CCRS Quarterly Meeting # 3 English Language Arts Grades 6-12

1. CCRS Quarterly Meeting # 3English Language Arts Grades 6-12 http://alex.state.al.us/ccrs/

2. Outcomes Participants will • Reflect on The Next Steps from the last meeting. • Explore the ELA standards for Language. • Identify academic language in complex text and determine its importance in the implementation of the Language Standards. • Purposefully choose strategies to build a vocabulary lesson using the Equip Rubric as a planning tool. • Prepare to share resources with district LEA team and colleagues.

3. Alabama Quality Teaching Standards 1.4-Designs instructional activities based on state content standards 2.7-Creates learning activities that optimizes each individual’s growth and achievement within a supportive environment 5.3-Participates as a teacher leader and professional learning community member to advance school improvement initiatives

4. Outcome #1 • Reflect on The “Next Steps” from the last meeting.

5. LET’S SHARE • Identifying Next Steps • Explore Makes Sense Strategies disc and its many smart sheets. • Add writing to a lesson plan that already includes reading, listening and speaking components. Bring back student samples.

6. Instructional supports & Assessments (Dimensions 3 – 4 Equip Rubric) • What do your student work samples tell you about your instructional supports? Did you • cultivate student interest and engagement in reading, writing, and speaking about texts? How? • address expectations (clear directions, proficient responses)? • provide appropriate supports for differentiated needs (above and below the grade level band)? • Assess student proficiency using methods that are unbiased and accessible for all students?

7. Three Key Shifts in ELA/Literacy • Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction and informational texts • Reading, writing and speakinggrounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational • Regular practice with complex text and its academic language

8. Outcome # 2 Explore the ELA Standards for Language

9. Closely Read the Language Standards for ELA First read: Look for key ideas and details paying close attention to the asterisks. Talk at your table about your observations of the standards with asterisks. How will you share with others that these progressive skills will require continued instruction with increasing rigor through grade 12?

10. Closely Read the Language Standards for ELA Second read: Note the vocabulary that is important for student understanding of the standards. Sprenger Critical Word List Talk with your table and determine additional words you would add to this list.

11. Closely read the Language standards for ELA Third read: Look at each subcategory and make observations about the expectations for student understanding. • Write your observations for each subcategory on sticky notes and post them on the charts.

12. Excerpt from the range and content of student language use • “…The inclusion of Language standards in their own strand should not be taken as an indication that skills related to conventions, effective language use, and vocabulary are unimportant to reading, writing, speaking, and listening; indeed, they are inseparable from such contexts.” • Common Core ELA, page 51

13. LUNCH

14. Outcome # 3 • Identify academic language • in complex text and • determine its importance in • the implementation of the Language Standards.

15. “It is widely accepted among researchers that the difference in students’ vocabulary levels is a key factor in disparities in academic achievement…but that vocabulary instruction has been neither frequent nor systematic in most schools.” (Appendix A of Common Core State Standards for ELA)

16. Language Anchor Standard 6 “Acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases …”

17. Academic Vocabulary “The words that are traditionally used in academic dialogue and text.” “Specifically it refers to the words that are not necessarily common or children would encounter in conversation.” Common Core State Standards

18. The Importance of Academic Vocabularyhttp://engageny.org/resource/common-core-in-ela-literacy-shift-6-academic-vocabulary/

19. 5 SIMPLE STEPS FOR EFFECTIVE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION Learningunlimited.com

20. 1. CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION Effective vocabulary instruction • does not rely on definitions • uses linguistic and non-linguistic representations • Provides multiple exposures • Teaches word parts • Provides strategies for different types of words • Provides opportunities for student discussion • Allows students to “play” with words. • Focuses on terms with high probability of enhancing academic success MarzanoBuilding Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement

21. 2. IDENTIFY AND SORT KEY VOCABULARY INTO 3 TIERS Domain-Specific Words Academic Vocabulary

22. TIER ONE WORDS Tier One words are the words of everyday speech usually learned in the early grades. They are not considered a challenge to the average native speaker, though English language learners of any age will have to attend carefully to them.

