Begin at 8:30Welcome to Day 1 of Core Academy 2013

We know teachers are going to be coming to this academy with MANY frustrations and concerns about the new SAGE test. We want to respect that frustration, get it out on the table, and talk about how we will address these things throughout the 4 days. This will also be a great pre-assessment for teachers to target things that will help the teachers throughout the week. Reassure them that we will try to address as many of their concerns as possible. Have them write their frustrations or questions on sticky notes, and quickly read over them as they are adding them to the “dump wall” (could be part of the whiteboard, a large piece of butcher paper, or even just the wall, whatever you determine). Try to point out their concerns as you address them through the week. You may need to improvise :0 adapt, and overcome .

We ask that you please be courteous to others and to the presenters who have worked very hard to bring you this info. Please mute your phones, take phone calls in the hall if they are necessary, use the internet to be interactive with our class, but please leave the social media for later. Keep side conversations to a minimum.

Just a reminder that we hope you go away with much more than lesson plans and trinkets! We want you to know and understand the process deeply, so that you can implement into your own classroom with any of your lesson plans that are already available!

6 tabs that we asked them to bring. They need to

label each tab. Extra paper is to be used for two column journaling.

Taylor Mali is a teacher, a poet, and teacher advocate. Mali said, “Those who seek to teach must never cease to learn.” You are here to learn and we commend you.

Each item 1-5 is compared to the effectiveness of WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ.

The student task was to analyze and interpret the text they read. Steve Graham had participants repeat: “To the moon!”

Let’s take a look at the findings for each of the 3 questions:

Major increase from just asking and answering questions. This was shown to be very effective in the content area classrooms such as science and social studies. During the lower grades, summarization and note taking had a big impact for younger students where more analytical or evaluative pieces showed a more profound effect on learning outcomes for older students. Remember that many of our older students will need to first learn to write about text at the lower levels before they can be effective with higher level writing.

With the implementation of SAGE this year you may feel like you’ve been in a storm and tossed about.

You may be feeling you need to rebuild, improve, or add to your writing program or strategies. You have to plan for writing. You schedule time and provide scaffolding for it. We can’t do “fly by teaching”. That is like throwing stucco to the top of a wall and expecting it to stick.

Show the book and pass around. We now need to plan our writing. We are going to walk through how to plan out and use this process to create and scaffold writing instruction for our students. We want to purposefully plan so we can see the outcome of what we want and teach so the learning sticks and makes a beautiful finished product.

This is the book in a nutshell. There are a few additions that we added to help with understanding.

In the writing for understanding model, students thinking is guided by a focusing/essential question. They then build their knowledge through the close reading of text(s). They are then able to formulate a statement in response to the question. Prior to writing students benefit from oral processing which enables them to test and share information as well as add to their thinking as they listen to others.

These should come from the standards

Integrate your content standards into the ELA standards anytime you can.

Use your Writing Standards, Language Standards, and 6 traits to guide your craft lessons.

Your essential questions can come from the standards themselves you don’t have to create them from scratch. See how the standards in grey/black were changed to an essential question in the red.

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Have you ever had that student who after giving them a writing assignment they just sit there? For example I use to give my students fun creative writing prompts for example, “what would you do if you were invisible” or “Tell about our favorite something” they would just sit there experiencing writer’s block. In this model, students gain lots of information through the building knowledge process so they are able to write. No more writers block.

This is where you plan out the lesson for the craft you have determined in your central ideas portion

We added this to the original Writing for understanding process. We feel this is a critical element in al learning.

Point out that the teacher needs to select a text worthy of rereading!

Another source used to understand Text Complexity - can download 1st chapter if Google this book. 34 pages and a great read.

We have seen this before….breeze through – reminders – bar moved, bands changedDuring this ppt. you will see some slides or graphics, may have seen before – like CC – our goal is to refresh and build upon what you already know.

