality they are. The Common Core Standards really do embody what good comprehension strategy instruction has always entailed – lifting the text, examining the text from multiple perspectives, and sharing and discussing ideas. However, new guidelines on what students should be examining are inherent within these standards, and the idea of slowing down is in greater depth. Greater emphasis is place on informational text than in the past, and although vocabulary has always been deemed important, Common Core makes a resounding statement about how we must do much better for all our students by making all grade levels accountable and pulling apart the types of vocabulary students must develop. In addition, Common Core demands critical thinking rather than intuition.  “What’s your evidence?” should be a frequent question that demands textual proof. I’m not going to lie – when you teach your students to question, debate, and produce hard evidence, they may begin to question things they once accepted as “just because”…