Super Saturday on College Readiness in Writing Adjusting to a New Alignment: STAAR, EOC, and CCRS

1. Super Saturday on College Readiness in WritingAdjusting to a New Alignment: STAAR, EOC, and CCRS --presented by the San Antonio Writing Project (UTSA) Dr. L. Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College San Antonio Writing Project | March 26, 2011 Super Saturday

2. Today’s Agenda Welcome Quick Write Planning OUR OWN curriculum for college-readiness What is the “new alignment?”: STAAR, EOC, and CCRS Teaching Demonstrations—lessons geared toward college readiness

3. Quick Write Topic: Close your eyes, and think about you in the first semester of your freshman year. Describe what you were like as a student and a writer.

4. Discovering a Set of Holistic Learning Objectives for a College-Readiness Curriculum

5. Experiment Part 1— Can we discover the characteristics of poorly prepared writers? (those judged as “not ready” for college-level writing) What can we see IN THEIR WRITING that “defines” them as “not ready?”

6. Characteristics of Poorly Prepared Writers -- --

7. Experiment—Part 2 Can we look at college writing assignments and see what writers should be prepared to do: • What common tasks do these writing assignments ask students to do? • What common sorts of skills or strategies do students need to employ to perform these tasks?

8. Characteristics of College Writing Assignments --

9. College Writing Assignments are “complex literacy tasks” “What are usually called 'writing assignments' in college might more accurately be called 'literacy tasks' because they require much more than the ability to construct correct sentences or compose neatly organized paragraphs with topic sentences. […] Projects calling for high levels of critical literacy in college typically require knowledge of research skills, ability to read complex texts, understanding of key disciplinary concepts, and strategies for synthesizing, analyzing, and responding critically to new information, usually within a limited time frame” (3-4). Carroll, Lee Ann. Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2002.

10. College Writing Requires • knowledge of research skills, • ability to read complex texts, • understanding of key disciplinary concepts, • and strategies for synthesizing, analyzing, and responding critically to new information, • usually within a limited time frame.

11. Argument: A key feature of college writing “Far more often--like every other week--you will be asked to analyze the reading, to make a worthwhile claim about it that is not obvious (state a thesis means almost the same thing), to support your claim with good reasons, all in four or five pages that are organized to present an argument . (If you did that in high school, write your teachers a letter of gratitude.)” (“Some crucial differences between high school and college writing”) Williams, Joseph and Lawrence McEnerny. “Writing in College.” University of Chicago Writing Program.

12. Based, then, on 1) the characteristics that typify student writing that is “not ready” and 2) the kinds of assignments students may typically have to write in college, what then should our curriculum be? What general goals and objectives should we have for our teaching of writing for pre-college or developmental writing students?

13. Goals and Objectives of a CCR Curriculum -- --

14. Time for a ten minute break

15. Understanding the New Alignment Between CCRS, STAAR and EOCs

16. Getting Under the Hood To understand this new alignment, it is important to see exactly how this alignment was made

17. P-16 College Readiness & Success PlanNov. 2006

18. Eight Objectives of P-16 CR Plan Objective 1Define standards and expectations for college readiness for the state that address what students must know and be able to do to succeed in entry-level college/university courses and in the skilled workforce. (completed Dec. 2008) Objective 2Align exit-level assessments of public education with entry-level expectations of higher education and the skilled workforce. (begin 2011-2012

19. CRS-TEKS Alignment Project (May 2009) • Phase I (May 2009) • analyzed the work of Phase II of the CCRS Initiative “gap analysis” • reviewed descriptions of what it means to be college ready • compared identified critical college readiness skills to national college-readiness skills (e.g. SAT, ACT, etc.) • developed performance expectations associated with each critical college-readiness skill for English III and Algebra II

20. Phase I Example

21. Phase II CCRS-TEKS Alignment • Validate the performance expectations (Nov. 2009) • in terms of the difficulty of the content and quality of student response as associated with each critical college readiness skill identified for English III and Algebra II • These performance expectations informed the development of the assessments (and thus will impact everything else from instructional materials, to professional development, to teacher preparation)

22. Phase II Example

23. TEKS< -- >STAAR • TEKS • Selected TEKS stressed in STAAR as “Readiness” or “Supporting” Standards • A New Model for Assessment • STAAR English III “Reporting Categories” • Engl III Blueprint • English III Test Design Schematic

24. Resource Links Related to the New Alignment of TEKS, STAAR, EOC, and CCRS P-16 College-Readiness and Success Strategic Action Plan Website http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/index.cfm?objectid=7FD77659-E087-B26F-8E8508CBC054642D --2010 Report http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/index.cfm?objectid=7AC7F668-FA43-59A4-A19DC8BA2E39BEA4 TEA End of Course Assessment Site http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index3.aspx?id=3302&menu_id-793 TEA STAAR Resource Page http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/staar/ TEKS for ELA http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter110/ch110c.html English III STAAR Assessment http://www.tea.state.tx.us/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2147489870&libID=2147489869 The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) A New Assessment Model http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/staar/ Crossing2College: A Resource on College Readiness in Writing from the San Antonio Writing Projecthttp://www.sanantoniowritingproject.org/crosstocollege

25. Crossing2College: A Resource for Preparing College-Ready Writers http://www.sanantoniowritingproject.org/crosstocollege/

26. “The readiness is all.”