Transformational Literacy: Part 3

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

Part 3: Supporting All Students to Succeed with Complex Texts

What's in and What's Out for English Language Arts and Literacy

In	Out
Regular encounters with complex texts	Leveled texts (only)
Texts worthy of close attention	Reading any old text
Balance of literary and informational texts	Solely literature
Coherent sequences of texts	Collection of unrelated texts
Mostly text-dependent questions	Mostly text-to-self questions
Accent on academic vocabulary	Accent on literary terminolog
Emphasis on reading and rereading	Emphasis on rereading
Reading strategies (as means)	Reading strategies (as end goal)
Reading foundations (central, coherent, and systematic)	Reading foundations (peripheral and detached)

Why This Practice Matters

• Learning strategies to read complex texts develops students' growth mindset

• The ability to read complex text is a gateway to college and careers

• Reading complex texts gives all students the ability to access the curriculum

• Reading complex text builds academic vocabulary, which is key to leveling the playing field for all students

• Overcoming challenges leads to joy in learning

Creating the Conditions for Success with Complex Text

Build a Culture of Achievement

A culture of quality

• Through regular opportunities for rereading, students embrace the notion that working hard and making mistakes is part of the learning process.

• Students "own" their achievement, reflect on their progress, and discuss their growth honestly by referencing assessment data, standards, learning targets, and examples of their work. Students believe that their effort will lead to achievement.

A culture of Character

• Students embrace a consistent set of values that express high expectations fro achievement, character, and behavior

• Students offer and seek out help in order to overcome academic or social obstacles.

A culture of Connection

• Students build strong relationships with other students, their teachers, and school leaders.

• Students collaborate with their peers and understand that they ware part of a group with the collective capacity to accomplish challenging tasks.

Complex Texts within a Compelling Curriculum

Structure	Impact on Motivation and Engagement
Case Studies Used frequently to teach science and social studies, case studies provide students with a narrow window into larger topics and are often locally relevant (e.g., studying a local civil rights hero as part of a larger civil rights unit).	Well-chosen case studies always include a variety of rich reading materials, including complex texts. Connections to local people, places, and events increase students' need to know and their willingness to read challenging texts in order to access the content. Case students are a great opportunity for students to read and make connections across multiple genres, including informational and literary texts. Students must use higher-order thinking skills to generalize their learning from a specific case study to other contexts.
Real-World Formats Final products or performance tasks can be modeled after real-world formats (e.g., scientific reports based on original fieldwork).	Models of quality work found in the professional world motivate students to persevere with challenging material in order to produce high-quality work with a real-world application. If students know that they must produce a scientific research report, they are more motivated to read research reports from the professional literature to use as models for their own work.
Authentic Audience Especially when combined with real-world formats, student work can be produced for an authentic audience in the community (e.g., the mayor, the local library).	The service-oriented purpose of creating work for an authentic audience motivates students to read and understand challenging texts that will help them do their best work. Absent an authentic audience and clear purpose, they may not see the need to read and access the content from challenging texts.
Working with Experts Teachers can bring experts from the community into the classroom to collaborate with students on projects, teach them skills from their field, and critique their work using professional standards.	Working with experts motivates students to prepare themselves to ask good questions, do high-quality work, and make the most of the opportunity.

Determining the Right Level of Text Complexity for Your Students

The Common Core Model for Text Complexity

• (Cautiously) Employ Quantitative Measures to Text Complexity

• Layer on Qualitative Measures of Text Complexity

  • Levels of meaning or purpose

  • Structure

  • Language conventionality and clarity

  • Knowledge demands

• Judiciously Consider the Reader and the Task

  • Cognitive capabilities - attention, memory, critical analytic ability

  • Motivation

  • Knowledge - vocabulary and topic knowledge, comprehension strategies

  • Experience

Helping Students Read Closely

Planning for Close Reading Lessons

Summary of Differentiation Strategies Used in teh Close Reading Lesson

• Seat sacks: a discrete way to distribute different materials to different students

• Chunks of text: strategically selected portions of text that enable students to read from the same text and complete a close reading activity without getting frustrated.

