This document discusses key instructional shifts prompted by the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, including an increased focus on complex texts, evidence-based reading and writing, and building knowledge through informational texts. It provides guidance and examples for teachers on implementing these shifts, such as conducting text complexity analyses, using text-dependent questions, supplementing existing curricula, and building knowledge through coherent text sets on topics. The document aims to clarify misconceptions and address challenges in transitioning to the Common Core standards.

1. The Common Core State
Standards for ELA/Literacy
Sandra Alberti

2. PAGE 2
Opportunities that require clarification
• Standards aligned vs. Standards based
• Standards vs. Standardization
• Standards vs. Curriculum
• Not a ceiling, but a message about priority

3. PAGE 3
Key Shifts in Instruction Prompted
by the Common Core State Standards
1. Complexity: Regular practice with complex text (and
its academic language)
2. Evidence: Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in
evidence from text
3. Knowledge: Building knowledge through content-rich
informational texts

4. PAGE 4
Key Shifts Build Toward College and Career
Readiness for All Students
Engage with
Complex Text
Extract and
Employ
Evidence
Build
Knowledge

5. PAGE 5
Instructional Implications for Key Shift One:
Regular practice with complex text (and its
academic language)

6. PAGE 6
Key Shift 1: Complex Text
Why relevant and important?
• What students can read, in terms of complexity, is greatest
predictor of success in college (ACT study)
• Gap between complexity of college and high school texts is
huge (4 years!)
• ACT tells us too many students are reading at too low a level
(<50% of graduates can read sufficiently complex texts)
Deficiencies are not equal opportunity. . .

7. PAGE 7
Where is “Complex Text” in the standards?
• Reading Standard 10 includes a staircase of increasing text
complexity, grade by grade.
• Anchor Standard 10 reads, “Read and comprehend complex
literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.”

8. PAGE 8
Some Features of Complex Text
• Complex sentences (sentence length); longer paragraphs
• Uncommon vocabulary (word length, word familiarity)
• Lack of repetition, overlap or similarity in words and sentences
• Subtle and/or frequent transitions; lack of words, sentences or
paragraphs that review or pull things together for reader
• Multiple and/or subtle themes and purposes
• Dense information
• Unfamiliar settings, topics or events
• Informational (rather than narrative) text structures and/or mixes
structures

9. PAGE 9
Informing Instruction Through Qualitative Analysis
• If my text has complicated syntax and sentence structures. .
.
• If my text has many and varying vocabulary demands…
• If my text has multiple and subtle levels of meaning or
purpose. . .
• If my text has specialized knowledge demands or includes a
great deal of information. . .
• If my text has mixed, changing, or unconventional structures.
. .
• If my text has essential graphics/ visual supports…
Then I should intentionally focus instructional time on this element!

10. PAGE 10
Navigating Text Complexity
http://www.ccsso.org/Navigating_Text_Complexity.html

11. PAGE 11
Text Complexity Roadmaps

12. PAGE 12
Is there still a role for pre-reading?
Yes. And teachers around the country are…
• Offering highly focused pre-reading activities that do not preempt or
provide knowledge that can be gained from a careful read of the text
• Limiting pre-reading to no more than 10% of time set aside for
focusing on the text
• Thinking about when best to offer supports to students: What must I
do before? What can wait?
• Giving thought to what’s been planned as part of pre-reading and
then reflecting again so as not to fall into old patterns
• Using student reading as pre-reading, i.e., using simplified texts to
build student competence and background knowledge so students
can access the more complex text

13. PAGE 13
Can we depend on the passages in our
pre-Common Core textbooks?
Yes, mostly. But teachers around the country are…
• Asking publishers to supply complexity metrics of the
passages in textbooks or running the complexity metrics
themselves (publically available: Lexile, Reading Maturity,
ATOS)
• Moving textbooks originally designed for their grade down to a
lower grade
• Spending time on the qualitative complexity of texts

14. PAGE 14
Is close reading all students need?
No! Teachers around the country…
• Know that in addition to closely reading texts, students need
the opportunity to read a volume of texts to build their
vocabularies and general knowledge
• Are setting aside time for accountable independent reading of
20 minutes per day which translates into students gaining the
equivalent of about 60 whole school days of reading by grade
6!
• Are creating structures that track independent reading through
student journals, reading logs, book clubs, book talks,
individual conferences, and the like

15. PAGE 15
Is there still a role for leveled text?
Yes. Teachers around the country…
• Know that in addition to complex text, students need lots of practice
to read texts closer to their own independent reading level
• Know that students reading at their own level is where stamina and
persistence develop, and where vocabularies and knowledge bases
can be rapidly expanded!
• Are re-conceptualizing the guided reading block so:
• It includes accountable independent reading at a student’s level, but not
as rigidly leveled as traditional guided reading
• It privileges student choice because when students are invested in a
topic, they have stamina to read at higher levels
• Students who most need it get focused time with their teacher in small
groups

