Text Complexity, Text Based Answers, Informational Texts, Oh My!

1. Text Complexity, Text Based Answers, Informational Texts, Oh My! Presented by Lora Drum

2. Common Core State Standards are not intended to be new names for old ways of doing business.  They are a call to take the next step.

3. Before we begin our journey today, please read and complete the Anticipation Guide found in your packet.

4. Common Core Instructional Shifts for ELA Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction and informational texts Shift 1 Reading and writing grounded in evidence from text Shift 2 Regular practice with complex text and its academic vocabulary Shift 3

5. Starting with a solid foundation is most important... Let’s begin by building a CCSS house to connect our literacy standards

6. CCSS-Reading Literature RL 1-10 Informational Text RI 1-10 Anchor Standards Key Ideas & Details Craft & Structure Integration of Knowledge & Ideas Range of Reading/Level of Text Complexity Foundational Skills FS 1-4

8. “Read like a detective, write like an investigative reporter.” -David Coleman co-author of ELA CCSS

9. Text Complexity Complex texts offer students new language, new knowledge, and new modes of thinking.

10. CCSS/ELA Vision * Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive, reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. * They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally.

11. Where does text complexity appear in the Common Core? College and Career Anchor Standard for Reading R.10: Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently. • By the time they • complete high school, • students must be able • to read and comprehend • independently and proficiently the kinds of complex texts commonly • found in college and careers.

12. What is Not Covered by the Standards?* The Standards set grade-specific standards but do not define the intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above grade-level expectations. *p. 6… and similar statement made for English Language Learners

13. What is a complex text? * The complexity of a text is a function of the reader’s proficiency. There are complex beginning reading texts, there are complex middle-grade texts, etc. * Numerous features can make a text complex. * Typically: Complex texts have complex ideas and, usually, complex ideas are conveyed with rare and infrequent vocabulary.

14. View of text complexity within the Common Core State Standards

16. Qualitative Evaluation: • Levels of meaning • Structure • Language conventionality and clarity • Knowledge demands

17. Qualitative measuresLexile ranges realigned to Common Core “MetaMetrics has realigned its Lexile ranges to match the Standards’ text complexity grade bands and has adjusted upward its trajectory of reading comprehension development through the grades to indicate that all students should be reading at the college and career readiness level by no later than the end of high school.”

18. Quantitative Evaluation: Readability measures and other scores of text complexity

19. Reader and Task Evaluation • Will the reader be interested in the content? • Does the reader possess adequate prior knowledge of experience regarding the topic? • Will the reader understand the purpose? • Will the complexity of any before, during and after reading tasks or the complexity of any questions asked about the text interfere with the reading experience?

20. Sample of Text Complexity “Placemat”

21. “Garden Helpers” (K-1) Main idea explicitly stated in first two lines. Structure is consistent First line names beneficial insect and says what it does. Second line(s) explains how this helps the garden. Simple sentences & words S-V & S-V-O “bugs,” “plants” “garden” Vocabulary “rich” -- $$$? Content Knowledge How can dirt be “rich and healthy”? How do earthworms make soil rich and healthy? What is a praying mantis?

22. “Often, textbook writers have frontloaded all necessary information to spoil any chance for intellectual discovery on the part of the student. The CCSS wants students to have opportunities to grapple with difficult text.” -David Coleman, co-author, CCSS

23. How do you increase capacity with complex texts? What you don’t do: • Give students who can’t read well hard texts. • Reading texts aloud to students does not develop independent reading (this is not to say that we should not be using read alouds- we should not just be using complex texts for read alouds only)

24. When the gap in reader capacity and text requirements becomes greater than approximately 90% accuracy, even comprehension of at/above level readers’ suffers Mesmer & Hiebert, 2011

25. What students need: * Consistent opportunities with texts that support capacity with core vocabulary * Systematically extending vocabularies in informational & narrative texts * Opportunities to increase reading stamina * Support in developing funds of knowledge

26. “The clear, alarming picture that emerges from the evidence … is that while the reading demands of college, workforce training programs, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past fifty years or so, K–12 texts have, if anything, become less demanding.” (CCSS, Appendix A, pg. 2) Why Text Complexity Matters

27. Text Based Answers Deeper/Close Reading

28. Reading on the “Surface Level” Activity “How to Bartle Puzballs” and “Conversation Piece”

29. Reflection: 1. Did you get the answers to these questions correct? 2. What did you learn by reading this paragraph? Did you take away any enduring understanding? 3. How is it possible to get the answers right, but not to take away any understanding of what you read? Answers: How to Bartle Puzballs 1. There are tork gooboos of puzballs. 2. Laplies, mushos, and fushos are tork gooboos of puzballs. 3. They will not grunto any lipples. 4. You should bartle the fusho who has rarchled her parshtootoos after her humply fluflu.

