Common Core State Standards

1. Common Core State Standards The Foundational Reading Skills

2. Why the Foundational Skills? • Explicit and systematic instruction is particularly helpful for students at risk for reading difficulties. • Children's reading development is dependent on their understanding of the alphabetic principle – the idea that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language. Learning that there are predictable relationships between sounds and letters allows children to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and to begin to read with fluency.

3. Foundational Skills of CCSS Please read the COI document. Note items in the left hand column are directly from CCSS and are end-of-the year expectations. The right hand column are the skills and understandings that underpin the outcomes on the left—the prerequisite skills. How can you make use of this document in your classroom? AUDIENCE DISCUSSION - SHARING

4. Possible Classroom Uses To ensure systematic, explicit instruction in a scientific, developmental sequence; Place the skills in an EXCEL document to track an entire class across time and to be able to group based upon need; To assess student writing and control over “encoding” skills – planning instruction for spelling. Accelerating student development (K-5 continuum)

5. Analyzing Students’ Writing Using the COI Document What does their writing show us about their control and understanding of the “encoding” of the alphabetic language?

6. Use the document to assess this students’ writing Where would a teacher start on the continuum with this young writer?

7. How does the continuum help you assess this writer?

8. To develop him as a writer, (adding details) – Why are they sitting at the table? What will they do next? Add that to your writing, and I’ll be right back. This child understands words are separated by spaces in print. Next: -saying words slowly and “hearing” ending sounds.

9. Assessing Student Writing and Spelling Page 8 Decode two-syllable words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables; Demonstrate understanding that a vowel team syllable contains two adjacent vowels because

10. Her Strengths and Next Steps • CONTEXT: This second grade student wrote this in response to a teacher asking them to write about an animal that lives in one of the habitats they were studying during science. • STRENGTHS: She has generated an idea about an animal she feels strongly about; she sticks to the topic; she shows a beginning sense of sequencing in her text. She uses the capital letter for “I”. WHAT DOES SHE NEED TO LEARN NEXT? • She would benefit from seeing different ways to organize factual information. The teacher may show her different examples of nonfiction animal books. She and her classmates could look at nonfiction text features and try to use them in their own writing (table of contents, captions with pictures, bold words, close-ups, diagrams with labels, an index). She needs to find more information about white sharks, so she has more to say and think about how to organize it in a multi-page format. This would be an effective tie to a nonfiction reading unit. She should be guided to replacing the use of “cool” in describing her subjects with more precise language.

11. STAND AND STRETCH

12. Writing and the Common Core State Standards

13. Writing: Text types, responding to reading, and research The Standards acknowledge the fact that whereas some writing skills, such as the ability to plan, revise, edit, and publish, are applicable to many types of writing, other skills are more properly defined in terms of specific writing types: arguments, informative/explanatory texts, and narratives. Standard 9 stresses the importance of the writing-reading connection by requiring students to draw upon and write about evidence from literary and informational texts.

14. Writing To Sources – a Key Task The standards require students to show they can analyze and synthesize sources and present careful analysis, well-defended claims and clear information through their writing. Several writing standards require students to draw evidence from a text or texts to support analysis, reflection or research.

15. Informative Writing While narrative writing is given prominence in early grades, as students progress, the standards ask students to write arguments or informational reports from sources. The standards call for: 30 percent of student writing to be narrative 30 percent of student writing should be to write arguments 35 percent of student writing should be to explain/inform These forms of writing are not strictly independent; arguments and explanations often include narrative elements, and both informing and arguing rely on using information and evidence drawn from texts.

16. Extensive Practice with Short, Focused Research Projects Writing standard 7 emphasizes that students should conduct several short research projects in addition to more sustained research efforts.

17. Teaching Students to Write an Argument • Show children an example of an argument. (models) • Demonstrate how the argument was planned; dissect the argument together. • Provide framework for the children to plan their argument. • Students work together in partners/small groups developing their reasons for their own arguments.

18. Building a Logic Chain – Organize your Reasons and Visualize an Argument It takes almost 7x the amount of water in the bottle to make the bottle itself Water bottles are made from plastic. 17 million barrels of oil (enough to fuel 1 million cars for a year) to produce 28 billion plastic water bottles American tap water is among the safest in the world Our landfills are filling up. We throw away water bottles every day. Cut up and sort the reasons. Add your own reasons as well. Fuel is expensive to produce. A logic chain looks like this: REASON 1 REASON 2 REASON 3 Conclusion Call for Action

19. Planning An Argument

20. Audience Discussion Discuss with the people around you: --your classroom strategies for teaching argument writing --how you might adapt some of what has been shared regarding argument writing?

21. Report Writing for the Young Learner “Leaves found in the Schoolyard”

22. Classification of Plants in Your Schoolyard This lesson is designed for students to classify plants in the schoolyard or neighborhood. Students will use their knowledge of plant structure and observation skills to determine the defining characteristics of plants. If desired, students can classify plants using plant reference material or the matrix based key on www.discoverlife.org

23. Outcomes or Standards • Students will communicate scientific investigations and information clearly. • CCSS - W.K-2.7 Research to Build and Present Knowledge Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., record science observations).

24. Procedures • Instructor Preparation: Plants in the schoolyard should be identified, marked and characteristics noted a day or two prior to this activity being conducted. Use utility flags numbered as necessary to mark the plants, or bright colored ribbon. • Class Activity: Review the characteristics of plants that students will be observing in the schoolyard. The next few slides will help you do that with the students. Characteristics will likely include leaf type, leaf arrangement, and leaf margin. Students should know and understand the difference between monocots and dicots.

25. Monocot versus Dicot • Look at leaf venation Monocots – parallel-veined leaves Dicots – Net-veined leaves

26. Dicots Leaf Structure Simple Single leaf blade Compound

27. Leaf Arrangement

28. Leaf Margin Observations Smooth Toothed Wavy Lobed

29. Out in the Schoolyard • Equipped with a clipboard, pencil and characteristics chart, students should observe the plants and fill in the plant characteristics chart for each plant marked. If desired, during this time plant clippings may be obtained to create a herbarium for the class. • Also pictures of the plants may be taken if a camera is readily available to further aid in classification.

30. Students sketch, label and observe

31. Field Chart for Student Observation of Leaves

32. Labeling the Leaves • Classification of the plants using reference material at the school, or web based. • Labels applied to the herbarium specimens. Labels should include: • Scientific name • Common name • Date collected • Where collected • Who collected

33. Brainstorming • What are some common, everyday materials or experiences you use for your students to do scientific observations and write about their observations? • Make a list at your table and be prepared to share some of these.

34. Sharing in a Large Audience • Raise your hand, we’ll provide you with a post it note to record the ideas. • We’ll place the ideas on the parking lot chart. • To share, the speaker will read them to the audience so everyone can hear the ideas.

35. STAND AND STRETCH

36. Other Ideas for Nonfiction Writing Student writing: “I tested things I found at home and school. Some things I could pull with the magnet. Some things won’t stick to a magnet.”