Best Practice in Reading & Writing
Bringing Curriculum Standards to Life in the Classroom
The purpose of standards
Reading and Writing, Fundamental Tools of Learning
- Focus on meaning
- Read aloud
- Do everything in your power to get kids to read - anything and everything
- Provide beginning readers with many opportunities to interact with print.
- Surround readers with opportunities for success
- Teach phonics
- Provide access to a wide and rich array of print
- Balance challenging texts with easy ones
- Model Reading
- Name and teach reading stratigies
- Support readers before, during and after reading
- Instructing students on planning, revising, and editing compositions
- Conducting inquiriy activities that lead to writing
Reading and Writing Fundamental Tools of Learning
Strategic Thought & Inquiry-Based Learning
Teaching Reading As Thinking
The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts...
Prepare ensure students are college and career ready in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language by teaching them to:
1. Demonstrate independence.
Students can, without significant scaffolding, comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines, and they can construct effective arguments and convey intricate or multifaceted information. Likewise, students are able independently to discern a speaker’s key points, request clarification, and ask relevant questions. They build on others’ ideas, articulate their own ideas, and confirm they have been understood. Without prompting, they demonstrate command of Standard English and acquire and use a wide-ranging vocabulary. More broadly, they become self-directed learners, effectively seeking out and using resources to assist them, including teachers, peers, and print and digital reference materials.
2. Build strong content knowledge
Students establish a base of knowledge across a wide range of subject matter by engaging with works of quality and substance. They become proficient in new areas through research and study. They read purposefully and listen attentively to gain both general knowledge and discipline-specific expertise. They refine and share their knowledge through writing and speaking.
3. Respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline
Students adapt their communication in relation to audience, task, purpose, and discipline. They set and adjust purpose for reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language use as warranted by the task. They appreciate nuances, such as how the composition of an audience should affect tone when speaking and how the connotations of words affect meaning. They also know that different disciplines call for different types of evidence (e.g., documentary evidence in history, experimental evidence in science).
4. Comprehend as well as critique
Students are engaged and open-minded—but discerning—readers and listeners. They work diligently to understand precisely what an author or speaker is saying, but they also question an author’s or speaker’s assumptions and premises and assess the veracity of claims and the soundness of reasoning.
5. They value evidence
Students cite specific evidence when offering an oral or written interpretation of a text. They use relevant evidence when supporting their own points in writing and speaking, making their reasoning clear to the reader or listener, and they constructively evaluate others’ use of evidence
6. Use technology and digital media strategically and capably
Students employ technology thoughtfully to enhance their reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language use. They tailor their searches online to acquire useful information efficiently, and they integrate what they learn using technology with what they learn offline. They are familiar with the strengths and limitations of various technological tools and mediums and can select and use those best suited to their communication goals.
7. Come to understand other perspectives and cultures
Students appreciate that the twenty-first-century classroom and workplace are settings in which people from often widely divergent cultures and who represent diverse experiences and perspectives must learn and work together. Students actively seek to understand other perspectives and cultures through reading and listening, and they are able to communicate effectively with people of varied backgrounds. They evaluate other points of view critically and constructively. Through reading great classic and contemporary works of literature representative of a variety of periods, cultures, and worldviews, students can vicariously inhabit worlds and have experiences much different than their own.
Consider the Reading Standards for Literature
Key Ideas and Details
Imaginative texts can provide rich and timeless insights into universal themes, dilemmas and social realities of the world in which we live. Literary text represents complex stories in which the reflective and apparent thoughts and actions of human beings are revealed. Life therefore shapes literature and literature shapes life.
Craft and Structure
Literary text, like all creative products, demonstrates style and craftsmanship. Readers can respond analytically and objectively to text when they understand the purpose or reason behind the author’s intentional choice of tools such as word choice, point of view and structure.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Competent readers can synthesize information from a variety of sources including print, audio and visual. Comparing and contrasting text in a variety of forms or genres provides a full understanding of the author’s message/theme as well as the ideas being explored.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
In order to meet the rigorous demands of college and/or the workforce, students must be able to read and comprehend increasingly complex literary text. They must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality, challenging text and develop the skill, concentration and stamina to read these texts independently and proficiently. For additional information see Range, Quality, and Complexity of Student Reading, K-12 in the Appendix.
Consider the Standards for Informational Text
Key Ideas and Details
Knowledge-based information is an ever-changing expanding genre that encompasses daily communication. The ability to comprehend and analyze informational texts develops critical thinking, promotes logical reasoning and expands one’s sense of the world and self.
Craft and Structure
Informational text, like all creative products, demonstrates style and craftsmanship. Readers can respond analytically and objectively to text when they understand the purpose or reason behind the author’s intentional choice of tools such as word choice, point of view and structure.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Integrating knowledge and ideas from informational text expands the knowledge base and perspectives found in text, which empowers the reader to make informed choices in life.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high quality and increasingly challenging informational texts.
Consider the Standards for Writing
Text Types and Purposes
Writers share information, opinions and ideas through multiple ways and texts. Knowledge of the different genres support students’ understanding and writing of text structures which allows them to communicate in appropriate and meaningful ways to their audience and achieve their intended purpose.
Production and Distribution of Writing Effective writing is the result of multi-stage, reflective process in which the writer must develop, plan, revise, edit and rewrite their work to evoke change or clarify their ideas. The stages of these processes are enhanced with collaboration and technology.
Research to Build and Present Knowledge
Writing is a tool for thinking and problem solving. In order to create new understandings, activating prior knowledge and engaging in the process of independent and shared inquiry are essential.
Range of Writing
To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students need to learn to use writing as a way of offering and supporting opinions, demonstrating understanding of the subjects they are studying, and conveying real and imagined experiences and events.