Common Core ELA

Instructional Shifts and

Higher Order Thinking

Shifts in ELA/ Literacy

Shift 1	Balancing Informational &  Literary Text	Students read a true balance of informational and literary texts.
Shift 2	Knowledge in the Disciplines	Students build knowledge about the world (domains/ content areas) through TEXT rather than the teacher or activities
Shift 3	Staircase of Complexity	Students read the central, grade appropriate text around which instruction is centered.  Teachers are patient, create more time and space and support in the curriculum for close reading.
Shift 4	Text-based Answers	Students engage in rich and rigorous evidence based conversations about text.
Shift 5	Writing from Sources	Writing emphasize use of evidence from sources to inform or make an argument

So What Does PARCC Look Like? It includes 2 parts in English Language Arts and 2 parts in math.

	English Langue Arts	Mathematics
PBA- Performance-Based Assessment (hand-scored)	Writing effectively Analyzing print and video texts	Solving multi-step problems Using abstract reasoning
	Reading comprehension	Understanding major grade-level appropriate math concepts

Students should be able  

 •      Identify the Main Idea and Theme

•      Identify the Setting

•      Analyze Characters

•      Identify Tone

•      Identify Main Idea and Theme

 •      Identify Point of View- Chiefly in literary texts, the narrative point of view as     in  first (I, me, we) or third person (he, she, they) narration; the position or perspective conveyed or represented by an author, narrator, speaker, or character.

•      Recognize Figurative Language

•      Identify Key Details

Evidence-Based Selected Response (EBSR)—

First question requires students to select one of at least four responses based on information from the test. (Part A usually tests content knowledge.)

The next question (Part B) requires students to choose evidence (EVIDENCE – Facts, figures, details, quotations, or other sources of data and information that provide support for claims or an analysis and that can be evaluated by others) from the text to support the selected answer to the first question.  

Part B usually tests the student’s ability to provide the correct evidence to support the answer to Part A. This type of item will be on both the Performance Based Assessment and the End of Year Assessment.

Evidence-based terms (examples)

For instance…

For example…

The author stated…

On page ____, it said…

From the reading, I know that…

It said on page…

According to the text…

Based on what I read…

Two different sources told me that…

Prose Constructed Response

•      A task that requires students to write in response to a text.

•      It may include a literary analysis, narrative, and research.

•      Allow students to demonstrate that they can communicate that understanding well both in terms of written expression and knowledge of language and conventions.

Three Kinds of Prose Constructed Responses

Literature Task	This task will ask students to carefully consider literature worthy of close study and compose an analytic essay
Narrative Task	In this task, students may be asked to write a story (or the next part of a story), detail a scientific process, write a historical account of important figures, or to describe an account of events, scenes or objects, for example.
Research Simulation Task	In this task, students will analyze an informational topic presented through articles or multimedia, the first text being an anchor text that introduces the topic. Students will engage with the texts by answering a series of questions and synthesizing information from multiple sources in order to write an analytic essay.

Analyzing Vocabulary

•      Highlight vocabulary in the PARCC practice test questions that you’d consider academic vocabulary.

•      Generate a list of vocabulary terms by grade level (forthcoming).

GENERAL ACADEMIC WORDS AND PHRASES/VOCABULARY – Vocabulary common to written texts but not commonly a part of speech. Common Core places general vocabulary into three tiers, defined as follows:

•      Tier One words are the words of everyday speech usually learned in the early grades, albeit not at the same rate by all children. While Tier One words are important, they are not the focus of Common Core/PARCC.

•      Tier Two words (general academic words) are far more likely to appear in written texts than in speech. They appear in all sorts of texts: informational texts (words such as relative, vary, formulate, specificity, and accumulate), technical texts (calibrate, itemize, periphery), and literary texts (misfortune, dignified, faltered, unabashedly).

•      Tier Three words (domain-specific words) are specific to a domain or field of study (lava, carburetor, legislature, circumference) and key to understanding a new concept within a text. Because of their specificity and close ties to content knowledge, Tier Three words are far more common in informational texts than in literature. Recognized as new and “hard” words for most readers (particularly student readers), they are often explicitly defined by the author of a text, repeatedly used, and otherwise heavily scaffolded (e.g., made a part of a glossary).

Strategies for Writing

Three Text Types- It is an instructional recommendation that elementary students write narrative 35% of the time and gradually decrease to 20% in high school.  Students should be prepared to write at any of the following levels.

Argument/Opinion

Informative/Explanatory

 Narrative

What is FAP?

FAP stands for FORM, AUDIENCE, and PURPOSE. 

—  FAP can be used to organize the information that you will see in the prompts. 

—  FAP is found in the writing task of the prompts.

F is for FORM (The two FORMS are letter and article.)

A is for AUDIENCE (The student will be able to find the AUDIENCE in the writing task of the prompts, such as

parents

friend

principal

teacher

site-based council

author

student(s)

neighbor(s)

board of education, and others

P is for PURPOSE (The PURPOSE can be found in the writing task of the prompts.)

—  

Use the R.A.P.P. Method

R (Restate the question)

A   (Answer the question)

P (Prove it with evidence)

P  (Proofread and edit)

Teachers, use authentic writing as models (Using documents, newspapers, children’s books, magazines, how-to books, etc.

Teachers, use visuals as springboards to writing (Paintings, drawings, and photos can be excellent springboards to writing.)