It's Monday, It's ELA Common Core Day! Today's Tip: Step 5

It’s Monday, It’s ELA Common Core Day! Today's Tip: Step 5: What will my students need to do, to demonstrate an understanding of this standard?  What facts should they know, what concepts should they understand, and what skills should they use?

I've been missing-in-action this month...  work deadlines just took over.  But now, I'm back!  

Today is a continuation of our look at Ainsworth's (2003) work in unwrapping the standards, where we’ve focused on Steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 (out of 5). Today's tip is Unwrapping the Standards, Step 5 (the last of the 5 steps) – What will my students need to do…

Step 5 – What will my students need to do, to demonstrate an understanding of this standard? What facts should they know, what concepts should they understand, and what skills should they use? (Ainsworth)

Facts they           should know	Concepts they should understand	Skills they           should use

Try thinking of a standard in a new way.  What facts should our students know? What concepts should they understand?  And what skills should they use?

In the sample of RL.__.2, what facts should they know?  Maybe what a key detail looks like? What concepts should they understand?  Maybe how a retell is different than a summary?  and What skills should they use?  As one teacher asked, "Is listening to the story an appropriate skill they should be able to use?" Yes!  Make it personalized for your students! 

So take a moment to think about one standard - it doesn't have to be this one below, (see more at http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_ELA%20Standards.pdf but think about what facts should our students know, what concepts should our students understand, and what skills should our students use - and that may truly assist you in your planning and instruction. 

 Sample of K-6 Standard RL.__.2:

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.

This unwrapping the standards 5-step-process should be helpful to you and your colleagues.  Remember though, you don't have to attempt it alone.  Sit with a group of friends/colleagues to work through these 5 steps together.  It is a ton more fun that way.  It seems like a lot of extra work to do, but front-loading this will give you an understanding that will help your teaching go even more smoothly, and the benefit is for both you and your students.

Until next time, share a literacy strategy!

Denise Gudwin, Ph.D.

It's Monday, It's ELA Common Core Day! Today's Tip: Step 4 of Unwrapping the Standards - Essential Questions

It’s Monday, It’s ELA Common Core Day! Today is a continuation of our look at Ainsworth's (2003) work in unwrapping the standards, where we’ve focused on Steps 1, 2, and 3 (out of 5). Today's tip is Unwrapping the Standards Step 4.   Next Monday, we will continue with Step 5 and then another look at the whole picture, looking at another standard… Today’s focus, Step 4 – Essential Questions.

Step 4 – Write at least one essential question derived from the unwrapped standard and the big idea. (steps from previous Monday posts)  Engage your students in the process and take them beyond the basic who, what, when, where, I liked it because…  (Ainsworth)

Before we jump into our topic, let’s look at a few examples of Essential Questions for possible themes/grades (Source: Common Core Curriculum Maps: English Language Arts, Grades K-5. Written by teachers, for Teachers. Jossey-Bass):

Kindergarten – How are the beginning, the middle, and the end of a story different from each other? (p. 13)

1^st Grade – What can versions of the same story teach us about different cultures? (p. 107)

2^nd Grade – Why should we support out opinions with reasons? (p. 167)

3^rd Grade – Why do we hand stories down to the next generation?

(p. 209)

4^th Grade – How does the author’s use of setting affect the plot of a story? (p. 281)

5^th Grade – How does literature provide insight into a culture? (p. 361)

Secondary – How does learning history through literature differ from learning through informational text? (p. xvii)

Write one or two essential questions for a unit of study...

Question	Question

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.

Essential Questions… Take a moment to think about the relevance, usefulness, and benefit of teaching a particular unit.  You may think of it as the “so what” of the content covered… By the end of the unit, the students should be able to answer the essential question(s) with one of more possible answers.  

This reflective questioning helps us pave the way for increasing academic achievement.

Until next time, share a strategy!

Denise Gudwin, Ph.D.

Digital Natives

When Kaylee was three, she was able to maneuver an iPhone and knew how to put in the password and go to her 4 folders of apps.  Wheels on the Bus was one of her favorites when she was three.  

At age four, she loved AniMatch, an electronic version of the old memory game with animal pictures and sounds, as well as FirstWords Animals, where she matched lowercase letters and spelled words of animals that made noises and twirled and jumped and made her laugh.  And, by age four, she knew how to swipe and drag, pinch and enlarge on the iPad.  

At age five, she enjoys TeachMe Kindergarten and TeachMe First Grade, where addition, subtraction, spelling, and Dolch Sight Words are the topics.  

The other day, she sat on my lap to watch a You Tube video with me, and as it started, she moved my hand away from my laptop, went right to the arrows, "We need it bigger!" and took care of it herself, enlarging the screen. When did she learn that?  

