E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E A R T S / L I T E R A C Y

S I X I N S T R U C T I O N A L S H I F T S

F O C U S O N S H I F T S 2 A N D 3

SHIFT 2: KNOWLEDGE IN THE DISCIPLINES

Literacy standards (6-12) are predicated on teachers in ELA, social studies, science and technical subjects using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening and language in their respective fields.

INSTRUCTIONAL IMPLICATIONS

All content area teachers teach literacy in their discipline

Build background knowledge to increase reading skills

Teach different strategies for different types of text

Explicitly teach students how to use text as source of evidence—topic and opinion writing

Teach use of primary and secondary sources

GOALS OF SHIFT 2

* School-wide content-area literacy

* Students build content knowledge through reading text and writing about what they read

* Students apply literacy skills with content area texts; including primary and secondary documents

* Teaching of discipline-specific reading and writing strategies vs. a generic list of strategies

* Students read and write for multiple audiences and purposes across disciplines

SHIFT 3: STAIRCASE OF TEXT COMPLEXITY

Students will:

Build background knowledge through the reading of complex texts

Read literature and informational text of appropriate complexity

Apply close reading strategies to reading literature and informational text

Systematically read increasingly difficult levels of text (each grade level a “staircase step” of growth)

Be provided scaffolding and support -not substitutions of easier text

QUICK REFERENCE CHART FOR CONVERTING MULTIPLE MEASURES INTO COMMON CORE

GRADE BANDS

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS TOOLSATOS Analyzer – Renaissance Learning

http://www.renlearn.com/ar/overview/atos/

Degrees of Reading Power® – Questar http://www.questarai.com(Contact Questar with requests for text analysis.)

The Lexile Framework® – MetaMetrix http://www.lexile.com/analyzer/

Coh-Metrix Easability Tool – University of Memphis(For Flesch-Kincaid measure)

http://141.225.42.101/cohmetrixgates/Home.aspx?Login=1(Beta site)

Reading Maturity – Pearson Knowledge Technologies

http://www.readingmaturity.com(Beta site)

SourceRater – Educators Testing Service

http://naeptba.ets.org/SourceRater3/(Beta site)

WHERE DO WE FIND TEXTS IN THE APPROPRIATE TEXT COMPLEXITY BAND?

We could….

* Choose from text exemplars found in Appendix B

or…

* Use available resources to determine the text complexity of materials

TIME TO PRACTICE…

• Review Test Exemplars (Appendix B)

• Use online tools and handouts to determine

complexity measures of texts