Complexity of texts students are expected to read is way below what is required to achieve college and career readiness:High school textbooks have declined in all subject areas over several decadesAverage length of sentences in K-8 textbooks has declined from 20 to 14 wordsVocabulary demands have declined, e.g., 8th grade textbooks = former 5th grade texts; 12th grade anthologies = former 7th grade texts Complexity of college and careers texts has remained steady or increased, resulting in a huge gap (350L)

These are the ranges for the Utah Core. This chart is found on page 9 in Appendix A if you want to tab it.Hyperlink 860 will take you back to Diary of a Wimpy KidHyperlink 645 will take you back to The Sun Also RisesHyperlink 4-5 will take you back to HolesHyperlink 450-790 will take you back to The Grapes of Wrath

Let’s figure out where this book is leveled according to the Core standards. Click on the 1000L to hyperlink back to the Lexile ranges and grade band page. Show participants that this is lexiled at a 6th to 8th grade measure. Many 2nd and 3rd graders are reading this book and should be allowed to because the content is actually more fitting for their age group. This is not a book worthy of a close read, however, lexile can be deceiving because it only takes into account one portion.

Not in the database? ADD NOTES ABOUT WORKING THROUGH SOME TITLE WITH PARTICIPANTS-

We learn in the Core that there are three dimensions to text complexity.Lexile is part of the quantitative dimension of text complexity.Short video discusses age appropriateness as a consideration for text complexity.**Be very familiar with this video before you go out to a site. Once in a while youtube may be blocked or you might have difficulty with connections. Be prepared to explain what is on the video.

Click on Lexile: 610L hyperlink to take you back to the lexile chart again. Let them find the grade band for this lexile. When you come back to this slide explain that this story about a group of Americans living in Europe during the 1920s. The main character Jake was wounded in the war and was left with a disabling injury that has left him impotent. His impotency interferes with his relationship with the woman he loves.

Click 660L to take you back to Lexile ChartStory about migrant workers that leave Oklahoma. during the Great Depression to seek jobs in California

Click on 680L hyperlink to go back to Lexile ChartStory about migrant workers that leave Oklahoma during the Great Depression to seek jobs in California.

Read quote.

Handout: Text Complexity Rubric (2 blank copies)

Handout: Text Complexity Rubric (2 blank copies)You will be taking the teachers through the rubric using the passage on the next slide.

The text complexity of this passage falls in the 1080 range. This is in the 9th to 10th grade level recommendation. Have the participants read through this passage and take this through the text complexity rubric together. Point out that if you depended wholly upon the lexile you would completely skip this passage that can be scaffolded for vocabulary. This is a great passage for content teaching in 3rd grade. Find an adjusted grade level together. (facilitator may want to do this on your own before teaching to be sure you can guide this appropriately)

The text complexity of this passage falls in the 1080 range. This is in the 9th to 10th grade level recommendation. Have the participants read through this passage and take this through the text complexity rubric together. Point out that if you depended wholly upon the lexile you would completely skip this passage that can be scaffolded for vocabulary. This is a great passage for content teaching in 3rd grade. Find an adjusted grade level together. (facilitator may want to do this on your own before teaching to be sure you can guide this appropriately)

As a quick overview of close reading first ask the teachers how familiar they are to close reading. Could do a fist to 5 assessment just to get a feel for where they are. Discuss the fact that close reading will be the beginning of every writing lesson. The writing will be the culmination of each reading.

This video is a great review of last summer’s training on Close Reading. Close Reading and Writing go hand in hand.

Review how we came up with the three levels and how they apply to close reading lesson planning. It is an option(but certainly not necessary) to cover each level with each subsequent reading as follows:Level 1- First readLevel 2- Second ReadLevel 3- Third ReadRemember that you can use a spike text. Each re-reading does not require reading the entire book.

This is an overview of what you will find in the standards for Level 1

Review how we came up with the three levels and how they apply to close reading lesson planning. It is an option(but certainly not necessary) to cover each level with each subsequent reading as follows:Level 1- First readLevel 2- Second ReadLevel 3- Third ReadRemember that you can use a spike text. Each re-reading does not require reading the entire book.

This is just a quick assessment for the facilitator to judge how deeply you will need to address this concept.

Explain myths of text dependent questions

The more time we spend with students talking about personal experiences, the less time we spend helping students see how to make meaning of the text.