• Sentence starters: prompts to jump-start students' thinking and writing

• Pair-shares with partners of similar skill levels: strategic pairings or groupings that give students a chance to check each others work and thinking

• Targeted feedback: support to individuals or groups who need it the most

• Exit tickets: quick assessments at the end of the lesson that provide information on each student's level of understanding

Determining the instructional sequence for close reading lessons is based on 3 factors:

1. The complexity and richness of the text to be read

2. The relative skill of the readers

3. The tasks to be completed or understandings to be gained

Before the Close Reading Lesson

Evaluate the Content

• Purpose of reading, what understandings or information acquired

• Look ahead to assessments, writings, performance tasks

• What makes it worth reading?

Analyze the Text

• How complex is text?

• What excerpts will be more difficult and require slower pacing?

• What challenges will be faced in terms of text's meaning, requisite background knowledge, structure, and language?

• Attend to syntax and vocabulary

• What needs to be understood at the beginning?

• Should it be read aloud 1st? Or can students read themselves and then listen to read aloud?

• Generate text-dependent questions in advance.

Develop Text-Dependent Questions

Plan backward from the core skills and understandings. Text-Dependent questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks:

• Analyze paragraphs on a sentence-by-sentence basis and sentences on a word-by-word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words.

• Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another.

• Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole.

• Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts.

• Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do.

• Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve.

• Consider what the the leaves uncertain or unstated.

Create Strong Text-Dependent Questions

• Step 1: Identify the core understandings and key ideas of the text.

• Step 2: Start small to build confidence.

• Step 3: Target vocabulary and text structure.

• Step 4: Tackle tough sections head on.

• Step 5: Create coherent sequences of text-dependent questions.

• Step 6: Identify the standards that are being addressed.

• Step 7: Create the culminating assessment.

During the Lesson

Launch the Text

• Students read chunks or teacher reads aloud

• Provide some word meanings

Ask Students to Make Meaning Independently

• Students reread and make notes, get gists

• Support individuals as needed

Clear Up Misconceptions and Model

• Students discuss understandings

• Focus on key vocabulary

• Focus on syntax

• Prompt for evidence

• Model only when needed and after students have had a chance 1st

Ask Students to Gather Evidence from the Text

• Introduce/reintroduce purpose and text-dependent questions

• Reread questions

• Students think and discuss answers

• Students write answers

• Ultimately students apply learning from text

Debrief

• Connect work to purpose

• Reflect

Meet the Needs of Diverse Learners with Engagement Strategies

• Carousel brainstorm

• Interactive Word Wall

• Science talk

• Quiz quiz trade

• Exit Tickets

Digging Deeper on Differentiation Strategies

Common Strategies

• Unpacking the learning targets

• Doing more with less

• Slowing it down

• Making it predictable

• Giving students a turn first

• Using expert read-alouds

Front-End Scaffolding (of Close reading)

• Visual cue to understand learning targets

• Define words that cannot be understood through context

• Read aloud before students read

• Provide audio recording of text

• Reading calendar for reading assignments

• Pre-highlighting text

• Eliminating the need for students to copy information

Back-end scaffolding

• Hint cards to help students get unstuck

• Students annotate text (sticky notes)

• Supply sentence starters for discussion

• Use heterogeneous groups

• Provide task cards and anchor charts for expectations

• Highlight key words in task

• Simplifying task directions

• Use homogeneous groups and provide more direct support

• Use station teaching

• Questions build in complexity

Teaching Academic and Discipline-Specific Vocabulary

Three Tiers of Vocabulary

Tier One: Basic Vocabulary

• Words found in everyday speech that rarely need teaching

Tier Two: Academic Vocabulary

• High-frequency words that are found in academic texts across a variety of domains but that are unlikely to occur in everyday speech.

Tier Three: Discipline-Specific Vocabulary

• Low-frequency words specific to a particular field of study and often found in informational texts about that subject.

• Support Incidental Vocabulary Learning

• Teach Some Vocabulary with Direct Instruction

The Place of Thinking Strategies (or Reading Comprehension Strategies)

Old

New

The teacher reads aloud. As he's reading, he pauses occasionally to think aloud about the important details in the text. He may highlight or write down key details. The teacher names his thinking strategy: "Determining Importance." Students then work with the text to find more key details.

Students have a first go at reading the text to identify the gist. If the text is particularly challenging, the teacher may read it aloud but does not stop to model thinking strategies, summarize, or paraphrase. The teacher asks students to reread looking for important details and evidence in the text to support their thinking. Students consider how these details may change their initial thinking about the gist. At the close of the lesson the teacher adds to an anchor chart that describes "things close readers do" (e.g., rereading for key details to support the main idea).

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