Instructional Leaders Meeting

1. Instructional Leaders Meeting October 29, 2013

2. Welcome! • Reflect • Were you able to work with your department to analyze the Lincoln text? • Do you believe your department understands the necessity of beginning with text analysis before writing questions or creating activities? • With what did they struggle in analyzing the text for its complex features? • What did you think of the Dweck article on growth mindsets?

3. Foci for the Year • Keeping you at the forefront of learning about CCSS, SBAC, and Social Studies Best Practices • Collaborating around various ways to implement the Shifts of Instruction and Practice Guides in all of our schools • Learning more about how to ensure students are ready for SBAC • Maintaining and promoting a growth mindset in ourselves and our students

4. Agenda – Information to Share • Upcoming classes (Reconceptualizing the MS Curriculum & 6th Grade DBQs) • Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom free teacher resources • Thank a Nevada Teacher(October due date!) • National History Bee • Project REAL: Your Day in Court Program • NNCSS (registration, presenter application, Teacher of the Year nomination)

5. Agenda – Action Items • Ask your principal if there is money to pay for teachers to attend the Northern Nevada Council for the Social Studies Conference on March 1. • Consider presenting at the NNCSS Conference and encourage other great teachers to do so as well. • Complete the survey about CCSS.

6. Professional learning (november-January) This work takes time to master and is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to implementing CCSS effectively. The practice we do today should be replicated at least twice in your departments from now until we meet again in January.

7. Activity to replicate with your department. Professional Learning: Core Action 2 Essential Questions: • How can we use our analysis of a text’s complexity to develop appropriate questions and tasks? • Why is this a powerful format even when we are not doing a close read? Ask your department to practice Steps 1-5 for Core Action 2 on at least two different texts between now and January.

8. Text Dependent: Require students to answer using evidence from the text; cannot be answered without reading the text Text Specific: Require students to delve into the particular complexities of the text at hand; are based solely on that text, not generalizable (e.g. not “What are the main idea and details of this text?”)

9. *a focus on particular steps will occur throughout the year Steps to Follow for Core Action 2* • Determine the essential understanding(s) of the text. What do you really care about students knowing and understanding when they finish reading this text? • Write the essential understanding in a clear, concise, and very specific sentence at the top of the document. This is where your questions about the document should lead. The more specific you are, the better. Your essential understanding is often the basis of your final writing prompt or task. • Use the High Quality Text Criteria to ensure that this is an appropriate text to spend time on. Is the text worth close study and class time?

10. *a focus on particular steps will occur throughout the year Steps to Follow for Core Action 2* • Qualitatively analyze the text. What about this specific text will be most complex for students? • What vocabulary should I attend to? How will I do this? (ignore – not essential, provide students with replacement word, create a vocabulary lesson, ask a question or provide a task that asks students to find context clues) • Are there areas of difficult, unusual, interesting syntax? Because varied syntax can present difficulties for students, how can I write a question or task that attends specifically to this?

11. *a focus on particular steps will occur throughout the year Steps to Follow for Core Action 2* 7. Determine key ideas that develop the essential understanding and create a series of open-ended questions to bring the reader to an understanding of these as they work through the reading. • Begin with questions that orient students to the text and have more literal answers before moving on to highly inferential questions or those requiring synthesis of multiple areas of the text. 8. Locate most powerful academic words; integrate questions and discussion around these words.

12. *a focus on particular steps will occur throughout the year Steps to Follow for Core Action 2* 9. Find difficult sections of text and craft appropriate questions; these might include particularly dense information, tricky transitions or places that offer a variety of possible inferences. If there are areas wherein multiple ideas are presented, find a way to have students stop and decipher the ideas in the reading. 10. Refer back to social studies standards and CCSS. Which standards might you be able to meet with this document? Consider things like tone/mood, multiple texts or points of view, etc. 11. Develop a culminating activity around the essential understanding(s). A good task should reflect mastery of one or more of the standards, involve writing, and be structured to be completed by small groups or by students independently.

