QCSD K-5 Literacy Buzz
November, 2018
QCSD K-12 ELA Vision Statement
All students in QCSD will become productive citizens with a command of literacy that prepares them for the challenges of being “College and Career Ready” and enables them to achieve their personal and professional goals.
Table of Contents
Can't Miss Celebrations
- Focused Independent Reading & Small Group Instruction - Susan Rivera
- Stop! Elaborate and Listen - Mark Hewes
- Integrating Wit and Wisdom Strategies into Science and Socials Studies - Ryan Wieand
Implementation News
- SeeSaw ELA Course
- Implementation with Integrity
Instructional Shift - Integrated Curriculum
- Is text based writing also considered mode specific writing?
- Assessment and Knowing Our Students as Readers and Writers
Content Area Literacy
- High Impact Strategy - Questioning
Conversations in QCSD and What the Literacy Experts Have to Say
Do Learning Centers and Seatwork Improve Reading Achievement?
- Level texts, not students
Coaching Corner
- Classroom visits
Can't Miss Celebrations
Check out these short videos From Susan Rivera's 2nd grade class!
Focused Independent Reading & Small Group Instruction
Stop, Elaborate and Listen - Mark Hewes
Integrating Wit and Wisdom Strategies into Science and Social Studies - Ryan Weiand
Departmentalized Teams and the Power of Collaboration
To see more celebrations, join the SeeSaw ELA Course and become an active member of the learning community! See Below for more details.
Implementation News
SeeSaw ELA Course
K-5 QCSD ELA Collaboration and Celebration Course
You are invited to collaborate in the K-2 and/or 3-5 ELA Collaboration and Celebration Seesaw Courses. Please join Kelly Cramer, Erin Oleksa-Carter, and the Reading Specialists in posting videos, pictures, and reflections highlighting teacher actions and student outcomes aligned to the K-5 ELA Implementation Stages. Let’s use this course as a space to collaborate, celebrate, and reflect on all of the awesome literacy learning happening with our students and teachers across the district. Please take a minute to watch this screencast on how to log in to Seesaw as a student.
1 Minute Screencast for Accessing Seesaw as a Student
What Does Implementation with Integrity Mean?
Teachers should use their knowledge of the modules and of their students to customize lessons when needed. In practice, tension exists between the desire to teach with fidelity to the lesson as written and the necessity of flexing to meet students' needs. Optimal learning occurs when teachers strike a balance between flexibility and fidelity, landing in the in the integrity portion of the spectrum. Implementing with integrity means:
- honoring the essential components of a module - its major questions, learning goals, and summative assessments
- internalizing a lesson's goals and plans, then customizing the lesson as needed during lesson preparation ensuring students receive a rigorous and successful learning experience by maintaining the expectations of the task, lesson and module
- providing scaffolds and differentiation to meet students where they are and ensure that their efforts are productive
- attempting different approaches to engage students with content; and
- solving problems and making decisions based on evidence and data, especially from student work.
K-5 ELA Implementation Stages
Instructional Shift - Integrated Curriculum
Is text based writing also considered mode specific writing?
- Balancing the reading of informational and literary texts so that students can access nonfiction and authentic texts, as well as literature.
- Focusing on close and careful reading of text so that students are learning from the text. Building a staircase of complexity (i.e., each grade level requires a “step” of growth on the “staircase”) so that students graduate college or career ready.
- Supporting writing from sources (i.e., using evidence from text to inform or make an argument) so that students use evidence and respond to the ideas, events, facts, and arguments presented in the texts they read.
- Stressing an academically focused vocabulary so that students can access more complex texts.
Below is an example of an Opinion piece from Appendix C of the CCSS.
Assessment Practices
Our ELA curriculum assessments align with these principles:
- Assessment can be a powerful tool to drive student learning.
- Assessments should form a coherent narrative reflecting the knowledge and skills students will build throughout a module.
- The most powerful type of assessment is the content-based performance task. Tasks should consist of work worth doing, reflecting best instruction.
- Self-assessment empowers students to understand and improve their learning.
- Frequent, low-stakes selected-response items (including multiple choice) give teachers important, timely feedback on students’ reading comprehension and critical thinking.
Impact of Assessment:
Whether in college or career, students will frequently be held accountable for what they know and what they can do. Forms of assessment that are typically limited to the classroom, like multiple choice, can be helpful in giving teachers quick feedback on student learning. But the best assessments mirror the work students will do in college and their careers, allowing them to perform their learning in authentic contexts.