Research has shown that while this is important to help connect students to the reading, it is more important to first help them connect to the text rather than focus on personal experience that may only involve a few students. Students like to talk about things that have happened to them. But our standards are designed to help us get students ready for college and careers.

Neither of these two questions requires students to do close reading of the text. Many students could answer the question by using prior knowledge — their answers do not demonstrate that they read the text in question.In the end, our task is unwavering: create questions that provide opportunities to teach strategies to our kids so they feel successful when they search for evidence and key words to answer text-dependent questions. Don't allow our students to answer a question without evidence and proof. Hold our students to high expectations, and constantly use those magic words, "Tell me more.""

Review for a moment the three types and the three types of close reading we discussed. Explain to your partner how they are related.

(slide says: When you're writing or reviewing a set of questions, consider the following three categories:Questions that assess themes and central ideasQuestions that assess knowledge of vocabulary, meaning, and structureQuestions that assess understanding of the author’s claims/argument or relationship to another text

So the question is: How can I create better text-dependent questions for the texts that I am using in the classroom?

Use these question builders to improve the previous questions.

Teacher will need laminated strips of questions. Have participants get out their copies of the core. Pass out strips of paper with questions written on them to groups of 3 or 4. Have participants sort questions by Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

In the handouts there are a list of good cooperative learning strategies. Have the teachers look through the strategies, star the strategies that they have used in their classroom, two stars by one you would like to try but haven’t, share your favorite with your partner. Share one that might not be on this list with the group. Facilitator can have the group look through them and ask questions about the strategies if they are unclear on any of them.

The key to successful cooperative learning is explicit teaching and modeling even the turn and talk. Here is one way that you can have students discuss text with others.

Ask teachers to annotate the two paragraphs. Compare the two types of annotations. What are the positives of each type?

You need to me assessing constantly instead of waiting until the final writing

Observation of students nonverbal clues can help us to assess understanding too

A good question can tell a lot here are some examples. The link below is a great article on questioning for understanding

Examples of craft lessons and types of models to use

The standards are not taught in isolation. We are pulling standards from several content areas.

This is the information we added in to the lesson planning process.

Discuss the items on the slide.The difference between reasons and evidence are: A reason is more emotional, it has to come from what the student thinks, however the evidence must come from the text to back up the reason. You may want to help students do this by stating a reason, then use the word “because” before stating their evidence.

Discussion on lexile and adjusted level.

The difference between Tarzan and Jane talk is the difference between note-taking and essay format writing. Model this for the students explicitly and keep reminding them that while we are taking notes we just write only key words, you may want to practice this with students by giving them a full sentence and have them pare it down into the most important words that will still get a point across.

The students could take notes in their math journals. They could stop at each mathematical process and first describe how Zero works in that process, then draw a model, and write an equation to show the process. For example, “In addition whenever Zero is added to another number, the number does not change.” 8+0=8. Draw a picture of 8 apples with zero apples being added to it, still equals 8 apples.

After reading the book and going through the note taking process the students need an understanding of what a hero is, and what a villain is… Make a T chart on the board, have them make their own along with you to use for writing later. Brainstorm together the attributes that make a hero, and the attributes that make a villain.

When teaching this lesson the students were very “PRO-Zero” . They didn’t want him to be called a villain. They felt that even though he didn’t do much that was heroic, he still was not evil. We chose to change the language to Hero vs. Not Hero while making our T charts. They really wanted to prove that he was a hero, but the evidence just isn’t as strong from this source. The next video helps calm their nerves about Zero not being a hero.

After taking notes about how Zero could be a hero again, remind the students that when they write to an opinion they should pick a side to write to with plenty of evidence from the text (this will come in handy on the SAGE).

This is similar to the OREO but is more along the lines of the Anita Archer strategy. Both are great structures, however you should choose one and stick with it so the students are used to it throughout the year and will be able to re-create a structure when they get into the SAGE test.

Please write three things you enjoyed today, and one

wish for something you’d like to know more about. Please do not ask for things we can do nothing about such as, “I wish this building was air conditioned.” Turn in your Hearts & Wishes before you leave today. We appreciate your feedback.