30. Ned Guymon’s “Conversation Piece,” which first appeared in a 1950 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine is surely the world’s shortest detective story. Turn and talk: Share how you answered the question for Conversation Piece What is the difference between how you read the first piece vs. how you read the second piece?

31. CLOSE Reading Activity • Read the passage on the next slide. • As you read, make a mental note of: • What strategies do you use when you read a challenging text?

32. NOTHING can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a Good Will. Intelligence wit, judgment, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune. Power, riches, honour, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with one’s condition which is called happiness, inspire pride, and often presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of these on the mind, and with this also to rectify the whole principle of acting, and adapt it to its end. The sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness.

33. Close Reading • A short Prezi about how to read closely….

34. The Art of Teaching Deep Reading • How? • Model it • Find strong passages for practice • Annotate: “reading graffiti”- mark word choices, sentence patterns, images and dialogue • Use poetry • Savor passages (Great beginnings and Lyrical pieces)

35. Annotating the Text

36. Close Reading Poem- The Learning Bricks Using the ideas for Close Reading from the Prezi and Annotating the Text, let’s apply what we’ve learned to a poem.

37. Read the passage silently. There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. Donald Rumsfeld, Newsweek (2003, p. 113)

38. Effective First Readings Have you ever arrived at a destination and had no memory of how you got there? Sometimes a first reading can resemble this phenomena! Consider four key questions: What did I just read?

39. Question 1: Have I provided my students with a reading focus? Question 2: Are my students willing and able to embrace confusion? Question 3: Can my students monitor their own comprehension? Question 4: Do my students know any “fix-it” strategies to assist them when their comprehension begins to falter?

40. Three key questions to ask students after they have read something: They encompass three different levels of thinking. (Sheridan Blau) • What does it say? (Literal level – comprehension) • (Foundational to answering the second question) • What does it mean? (Interpretation level) • (More than just appreciating a good story – themes) • What does it matter? (Reflection) • (The heart of why they read the book)

41. Mystery Envelope Activity What is the single most important word in this chapter? Which character has changed the most so far? Why did we read this book? Which character is most (least believable) and why?

42. How do we do this? especially with our struggling readers

43. Scaffolding… • Scaffolding doesn’t… • reduce complexity. • replace the text. • tell students what they are going to learn.

44. How to Scaffold • Model • Provide descriptive feedback • Activate prior knowledge • Build background • Use supports • Sensory • Graphic • Interactive • Language

45. Timing matters • Greater scaffolding is provided at the beginning of tasks. • Scaffolding supports an increasing level of complexity. • Include a plan for removing the scaffolding.

46. Examples of Scaffolding • Modeling/Demonstrations • Realia and Multi-media • Hands-on Manipulatives • Pictures/Visuals • Venn Diagrams • Sequence Maps • Concept Maps

47. Text Complexity Statement regarding use of leveled texts Range of Reading and Text Complexity R.10 Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.

48. Scaffolding to support students’ ability to read increasingly complex texts • Non-text sources • For example, multi-media and class discussions, build the foundation of vocabulary, language and content knowledge • Easier, supplemental texts • can provide instructional-level reading material • Instructional scaffolding activities • For example, teacher-facilitated read-alouds, discussion of text excerpts, partner reading, peer coaching • Explicit instruction • on vocabulary, text structure, & comprehension strategies • Multiple texts

49. With partners, brainstorm scaffolding activities you might use with the text(s) we analyzed called Garden Helpers Activity: Scaffolding the text Rich!

50. Students need to engage in… • Grade-appropriate materials for exposure to structures, content, vocabulary; • Instructional-level materials that allow them to progress • Easy materials that allow them to practice. • If familiar/interesting, material can be more challenging. • If unfamiliar/uninteresting, material may need to be less challenging.