Transformational Literacy: Part 1

Transformational Literacy: Making the Common Core Shift with Work that Matters

Part 1: Unlocking the Power of Informational and Literary Texts

The Centrality of Informational Text

The Common Core literacy instructional shift requires students to build content knowledge through a balance of rich informational and literacy text. Elementary teachers need to incorporate more informational texts into instruction to build a knowledge base. Middle and High school teachers need to find ways to integrate informational text with literary text.

Why This Practice Matters

• It fosters students' natural curiosity and motivation to learn about the World.

• It builds knowledge and tools for lifelong learning. To better prepare students for college and career reading, the ratio of informational text to literary text should be 50:50 by 4th grade and 70:30 by 12th grade.

• It connects reading with learning. Students begin seek out text to "read to learn".

• It provides an avenue for students who are not interested in narrative text. Lots of times, boys and young men are more motivated to read when that reading addresses relevant topics or has direct application to their own lives.

Creating Text-Rich Classrooms

Strike the Right Balance

• Elementary's challenge is to have a ratio of 50% informational text.

• Secondary's challenge is to vary the types of informational texts and teaching students the literary skills to read them.

Build Rich Sets of Informational and Literary Texts

• Engaging students in the study of sets of texts, including informational and literary, about a topic builds background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

Strategically Organize Text Sets

• Start with a hard/mysterious book that will be the "goal". Then read more accessible text until background knowledge is firmer and then return to the beginning book.

• Sprinkle and toggle between informational texts with literary texts

• Start with personal and move towards universal

• Start with universal and move towards personal

What is Text Anyway?

The Common Core insists on using rich text to gather and analyze daily. Students need to learn deep analytic skills in order to know how to process information from written text.

Make "Outside the Box" Text Choices

Expository	Argumentative	Instructional	Narrative
Textbooks (science)	Opinion and editorial pieces	Training manuals	(Auto)biographies
Textbooks (humanities)	Speeches	Contracts	Histories
Reports	Advertisements	User guides and manuals	Correspondence
Tourism Guides	Political Propaganda	Legal documents	Curriculum vitae
Product Specifications	Journal Articles	Recipes	Memoirs
Product and service descriptions	Government documents	Product and Service descriptions	News Articles
Magazine articles	Legal documents		Essays
Company profiles	Tourism guides		Interviews
Legal documents	Correspondence		Agendas
Agendas	Essays
Correspondence	Reviews
Essays	Memoirs
Interviews
Government documents
News articles

Seek out Great Informational Texts

• Museums

• Government Organizations

• Nonprofit academic, arts, or professional organizations

• Photographs and art

• Seek out librarians as key allies.

• Be wary of open web searches

• Join e-mail or networks of teachers who teach the same content or grade level to learn what they've found to share.

• Be savvy regarding copyright laws

Finding Texts That Meet the Standards

Teachers need to take a close look at grade-level Common Core standards, the topic or theme the text represents, and the quality of the text.

Analyze Anchor Texts

• Content: Is the text aligned to the grade-level content standards?

• Interest: Is the text compelling for students?

• Complexity: Is the text appropriate in terms of qualitative and quantitative measures of complexity?

• Reading Standards: Does the text offer opportunities to teach the grade-level Common Core literacy standards?

• Writing Standards: Can this text serve as a mentor text and model of author's craft?

A Volume of Reading

Build in Plenty of Time to Read for Research

The authors of the Common core state that "to be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and non-print texts in media forms old and new".

Build in Plenty of Time to Read for Pleasure

Reading for pleasure complements reading complex text that is required reading. It is key to building lifelong readers and enables developing readers to make choices about their own reading likes and dislikes as they construct their own reading identities.

Reasons to Read

Choose the right texts for students to read in service of building their knowledge of the world is key to this Common Core instructional shift. Also important is providing high-quality curriculum that motivates children to read and instructional strategies that make good use of the text.

Strategies to hook students into compelling content

• Readers' theater presentations

• Formal or informal debates

• Socratic seminars - student-led discussions that are text and evidence based and that address important questions

• Poetry slams, reading slams, and choral readings based on texts

• Sets of texts with range of perspectives on an issue, including some that are oppositional

• Sets of texts on issues of justice and fairness

• Opportunities for students to teach a text to their peers

Teach Content through Case Studies

• Typically take 2-6 weeks

• Involve an authentic audience of community members

• Often office opportunities for service learning

Introduce New Topics with the Building Background Knowledge Workshop (BBK)

This workshop is a protocol that generates enthusiasm for learning new content and motivates students to persevere through challenging work. It is a short, 2-3 class periods, hook into a longer unit of study.

Overview of Steps in the BBK

1. The "mystery" piece - Can be an image, chart, graph, poem, special guest, or trip - During this stage, students do not know what they are going to study. The mystery pieces just gives a clue. - At the end of this stage the topic of study is revealed and learning targets are introduced.

2. Activating Schema - Teacher conducts informal assessments about prior knowledge

3. Reading a common text - Students read foundational text that anchors learning in common content and vocabulary. - Move slowly, and come back to it often. - During this stage, children will generate questions that need to be recorded.

4. Expert and jigsaw groups - In "expert" groups, all students will read the same expert text and gain expertise on that topic. - Then one person from each "expert" group forms a "jigsaw" group to speak about their topic.

5. Revisiting the original hook or mystery - Reflect on their new knowledge and understandings - Return to texts to cite specific evident for assertions

Text as Teacher: Using Text to Teach Content and Literacy in Your Discipline

The Common Core instructional shifts challenge us to think more carefully about the what of teaching and learning: the actual texts we will put in front of students. It is no simple matter to address content standards and literacy skills through a complex text or set of texts, but it is rich and rewarding. Giving students ownership of a challenging, purposeful process through strategies such as case studies and the BBk workshop and giving them access to compelling, quality texts in every content area will provide a terrific boost to their readiness for higher-level work and learning.

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