Content Literacy
What is Content Literacy?
What is Content Literacy?
Content-area literacy focuses on the similarities of literacy in the content areas with general strategies—like summarizing, questioning, and making inferences—that can help students with comprehension and can be applied universally across content areas.
Why Content Literacy?
To graduate high school fully prepared for college and the workforce, students need more than basic literacy skills. They need to master the distinct approaches to literacy that are used in academic disciplines such as science, mathematics, and history––as well as Career Technical Education courses.
High Impact Strategy - Questioning
Core Practice Description
Students monitor their understanding of the text by recording questions they have about it.
Progression and Practice
During their first encounter with a text, students record questions they have about it. When students return to the text, they continue to monitor their understanding, recording any additional questions that arise while also looking for answers to their initial questions. After the first stage of reading, students share, and when possible, answer these text-based questions, or problem solve about how to answer the questions. For instance, students may return to the text, consult a reference source, or conduct research.
Value
For Students
When readers ask themselves (or others) questions during the first few readings of a text, they are able to maintain engagement with and focus on the text while reading and monitor their comprehension of what they are reading.
For Teachers
Examining students’ questions serves as a valuable formative assessment tool as the questions students ask indicate their understanding of the text and learning from previous modules.
Questioning Strategies Across Grades 2-5 Curricular Areas
Science - Foss
By generating questions, students become aware of whether they can answer the questions and if they understand what they are reading. Students learn to ask themselves questions that require them to combine information from different segments of text. For example, students can be taught to ask main idea questions that relate to important information in a text.
Social Studies - TCI
Turn the first subhead title into a question. Ask students to read to find the answer. Encourage students to use this strategy on their own as they read.
ELA - W&W
Wonder Chart (Variation: Notice and Wonder T-Chart) A Wonder Chart encourages students to think about a new, complex text by writing questions about their areas of curiosity and confusion, then investigating the answers to those questions. Students’ questions provide formative assessment data and set the stage for further discussion.
1. Display a chart with three columns: Questions, Answers in Progress, and Complete Answers.
2. After the first read of a text, students write text-based questions on large sticky notes, and then place the notes in the Questions column.
3. Select questions to investigate, and/or group similar questions together.
4. During later reads of the text, students identify the questions they can now answer with text evidence. They write responses on large sticky notes, and then attach the notes to the relevant question notes.
5. As appropriate, move each question-and answer pair to the Answers in Progress or Complete Answers column.
Conversations in the K-5 QCSD Literacy Community and What the Experts Have to Say
Do Learning Centers and Seatwork Improve Reading Achievement?
Timothy Shanahan writes...
I’d love to tell you that there are terrific research-supported workbooks, seatwork activities, computer programs, stations, or learning centers. There just aren’t. Given that practitioners need to be experimental, trying out various routines to evaluate their impact on learning and behavior. Click here to read more.What are the best ways to use leveled text?
Kelly's Share
Classroom Visits
As we finish up this first trimester, I look forward to spending even more time in your classrooms! The purpose for my visits are to experience the curriculum and to observe student outcomes in relation to the implementation stages. Remember, as a coach, I do not provide teachers feedback about instruction unless you ask me to. Here you can see the reflection tool I may use when visiting your classroom. If I do use this tool, I will leave the one and only copy with you before I leave the classroom. I look forward to continuing our partnership together. Thank you and see you soon! Kelly
A coaching session with Kelly could look like:
One 30 minute prebrief in which we will:
Discuss an area of strength or focus of your choosing.
Set a mini goal to work towards.
Decide the best job-embedded coaching method (co-plan, co-teach, real time coaching, and/or data collection) that will support you reaching your mini-goal.
At least one ELA block for job embedded coaching.
Co-teaching, data collection and/or real time coaching
One 30 minute debrief meeting in which we will:Celebrate successes
Reflect
Determine if goal was met and decide next steps
*If co-planning is chosen as a course of action during meeting one, another time will need to be set aside to co-plan either digitally or in person. *Please reach out via email to schedule our prebrief.
Reach out by email to schedule.
Quick Links to Documents
Authors
Erin Oleksa-Carter
Supervisor of Literacy, Fine Arts, and ELD
Kelly Cramer
K-5 Literacy Coach