23. TIER TWO WORDS Tier Two words (what the Standards refer to as general academic words) are far more likely to appear in written texts than in speech. They appear in all sorts of texts. Tier Two words often represent subtle or precise ways to say relatively simple things. Because Tier Two words are found across many types of texts, they are highly generalizable.

24. TIER THREE WORDS Tier Three words (what the Standards refer to as domain-specific words) are specific to a domain or field of study and key to understanding a new concept within a text. Because of their specificity and close ties to content knowledge, Tier Three words are far more common in informational texts than in literature. Recognized as new and “hard” words for most readers, they are often explicitly defined by the author of a text, repeatedly used, and otherwise heavily scaffolded.

25. Word Sort Walk Arm Pizza House School Cloud Friend Legislature Eclipse Lava Circumference Carburetor Aorta Periphery Accumulate Saunter Itemize Falter Misfortune

26. How Do We Identify Tier Two Words? Importance and utility: Words that are characteristic of mature language users and appear frequently across a variety of domains. Is it a word likely to appear frequently across content areas and subjects? Does it have multiple meanings? Are students likely to encounter it used differently than it is here? Will it be of use to students in their own writing? Instructional potential: Words that can be worked with in a variety of ways so that students can build rich representations of them and of their connections to other words and concepts. How does the word relate to other words, ideas, or experiences that the students know or have been learning? Conceptual understanding: Words for which students understand the general concept but provide precision and specificity in describing the concept. What does the word choice bring to the meaning of the text? (e.g. precision, specificity? What words are more important to understanding the text? Isabel Beck 2002

27. Freedom Walkers Freedman, Russell. Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. New York: Holiday House, 2006. (2006)

28. From the Introduction: “Why They Walked” Freedom Walkers Tier TwoTier Three • Not so long ago in Montgomery, Alabama, the color of your skin determined where you could sit on a public bus. If you happened to be an African American, you had to sit in the back of the bus, even if there were empty seats up front. • Back then, racial segregation was the rule throughout the American South. Strict laws-called “Jim Crow” laws-enforced a system of white supremacy that discriminated against blacks and kept them in their place as second-class citizens. • People were separated by race from the moment they were born in segregated hospitals until the day they were buried in segregated cemeteries. Blacks and whites did not attend the same schools, worship in the same churches, eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, drink from the same water fountains, or sit together in the same movie theaters. • In Montgomery, it was against the law for a white person and a Negro to play checkers on public property or ride together in a taxi. • Most southern blacks were denied their right to vote. The biggest obstacle was the poll tax, a special tax that was required of all voters but was too costly for many blacks and for poor whites as well. Voters also had to pass a literacy test to prove that they could read, write, and understand the U.S. Constitution. These tests were often rigged to disqualify even highly educated blacks. Those who overcame the obstacles and insisted on registering as voters faced threats, harassment. And even physical violence. As a result, African Americans in the South could not express their grievances in the voting booth, which for the most part, was closed to them. But there were other ways to protest, and one day a half century ago, the black citizens in Montgomery rose up in protest and united to demand their rights—by walking peacefully. • It all started on a bus. • Freedman, Russell. Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. New York: Holiday House, 2006.

29. Choosing Tier Two Words for Focused Instruction

30. 3. CREATE A PRINT-RICH ENVIRONMENT • Opportunities to read and write with different types of text and other print/non print materials. • Exposure to displays that showcase student work and other important academic information. • Access to many instructional resources

31. 4. Identify and master evidence- based instructional strategies wordwalls llogs Smart sheets frayermodel wordles

32. 5. Choose digital tools that support word learning • www.lexipedia.com

33. Outcome #4 • Purposefully choose strategies to build a vocabulary lesson using the Equip Rubric as a planning tool.

34. Lesson Planning Choose a vocabulary tool discussed in the previous activity to write a lesson. Use the EQuIP rubric to analyze the components of the lesson.

35. Wrapping up…..

36. Next Steps • Practice with your students and bring back student work samples to share.

37. Prepared Graduate Defined Possesses the ability to apply core academic skills to real-world situations through collaboration with peers in problem solving, precision, and punctuality in delivery of a product, and has a desire to be a life-long learner. Possesses the knowledge and skills needed to enroll and succeed in credit-bearing, first-year courses at a two- or four-year college, trade school, technical school, without the need for remediation.