Leading the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards

1. Leading the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards American Federation of Teachers March 2, 2013

2. Today’s Talking Points • Standards Overview • Understanding the Key Shifts in English Language Arts and Mathematics • Considerations for Implementation at the Local Level • Implications for Instruction • Communication and Resources

3. The Standards • The goal of these standards is for all students to be college- and career-ready. • The standards: • are more focused • call for deeper levels of cognitive understanding • hold higher expectations for our students • This has REAL and SIGNIFICANTimplications for instruction.

4. Adoption of Standards • To be meaningful, the standards will need a comprehensive systematic approach consisting of: • aligned curriculum, professional development, resources, assessments • Time for planning and collegial conversations • adequate teaching and learning conditions • collaborative labor management relationships

5. Overall changes • Enough substantive changes were made on both the ELA and the mathematics standards for us to support the standards. • AFT Resolution • A Common Core: High standards as the foundation for all schools • Recommendations of the AFT Ad Hoc Committee on Standards Rollout

6. Understanding the Standards and the Key Shifts They Require Just as students need to aim for the right target, instructional changes need to be directed at the right objectives. The instructional shifts for Mathematics and English Language Arts and literacy are foremost among the changes within the Common Core initiative. ASCD; Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards, Moving from Adoption to Implementation to Sustainability

8. Common Core State Standards for ELA/Literacy: Key Shifts • Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction • Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational • Regular practice with complex text and its academic language

9. Shift #1: Building Knowledge Through Content-Rich Nonfiction • Much of our knowledge base comes from informational text. • Informational text makes up the vast majority of required reading in college/workplace (80%). • Informational text is harder for students to comprehend than narrative text. • Yet, students are asked to read very little of it in elementary (7 - 15%) and middle school. • CCSS moves percentages to: • 50:50 at elementary level • 60:40 at middle school* • 75:25 at high school* (*includes ELA, science, social studies)

10. Shift #2: Reading, Writing & Speaking Grounded in Evidence, Both Literary and Informational • Most college and workplace writing requires evidence. • Ability to cite evidence differentiates strong from weak student performance on NAEP. • Evidence is a major emphasis of the ELA Standards: Reading Standard 1, Writing Standard 9, Speaking and Listening Standards 2, 3 and 4, all focus on the gathering, evaluating and presenting of evidence from text. • Being able to locate and deploy evidence are hallmarks of strong readers and writers.

11. Shift #3: Regular Practice with Complex Text and its Academic Language • What students can read, in terms of complexity, is greatest predictor of success in college (ACT study). • Too many students reading at too low a level (Less than 50% of graduates can read sufficiently complex texts). • Standards include a staircase of increasing text complexity from elementary through high school. • Standards also focus on building vocabulary that is shared across many types of complex texts and many content areas.

12. What does this mean for instruction? Creating Questions for Close Analytic Reading Exemplar Think about what you think is the most important learning to be drawn from the text. Note this as raw material for the culminating assignment and the focus point for other activities to build toward. Determine the key ideas of the text. Create a series of questions structured to bring the reader to an understanding of these. Locate the most powerful academic words in the text and integrate questions and discussions that explore their role into the set of questions above. Take stock of which standards are being addressed in the series of questions above. Then decide if any other standards are suited to being a focus for this text. If so, form questions that exercise those standards.

13. Consider if there are any other academic words that students would profit from focusing on. Build discussion planning or additional questions to focus attention on them. Find the sections of the text that will present the greatest difficulty and craft questions that support students in mastering these sections. These could be sections with difficult syntax, particularly dense information, and tricky transitions or places that offer a variety of possible inferences. Develop a culminating activity around the idea or learning identified in #1. A good task should reflect mastery of one or more of the standards, involve writing, and be structured to be done by students independently.

14. Activity • Using the Curriculum Review Tool, rate your district’s readiness for aligning and implementing the CCSS – English Language Arts

15. What challenges & professional development opportunities do the CCSS for English Language Arts present?

16. Common Core State Standards for Mathematics: Key Shifts • Focus: Focus strongly where the standards “focus” • Coherence: Think across grades, and link to major topics • Rigor: In major topics, pursue conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application

17. Shift #1: Focus Strongly where the Standards Focus • Significantly narrow the scope of content and deepen how time and energy are spent in the math classroom. • Focus deeply on what is emphasized in the standards, so that students gain strong foundations.

18. Standards for Mathematical Practice

19. Shift #2: Coherence: Think Across Grades, and Link to Major Topics Within Grades • Carefully connect the learning within and across grades so that students can build new understanding on foundations built in previous years. • Begin to count on solid conceptual understanding of core content and build on it. Each standard is not a new event, but an extension of previous learning.

20. Shift #3: Rigor: In Major Topics, Pursue Conceptual Understanding, Procedural Skill and Fluency, and Application • The CCSSM require a balance of: • Solid conceptual understanding • Procedural skill and fluency • Application of skills in problem solving situations • Pursuit of all three requires equal intensity in time, activities and resources.

21. Rigor is not harder problems; It is deeper understanding • The Past • 106 = ___hundred + ___tens + ___ones • ___ = 3 hundreds + 4 tens + 8 ones • The Future • 106 = ___tens + ___ones • True or False? • 2 Hundreds + 3 ones > 5 tens + 9 ones • 4.06 > 4.2 • Write a number sentence that comes between 5.32 and 5.319

22. What does this mean for instruction?

24. Activity • Using the Curriculum Review Tool, rate your district’s readiness for aligning and implementing the CCSS – Mathematics

25. What challenges & professional development opportunities do the CCSS for Mathematics present?

26. Communication

27. Communication Strategy • Messenger & Message • Audience • Mode • What to include: • Vision Statement • Why the new standards are important • What it means for teaching & learning • Implementation timeline • Accountability systems

28. Assessments:Did your state adopt PARCC or SMARTER Balanced?Resources

29. Activity • Implementing the Common Core State Standards; The Role of the Elementary School Leader, School Counselor & Secondary School Leader A Joint Action Brief by Achieve, College Summit, NASSP & NAESP with Support from the MetLife Foundation

30. Resources • Share My Lesson • Colorin Colorado • Assessing Alignment to the Common Core State Standards A Curriculum Review Tool for English Language Arts; Mathematics • AFT Professional Development Summer Educator Academy • AFT Parent Letters

31. Mathematics Resources • Progressions narratives • http://commoncoretools.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/progressions-for-the-common-core/ • Illustrative Mathematics Project http://illustrativemathematics.org • Common Assessment Prototype Items • PARCC http://www.parcconline.org/samples/item-task-prototypes • Mathematics Assessment Project (Gates) • http://www.map.mathshell.org.uk/materials/ • Student Achievement Partners • http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/ • Hunt Institute Videos http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHuntInstitute

32. Literacy Resources • CCSS, Appendices and related informationwww.corestandards.org • Professional development modules, exemplar text, close reading exemplarswww.achievethecore.org • A Primer on “Close Reading of Text”http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/pubs/CR.Primer.print_.pdf • PTA’s Parents’ Guide to Student Success (K-8)www.pta.org/4446.htm

33. Learn more and stay informed • Common Core State Standards Initiative www.corestandards.org • American Teacher www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals 2009/Jan.& May/June 2010 • Assessment consortia PARCC - www.parcconline.org Smarter Balanced - www.k12.wa.us/SMARTER • Recommendations from the AFT Ad Hoc Committee www.aft.org/about/resolution_detail.cfm?articleid=1612