Exploring the PA Common Core for ELA, K-12

1. Exploring the PA Common Core for ELA, K-12

2. Turn and Talk • What do you already know about the Common Core State Standards? • What are you hoping to learn today?

3. Governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, 2 territories, and the District of Columbia committed to developing a set of consistent state standards for proficiency in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. The Common Core State Standards were developed through a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The NGA Center and CCSSO received feedback on drafts of the standards from national organizations representing, but not limited to, teachers, postsecondary educators (including community colleges), civil rights groups, English-language learners, and students with disabilities. An advisory group provided advice and guidance on the initiative. Members of this group include experts from Achieve, Inc., ACT, the College Board, the National Association of State Boards of Education, and the State Higher Education Executive Officers. Who Created the CCSS

4. Why the CCSS? Mission (from http://www.corestandards.org/ ): The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

5. College and Career Ready • Students who are and career ready: • Demonstrate independence • Build strong content knowledge • Respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline • Comprehend as well as critique • Value evidence • Use technology and digital media strategically and capably • Come to understand other perspectives and cultures CCSS pg. 7

6. CCSS Key Points: Foundational SkillsCCSS/ K-5 PACC/PreK-5 • These standards are directed toward fostering students’ understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle and other basic conventions of the English writing system. • These foundations skills are not an end in and of themselves rather they are necessary and important components of an effective comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of type and disciplines. Appendixes A: pgs 17-22

7. CCSS Key Points : Reading • The standards establish a “staircase” of increasing complexity in what students must be able to read so that all students are ready for the demands of college- and career-level reading no later than the end of high school. • The standards also require the progressive development of reading comprehension so that students advancing through the grades are able to gain more from whatever they read. Appendix A: pgs 2-15

8. CCSS Key Points: Reading • Through reading a diverse array of classic and contemporary literature as well as challenging informational texts in a range of subjects, students are expected to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspective. Because the standards are building blocks for successful classrooms, but recognize that teachers, school districts and states need to decide on appropriate curriculum, they intentionally do not offer a reading list. Instead, they offer numerous sample texts to help teachers prepare for the school year and allow parents and students to know what to expect at the beginning of the year. • The standards mandate certain critical types of content for all students, including classic myths and stories from around the world, foundational U.S. documents, seminal works of American literature, and the writings of Shakespeare. The standards appropriately defer the many remaining decisions about what and how to teach to states, districts, and schools.

9. CCSS Key Points : Reading /Text Complexity Reading: Text complexity and the Growth of Comprehension The Reading standards place equal emphasis on the sophistication of what students read and the skill with which they read. The Anchor Standard defines a grade-by grade “staircase” of increasing text complexity that rises from beginning reading to the college and career readiness level. Whatever they are reading, students must also show a steadily growing ability to discern more from and make fuller use of text, including making an increasing number of connections among ideas and between texts, considering a wider range of textual evidence, and becoming more sensitive to inconsistencies, ambiguities, and poor reasoning in texts. Appendix A: pgs 2-15

10. CCSS Key Points: Writing Writing • The ability to write logical arguments based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence is a cornerstone of the writing standards, with opinion writing—a basic form of argument—extending down into the earliest grades. • Research—both short, focused projects (such as those commonly required in the workplace) and longer term in depth research —is emphasized throughout the standards but most prominently in the writing strand since a written analysis and presentation of findings is so often critical. • Annotated samples of student writing accompany the standards and help establish adequate performance levels in writing arguments, informational/explanatory texts, and narratives in the various grades. Appendix A pgs 23-27

11. CCSS Key Points: Speaking & Listening • The standards require that students gain, evaluate, and present increasingly complex information, ideas, and evidence through listening and speaking as well as through media. • An important focus of the speaking and listening standards is academic discussion in one-on-one, small-group, and whole-class settings. Formal presentations are one important way such talk occurs, but so is the more informal discussion that takes place as students collaborate to answer questions, build understanding, and solve problems.

12. CCSS Key Points: Language (This is embedded in PA Common Core Standards) • The standards expect that students will grow their vocabularies through a mix of conversations, direct instruction, and reading. The standards will help students determine word meanings, appreciate the nuances of words, and steadily expand their repertoire of words and phrases. • The standards help prepare students for real life experience at college and in 21st century careers. The standards recognize that students must be able to use formal English in their writing and speaking but that they must also be able to make informed, skillful choices among the many ways to express themselves through language. • Vocabulary and conventions are treated in their own strand not because skills in these areas should be handled in isolation but because their use extends across reading, writing, speaking, and listening. • Appendix A pgs 28-35

13. CCSS Key Points : Media & Technology • Just as media and technology are integrated in school and life in the twenty-first century, skills related to media use (both critical analysis and production of media) are integrated throughout the standards.

14. How to Read the Document (CSSS & PACC) STANDARD CATEGORY Reading Informational Text ANCHOR STANDARDS Key Ideas and Details Craft and Structure Integration of Knowledge and Ideas GRADE LEVEL STANDARDS (Under Each Anchor Standard) 3: Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea. 11: Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.

15. Grade Specific StandardsCommon Core K-12/ PA Common Core Prek-12 • The K-12 grade-specific standards define end-of-year expectations and a cumulative progression designed to enable students to meet college and career readiness expectations no than the end of high school. • Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings, mastered in preceding grades.

16. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings, mastered in preceding grades. • Think about the curriculum… • what is in place? • what will need to be revised? • Think about instructional practices… • what is in place? • what will need to be revised? • Think about formative & summative assessments • what is in place? • what will need to be revised? • http://www.corestandards.org/

17. PACC and CCSS What does all of this mean…. • PACC compared to CCSS • Curriculum • Instruction • Grade Book/Learning Targets • Assessments: Local/ PSSA/National • Other

18. Resources • http://www.corestandards.org/ • http://www.pdesas.org/