16. PAGE 16
Can we closely read entire novels?
Of course! Teachers around the country are…
• Concentrating on challenging sections of novels in class to study
organization, sentence structures, word choice, symbolism,
character development, plot advancement, etc.
• What’s worth knowing here?
• In what ways does this excerpt rely upon, relate to, or affect other
portions of the text?
• In what ways does this excerpt relate to the book’s theme? Propel the
action?
• What has the author hinted at?
• Assigning other parts of the novel for independent reading and
asking students to annotate the text in preparation for classroom
discussions

17. PAGE 17
Should we organize around standards or the text?
The text! Teachers around the country are…
• Discarding traditional pacing guides that detail when a particular
content standard should be taught and/or assessed
• Abandoning a checklist approach and asking sequences of
questions that touch on several standards at once
• Bundling standards across domains in each lesson, too (integrating
reading, writing, speaking and language)
• Slowing down, chunking texts, reading, re-reading, spending days
on a single text rather than rushing through or reading a text only
once

18. PAGE 18
Instructional Implications for
Key Shift Two:
Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in
evidence

19. PAGE 19
Key Shift 2: Evidence!
Why relevant and important?
• Most college and workplace writing requires evidence
• Ability to cite evidence differentiates strong from weak
student performance on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress in reading
• Being able to locate and deploy evidence are hallmarks
of strong readers and writers

20. PAGE 20
Where is “Evidence” in the standards?
The standards prioritize students’ command of evidence
across the domains of reading, writing, speaking &
listening:
• Rigorously cite evidence from texts to support
claims/inferences (Reading Standard 1)
• Draw evidence from texts to support analysis, reflection and
research (Writing Standard 9)
• Engage in purposeful evidence-based talk (Speaking and
Listening Standard 1)

21. PAGE 21
Nature of Text-Dependent Questions
• Text-dependent questions provide students a wholly text-
dependent experience when reading complex informational
text.
• Personal bias is minimized in favor of the text evidence—no
reliance on personal experience or knowledge to construct
appropriate, evidence-based answers.
• Text-dependent questions privilege the text and allow
students to deal with information that is directly before them.

22. PAGE 22
Drawing Evidence from Texts
Text-DependentNot Text-Dependent
In “Casey at the Bat,” Casey strikes out.
Describe a time when you failed at
something.
In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr.
King discusses nonviolent protest.
Discuss, in writing, a time when you
wanted to fight against something that
you felt was unfair.
From “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,”
have students identify the different
methods of removing warts that Tom
and Huck talk about. Ask students to
devise their own charm to remove warts.
Are there cultural ideas or artifacts from
the current time that could be used in
the charm?
What makes Casey’s experiences at bat
humorous?
What can you infer from King’s letter
about the letter that he received?
Why does Tom hesitate to allow Ben to
paint the fence? How does Twain
construct his sentences to reflect that
hesitation? What effect do Tom’s
hesitations have on Ben?

23. PAGE 23
Can we depend on questions from our textbooks
at elementary school?
Well, not really. Teachers around the country are…
• Supplementing and supplanting current resources with text
dependent questions through the Basal Alignment Project—a library
of almost 250 teacher-developed lessons for
grades 3-5:

24. PAGE 24
Can we depend on questions from our textbooks
at middle school?
Well, not really. Teachers around the country are…
• Supplementing and supplanting current resources with text
dependent questions through the Anthology Alignment Project—
almost 100 teacher-developed lessons for grades 6-8

25. PAGE 25
Are text-to-self questions permitted?
Yes. But teachers around the country are…
• Using text-to-self connections more sparingly, realizing that
too often personal response had replaced an analysis of the
text
• Beginning by focusing on the text itself (rather than
connections): what the words say, structure of the text,
specific word choice and implications of authorial choices
• Only then (in later readings after the text has been deeply and
completely analyzed) asking students how the text connects
to their life and views and how the text connects to other texts

26. PAGE 26
Should students write to every text?
Yes! Teachers around the country are…
• Including a range of short and on demand pieces in addition
to longer process pieces in upper elementary and beyond
• Providing students writing prompts that
• Are contextualized, in other words, they are based on a text
• Use the language of the standard where appropriate
• Are specific regarding the use of evidence in student responses
• Cross domains so a single prompt may assess writing, language,
and reading standards

27. PAGE 27
Instructional Implications for
Key Shift Three:
Building knowledge through content rich nonfiction

28. PAGE 28
Key Shift 3: Building Knowledge
Why relevant and important?
• Non-fiction makes up the vast majority of required reading in
college/workplace
• Informational text is harder for students to comprehend than
narrative text
• Boys lag girls in reading… research shows males prefer
reading informational texts over narrative fiction
• Bundling texts around a topic increases academic vocabulary
growth by as much as 4x (Adams and Landauer)

29. PAGE 29
Where is “Building Knowledge” in the standards?
• Common Core pertains to literacy across the disciplines of
science, social studies, and technical subjects
• Building knowledge appears most directly in the writing
standards 7-9 that pertain to research
• Several reading standards ask students to compare, contrast,
synthesize information across several texts on the same topic
• Page 33 of the standards (Human Body) shows what it means
to provide students with a coherent selection of texts