13. Step 3: High Quality Text?

14. STEP 4: What specifically makes this text complex? EXPLICIT…………IMPLICIT CONVENTIONAL STRUCTURE………UNCONVENTIONAL STRUCTURE LITERAL………FIGURATIVE OR IRONIC CLEAR………AMBIGUOUS OR MISLEADING CONTEMPORARY OR FAMILIAR………ARCHAIC OR UNFAMILIAR CONVERSATIONAL………ACADEMIC FAMILIAR VOCABULARY………HIGH TIER 2/3 VOCABULARY LOAD SIMPLE SENTENCE STRUCTURE………COMPLEX AND VARIED EVERYDAY KNOWLEDGE………NEED BACKGROUND LOW INTERTEXTUALITY………NEED TO KNOW OTHER TEXTS SINGLE LEVEL OF MEANING…MULTIPLE LEVELS OF MEANING

15. Step 5: VocabularyQuestions & Tasks Circle these words • With what vocabulary will students MOST struggle? • Which of these terms is ESSENTIAL to understanding the text? • For the ESSENTIAL terms, which have adequate context clues for which you could build a question or activity for students to determine the meaning? (underline the context clues). Write a question to help students make meaning of this essential word. • For the ESSENTIAL terms without adequate context clues, which might you spend time teaching (important academic vocabulary that will transfer to other readings)? Make a list of these words. Discuss how you might teach them with a vocabulary strategy. • For the words left over (essential, not enough context clues, not worth explicit teaching), provide students with a grade-level appropriate synonym? Add a synonym to the right side-bar.

16. Step 5: Question stems for vocabulary This is not a comprehensive list! • What words and phrases (context clues) in paragraph ___ help you to understand the meaning of the word ____? • How do the words ______, ______, _____, and _____ help you to better understand the author’s use of the word ______? • The word ____ appears in line/paragraph ____. If the word were changed to _____, how would the meaning of the passage change? What other words and phrases would need to be changed? What would you change them to?

17. Step 5: Question stems for vocabulary, cont. This is not a comprehensive list! The word/phrase _______ on line __ has multiple meanings. What does this word often mean? How is it used differently in this context? How do you know? The word/phrase ____ on line __ is important to understanding the author’s point of view. What word or phrase could you substitute for this word/phrase to demonstrate a different point of view? What insert # words from the text are most important to understanding the author’s point of view (or tone or mood of the text)? Explain your choices using evidence from the text.

18. Step 5: Question stems for vocabulary, cont. This is not a comprehensive list! (for use with an important transition word) What does the word _____ on line ___ tell us about the author’s structure of this text? Why is this word important to notice? Use evidence to explain your answer. What words/phrases in paragraph(s) ____, help you to understand the author’s transitions between ideas? Explain.

19. Step 5: Question types for vocabulary Reread this sentence from, The Great Fire. Interspersed in these residential areas were a variety of businesses—paint factories, lumber-yards, distilleries, gasworks, mills, furniture manufacturers, warehouses, and coal distributors. The word interspersed contains the prefix inter-, which is also used in words like interaction, interplanetary, and international. Based on the word interspersed in the quoted sentence, where were the businesses located? • Around the edges of the residential areas • Far from the residential areas • Among the residential areas • Alongside the residential areas

20. Step 5: Question types for vocabulary Read this sentence from Diamonds in the Sky. Nanodiamonds are stardust, created when ancient stars exploded long ago, disgorging their remaining elements into space. Based on the context of the sentence, what is the most precise meaning of the word disgorging? • Scattering randomly • Throwing out quickly • Spreading out widely • Casting forth violently

21. Step 5: Question types for vocabulary Reread this sentence from the passage: The answer was to make the roads and sidewalks out of wood and elevate them above the waterline, in some places by several feet. Which word in the sentence helps the reader determine the meaning of the word “elevate”? A. out B. above C. waterline D. feet

22. Your plan of action • How will you work with your department to analyze two grade level texts and develop vocabulary related questions for them from now through January? • In January, we will begin focusing on steps 6-11.

23. Activity to replicate with your department. Professional Learning – Core Action 1 How does work with complex text encourage cognitive flexibility? “Give challenging work to all students. Students’ minds grow when they stretch themselves. Try to incorporate tasks that train students’ attention (e.g. learning to tune out distractions), memory (learning to hold a number of things in mind at the same time), and cognitive flexibility (switching back and forth between ideas that can be confusing in their similarity)” (Dweck, 2009, p. 60).

24. Questions, Concerns, Comments