Currently, big shifts are
necessary in teaching because of the new Common Core State Standards. One key strategy we are honing in on in our
ELA class is guided or close reading strategies with our students. Changes made to teaching are being amplified
by the new assessments that are coming. These new tests are very different from
the assessments most students have taken in the past.
I did some research on the
Internet to dig a little deeper into this shift and stumbled across a wonderful
webinar by Dr. Timothy Shanahan. In the
webinar he focuses on how “things used to be” versus how they are “going to be.”
Moving forward text challenge is going to increase. According to Dr. Shanahan, in order for children
to reach the CCSS career and college ready goals, the difficulty level must be
raised in text for students. The ultimate
goal is for students to be reading 2-3 years higher by graduation than where current
graduates are reading.
I believe one of the most interesting points on this webinar
is in regards to guided reading strategies.
Dr. Shanahan claims that teachers often try to “protect” students from
struggling to read text rather than ensuring they are struggling “successfully”. To do so, teachers should anticipate areas
that will be challenging for students and be prepared to guide students to deal
with difficulty. Why is the text
hard? What are the areas of difficulty? In dealing with this, he claims teachers
should not necessary teach vocabulary beforehand, but notice difficult sentence
structure or tone of the text. And so
when instructing, we should ask the students a question about the difficult
section in order to assess their understanding of the material. Then, break down the text together by looking for instructional
text.
This webinar was extremely helpful
in allowing me to better understand how my teaching strategies will need to
shift in order to better align myself with the CCSS changes ahead. Check out the webinar below for more
information!
Take Care,
Ms. Vince
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