It's Monday, It's ELA Common Core Day! Today's Topic: Unwrapping the Standards - Beginning with Steps 1 and 2

Ainsworth gives us 5 steps to follow when Unwrapping the Standards. Today we will look at Step 1 - Code It, and Step 2 - Unwrap It, with one sample standard. Next Monday, we will dive into Step 3 - Determine the Big Ideas..  The whole 5-step process is a very good way to get to know the Common Core Standards. (Steps 3-5 are my favorites, but let’s start with #1 and #2.)

Step 1 is easy.  All you do is Code It! – Highlight or underline the verbs and then highlight or circle the nouns.  It’s just a way to start the whole unwrapping process. After you do that, complete Step 2 – Unwrap It!  Identify the concepts and skills in the standard, to determine what students need to understand and do… You may want to rewrite them separately, to help them stand out.  (For example, one of the standards below has as many as 7 separate concepts and skills embedded in it – read your grade level(s) and identify each concept and skill in your standard.)

Choose your grade group(s):

Kindergarten Teachers: 

Standard RL.K.2: With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details.

1^st Grade Teachers:

Standard RL.1.2: Grade 1 students will retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.

2^nd Grade Teachers:

Standard RL.2.2: Grade 2 students will recount stories, including fable and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.

3^rd Grade Teachers:

Standard RL.3.2: Grade 3 students will recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.

4^th Grade Teachers:

Standard RL.4.2: Grade 4 students will determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.

5^th Grade Teachers:

Standard RL.5.2: Grade 5 students will determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

6^th Grade Teachers:

Standard RL.6.2: Grade 6 students will determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.

Enjoy getting to know this one standard. This is just the beginning of the 5 Step Process. Next Monday, we will dive into it a little deeper. 

Until next time, share a strategy!
Dr. Denise Gudwin

How Do We Help Kids Pick the Right Books?

In my recent LITC 525 class, a few of my students asked the question, "How do we help kids pick the right books?"  Choosing books for someone else to read, especially if that someone is a student who struggles in reading, can be tricky  here are a few tips you might want to use:

1.  Let the students choose their own book based on their interest.  If Casey wants to look at a book about frogs, even if it is too difficult for him to read on his own, let him have time with the book on frogs.  Nonfiction books can be an excellent motivator for students.  Casey can gather information from the photographs and charts, and this particular book might encourage him to read a book on frogs at his level.  This is where an exemplary educator comes in - He/She will notice that Casey chooses books about frogs and will make sure to have other frog books accessible to him at his level.  (Books at his level and even some that are easier and more difficult.)  This is where topic baskets or theme bins come in handy!

   2.  Good Fit Books for Kids – I PICK (Boushey & Moser, based on Allington’s work)  Create an I PICK anchor chart for your students:

I choose a book.

Purpose – Why do I want to read it?

Interest – Does it interest me?

Comprehend – Am I understanding what I’m reading?

Know – I know most of the words?

3.  Five Finger Test

• Choose a book that interests you.  Open to a page somewhere in the middle of the book.
• Read the page. (Out loud is better.)
• Hold up a finger each time you come to a word you don’t know or don’t understand.     

• Now, the Five Finger Code:

1)    If you have only ONE FINGER up, you knew all but one word.  This book will be PRETTY EASY for you.  Thumbs up!

2)    If you held up TWO FINGERS, this book is JUST RIGHT FOR YOU!  You may need some help, but it will be a good learning book for you.

3)    If you held up THREE FINGERS, this book might be CHALLENGING, but try it.  You may enjoy it.  If you keep this book to read, be aware that it might be frustrating and you may not understand it as much as you’d like.

4)    If you held up FOUR FINGERS, this book will be VERY CHALLENGING, but you can read it with a partner if you’d like. If you really like this book and if it has pictures, illustrations, or charts, you may want to look at it on your own, but still find another book to read or a buddy to read this one with you.

5)    If you held up FIVE FINGERS or more, this book is probably TOO HARD to be fun to read.  That means STOP, and either save it for later or read it with someone who can read it to you.  If you really like this book and if it has pictures, illustrations, or charts, you may want to look at it on your own, but still find another book to read.

    4. The Goldilocks Rule – Find a book that is NOT TOO HARD, NOT TOO EASY, BUT JUST RIGHT. 

Which do you think your students would like the best?  Let’s keep them in the core of what we choose!

Until next time, share a strategy!

Dr. Denise Gudwin

It's Monday, It's ELA Common Core Day!  Today's Tip: Team Up With Your Librarian.

I met an amazing School Librarian last week, during my Common Core seminar in Oklahoma City. We had a great discussion about her role in the Common Core at numerous times during the day.  She’s the type of librarian that we all want to know.  Since she used to be a teacher for eight years, she has a broad vision of literacy in the library, coupled with her love of teaching and her love of reading. Every time I looked over at her during the all-day workshop, she was smiling, enthusiastic, validated, taking notes, sharing with her colleague, saying, “yes!”