Marc Prensky refers to our students of today, like 5-year old Kaylee or 9th grader Joey, as Digital Natives.  They are growing up or have already grown up in the digital world.  And we must adapt our teaching  to engage them in ways that interest them

Digital Natives.… are used to receiving information fast.  They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than after. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.  They prefer games to “serious work.” They have a whole library in their pocket. They have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic and “tell-test” instruction. These skills are often totally foreign to the Digital Immigrants (Prensky 2001, 2010).  

When I presented at the National Title I Conference in January 2012, there were a handful of Keynote and smaller sessions that opened new windows and doors to digital literacy.  I consider myself fairly savvy when it comes to technology, not great, but better than some... but I had one "ah-ha" moment after another.   

What do some of the experts say? 

According to Ormiston (National Title I Conference 2012) the communication spectrum that supports a digital rich classroom includes:

è Collaborating

è Moderating

è Negotiating

è Debating

è Commenting

è Net meeting/Skyping/Video conferencing

è Reviewing

è Questioning

è Replying

è Posting and Blogging

è Networking

è Contributing

è Twittering

è Instant Messaging

è Texting

è Podcasting

è Producing

•  Technology-related discussions often are focused primarily on ways to keep students from using it during the school day, rather than on the potential of digital technology to motivate students and enhance our instruction (Kingsley, 2010, Dagget, 2012).

• Subjects (ages 10-11) translated a paragraph of texts into standard English and a Standard English paragraph into a text – There is considerable evidence of higher achievement with students who text (Plester, Wood, & Bell, 2008). 

• “If teachers are not up-to-date with technology, (including but not limited to smart phones, text messaging, tweeting) they have no business teaching today’s children/students – they don’t have a clue what’s going on” (Dagget, National Title I Conference, 2012).

What can we do in our K-12 classrooms?  "Go faster, less step-by-step; we want more random access,” said a 12-year-old girl.  We can use Smartboards, blogging, podcasting, video production, digital storyboarding, wordle (a word generating image), glogster (a graphic blog), and don’t stop there… try digital story telling or writing. (Thanks to Stone & Norman, 2012, Speakers for Seattle Reading Council's Spring Professional Learning, for sharing the following sites):

• Strip Designer click here!
• Edutopia (A “how to” that’s tech friendly.) click here!
• StoryKit  click here!
• Storyrobe click here! 
• ePub click here! 

We will continue our digital conversation next week, with the benefits of Gaming, some more tips for the classroom, and a bit of research to support it. 

Until next time, share a literacy strategy!

Dr. Denise Gudwin

It’s Monday, It’s ELA Common Core Day! Today’s Tip: Unwrapping the Standards Step 3 and Looking at the whole picture.

It’s Monday, It’s ELA Common Core Day! Today is a continuation of last week's look at Ainsworth's (2003) work in unwrapping the standards, where we focused on Steps 1 and 2 (out of 5). Today's tip is  Unwrapping the Standards Step 3.  We also want to take a moment and look at the whole picture.  Ainsworth's whole 5-step process is a very good way to get to know the Common Core Standards, so next Monday, we will continue with Step 4 and then Step 5 the following Monday, but today we are focusing on Step 3 - Determine the Big Ideas.

Step 3 – Determine the Big Ideas… What do they need to already know?  What type of literacy skills will they need to use? Is this important for my students to learn?

Need to Know

Skills to Use

How will this help my students?

First, here are the standards.  Then look below for our focus discussion:

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.

Take a moment to think about what your students will "need to know" to do this...   what "skills will they need to use?"  and always, the bottom line is "how will this help my students?" Ask yourselves the questions that are pertinent to your grade level, your students' levels and the needs of your group... For example:

What do they need to know?

• Do they need to know what retell or recount means?
• Do they need to know how a folktale is organized?

What skills will they need to use?

• Do they need to be able to retell or recount?
• Do they need to be able to listen to a story, to use their listening comprehension skills?
• Do they need to know the difference between major details and insignificant ones?

How will this help my students?

• Will this help them during your instructional time?   
• How?
• How will retelling, recounting, determining theme, identifying major details help them with their achievement in reading?

And finally, let's look at the whole picture... go back and look at how the standard builds from one grade to another, look at the Kindergarten one, and the first grade, and second grade, all the way to sixth grade or above.  It is important to see where our students are going, not just having tunnel vision looking at our current grade only.  We can see how the learning is layered.  We will look at this whole picture more in-depth in a future post, with another standard.

“ ‘Unwrapping’ the academic content standards is a proven technique to help educators identify from the full text of the standards exactly what they need to teach their students.  Unwrapped standards provide clarity as to what students must know and be able to do.  When teachers take the time to analyze each standard and identify its essential concepts and skills, the result is more effective instructional planning, assessment, and student learning”  (Ainsworth, L., 2003).

Until next time, share a strategy!

Dr. Denise Gudwin