30. PAGE 30
Is literature “out” in ELA classes?
Absolutely not! And ELA teachers across the country are…
• Bringing additional content-rich literary nonfiction—texts worth
reading and re-reading—into their curriculum
• Building text sets that include fiction and literary nonfiction
texts that “talk to each other” when building units of study
• Providing students with coherent selections of strategically-
sequenced texts so they can build knowledge about a topic

31. PAGE 31
By informational, do we mean reading
bus schedules and gov’t regulations in ELA?
No. But ELA teachers around the country are…
Adding more literary nonfiction texts to their lessons. Here are
some examples:
• Narrative of the Life of Frederic Douglass an American Slave
• Travels with Charley: In Search of America
• Speeches by Patrick Henry, George Washington, Abraham
Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Learned Hand, Margaret Chase
Smith, Elie Wiesel, Ronald Reagan and the like
• The Declaration of Independence and The Bill of Rights
• Paine’s Common Sense, Thoreau’s Walden, and Emerson’s
“Society and Solitude”

32. PAGE 32
Can we depend on our ELA textbooks for the right
balance of passages?
No. Teachers around the country are…
• Supplementing mainly narrative textbook passages with a
collection of related texts organized around a topic or line of
inquiry.
A given text set…
• Is determined by an anchor text—a rich, complex grade-level anchor
text—that is the focus of a close reading
• Includes texts that are connected meaningfully to each other to so
that in reading the set, students build a coherent body of knowledge
around the topic
• Varies in terms of number of texts depending on purpose and
resource availability around a given topic

33. PAGE 33
What are teachers doing to support struggling
readers access complex texts?
Bust the myth that growth of reading skills must be sequential—
allow students to practice with complex texts while they get extra
supports and do so by:
• Chunking the text (teach a little at a time)
• Reading text aloud while students follow along
• Slowing down, reading and re-reading
• Offering sequences of engaging questions (not explanations)
• Providing coherent sequences of texts (through gradated texts and
guided reading)
• Placing a premium on stamina and persistence
• Providing support while reading rather than just before; offer extra
support to students who need it

34. PAGE 34
Top Ten Actions to Take:
1. Take Complexity Inventory of what your students are
reading and make adjustments
2. Conduct qualitative analyses of texts
3. Ask all students to stretch to read more complex
texts—especially short texts—beyond their reading
level (with supports)
4. Be thoughtful about (and focus) pre-reading
5. Re-conceptualize guided reading—place a premium on
accountable independent reading
‘Both and’ Literacy Instruction K-5: A Proposed Paradigm
Shift for the Common Core State Standards ELA Classroom

35. PAGE 35
Top Ten Actions to Take, cont’d.
6. Establish structures that promote a volume of reading
7. Adjust balances of texts so students have more
experience with a range of informational texts
8. Build gradated text sets
9. Evidence! Evidence! Evidence! Substitute text-
dependent questions for non text-dependent questions
in existing materials
10. Ask students to write about everything they read

36. PAGE 36
www.achievethecore.org

37. PAGE 37
Pathways for Learning, and doing!
37

38. PAGE 38
Instructional Practice Guides
• Developmental tools for teachers and those who support
teachers.
• Use the Instructional Practice Guides for:
– Teacher self-reflection
– Peer-to-peer observation and feedback
– Instructional coaching

39. PAGE 39

40. PAGE 40
Core Actions
1. Focus each lesson on a high quality text (or multiple
texts)
2. Employ questions and tasks that are text dependent
and text specific
3. Provide all students with opportunities to engage in the
work of the lesson

41. PAGE 41
Developmental Tools

42. PAGE 42
Instructional and Assessment Materials

43. PAGE 43
Types of Tools in the Toolkit
Type of Tool Used for Evaluating
Instructional Materials
Evaluation Tool (IMET)
Comprehensive mathematics and English language
arts or reading curricula in print and digital format.
EQuIP Rubric for
Lessons and Units
Lesson plans and units of instruction in
mathematics and English language arts/literacy.
NEW: Equip Student Work Protocols
Assessment
Evaluation Tool (AET)
Assessments or sets of assessments and item banks
for mathematics and English language arts/literacy,
including interim/benchmark assessments, and
classroom assessments designed to address a grade
or course.
Assessment Passage
and Item Quality
Criteria Checklist
Assessment passages and assessment items or
tasks.

44. PAGE 44
Resources
• http://www.ccsso.org/Navigating_Text_Complexity.html
• EngageNY: K-8 lessons worth using (Core Knowledge and
Expeditionary Learning)
• BAP, AAP and RAP:
– Edmodo: BAP group code: f4q6nm; AAP group code:
jsv4r7; RAP group code: pkx52i
• www.achievethecore.org
• “Both And” Literacy Instruction (The Libens)
• InCommon (Vermont Writing Collaborative)
• Mini-assessments
• Assessment Evaluation Tool
• Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool

45. Thank You!