Here are some of her ideas (which are absolutely wonderful, by the way!) specifically for teachers:

• Get together with your librarian.  They have books and stories and ideas to share with you. Collaborate together.
• She has lesson plan ideas and would love to share them with you.
• She would love to use her lesson plans with your students during her library time, especially if you have communicated with each other, and if she knows the direction you are headed.
• She would love to co-teach a lesson with you.  She will come into your classroom and teach a lesson with you.  Together.  Co-teaching.
• The standards you work on are some of the same standards she works on. She would love to piggy-back on what you’re teaching.  She can reinforce that learning if she knows your focus.
• She is passionate about books and learning, and wants to work together to give her students/your students a love of reading.
• She wants to search, find, and gather up books and resources for you, to support you in this Common Core journey.

I hope you know a librarian who has some of these same attributes.  Think of what a team you two would make.

Does your librarian have similar characteristics?  He/she may, and you might not even know it!

What can you do to bridge that relationship between teacher and librarian?

Until next time, share a literacy strategy!
Dr. Denise Gudwin 

It's Monday, It's ELA Common Core Day!

So, RL.__.6 is a standard that opened my eyes last year when I was preparing a Common Core workshop with teachers in New Hampshire, Missouri, and N. Dakota.  I wanted to share this one with you...

RL stands for Reading Standards for Literature.  The middle number ( __ ) represents the grade level, and the 6 represents the standard.

Now, what you want to do, is read over all of them, all the way down:

RL.K.6 (Kindergarten) - With prompting and support, name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story.

same standard, 1st grade... RL.1.6 (1st grade) -  Identify who is telling the story at various points in a text.

same standard, 2nd grade... RL2.6 (2nd grade) - Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.

WOW - did you just have the same though I did?  

If I was a kindergarten teacher, it would be really good for me to know that point of view is where this standard is leading, down the line.  As a kindergarten teacher, I wouldn't stop at name and illustrator and the role(s) of who is telling the story... I would start to weave in oral discussions about point of view.  

I know a 5-year-old little girl named Kaylee, who has been talking about point of view with me since she turned 4.  We didn't call it point of view then... We talked about what the story would be like if my cat Mika, was the main character and she was telling the story, and how would the story change if Ty, my big brown chocolate lab was telling the story, and how it would sound really different from Mika's version.  I didn't label our discussions "point of view" but we had some rich dialogue going back and forth, all laying the foundation for point of view later on.

With Common Core, it's really important that we look down the road and see where our grade's standard is heading.  It's a way we can set our students up for success. 

Here's where that same standard is heading:
RL.3.6 (3rd grade) - Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters.

RL.4.6 (4th grade) - Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first- and third-person narrations.

RL5.6 (5th grade) - Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.

RL.6.6 (6th grade) - Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

and then look where 8th grade takes us (I know I skipped 7th grade, but I just want us to look ahead.)  RL.8.6 - Analyze how differences in the points of view of the characters and the audience or reader (e.g., created through the use of dramatic irony) create such effects as suspense or humor.

WOW!  So, my It's Monday, It's ELA Common Core Day! TIP this week is - don't put blinders on and only see your grade level's standards.  Take the one you are working on and look at the next grade, and the next, and the next... It might help direct the way you are teaching. :)

Click here for more Common Core ELA Standards.

Until next time, share a literacy strategy!
Dr. Denise Gudwin

What Do Good Readers Do?

I'm switching over to a new blog framework - My 2012 New Year's Resolution was to blog every week.  It is August... I missed my target.  By 216 days.  I will post every week... I will post every week.  Thanks to the teachers across the country who have encouraged me to blog.  You are always my inspiration.

Thanks to my friend and colleague, Dr. Nicki Newton, (see her awesome Math blog here.) I am going to be more diligent in posting.  

Today's topic - What Do Good Readers Do?  Share with your readers what good readers do.  Knowing what strategy to use when, will assist your students in becoming more effective readers.   Be sure to say, “This is what good readers do…” or "Good readers use this strategy, because..." or "This strategy helps me when I ______, because that's what good readers do."

It shouldn’t be a secret, yet when you ask struggling readers what good readers do, oftentimes they have no idea – the most common answer is, “They read fast.”  We must teach our students strategies that good readers use, so they can incorporate them into higher order thinking skills.   Create your own list with your students, adding to it throughout the year. You can also see list shared here at www.denise.gudwin.org.  

So what do good readers do?  Here's a list to start with...  Add to it with your students! Invite other students who are good readers to share with your students what they do, as good readers.  

Good Readers...

• use picture clues
• reread
• attempt to figure out an unknown word
• think about the meaning of the text/story
• go back to text
• visualize the story part
• form a picture in their mind
• ask themselves questions about the text
• chunk word parts
• read fluently, not word-by-word
• have a purpose for reading
• know when they don't "get it"
• discuss what they've read
• think actively about what they are reading
• summarize
• make predictions
• want to read more about this topic
• talk about what they're reading
• make connections to what they've read before
• make text-to-self connections

Until next time, share a literacy strategy.

Dr. Denise Gudwin