ELA Common Core State Standards: Q&A

Answer (from the IRA Common Core Standards Committee):

Reading comprehension certainly is given a lot of weight in the standards. Comprehension standards are the first ones reported and there are more comprehension standards than there are any others. Reading comprehension echoes across the writing, speaking and listening, and language standards, too. Phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, oral language, writing, vocabulary, and language conventions are all given extensive and appropriate attention, as well. It would be a mistake to decide that some outcomes are the important ones; they all are.

Common core comes from the "fewer, bigger, better" school of standards writing. Past standards have been extensive in number and unequal in grain size (with a mix of small items that could be learned quickly and big ones that could be worked on for years). That made it necessary for schools to try to prioritize the standards that could provide the biggest learning payoff; that approach won't work well with the common core standards.

That said, there do seem to be a few gaps in regard to comprehension. For example, the writers of the standards say that they decided not to discuss a full range of metacognitive strategies (things like activating prior knowledge, visualizing, and determining importance), that teachers would need to teach, but acknowledge that students will need to learn them. We are encouraged to use our professional judgment when teaching students to meet the standards. It's important to make sure our students get the literacy instruction they need.

Question

Our state education people told us that we aren't doing No Child Left Behind anymore, we are doing the Common Core Standards. Thus, they say, we no longer have to focus on phonological awareness, phonics, or fluency as we did for the past decade.

Answer:

The Common Core actually requires the teaching of all of those skills that you mention. In the standards document, they are labeled as "Reading

Standards: Foundational Skills (K-5)." Perhaps the person you spoke with was confused by how different these new standards look. In the Common Core, there are several pages devoted to describing the reading or reading comprehension standards and the foundation standards are tucked in after them. These particular standards might not be as prominent in the documents, but they still need to be taught well and successfully.  

Question:

I'm confused. Common Core says to teach students at Lexile levels matched to their grade, but I always was told it was best to teach students at their "instructional level" no matter what grade they were in. What should I do?

Answer:

This is one of the most challenging aspects of Common Core in grades 2-12.

Teachers are being asked to teach students to read with texts that previously would have been labeled frustration level. There are several reasons for this change, but one of the most important is that too many students don't reach sufficiently high reading levels by the time they leave high school. Raising book levels along the way will increase their opportunity to master such material in time.

Research and experience suggest that there is no magic level or right-on student/book match that enables learning. Students can make real progress even with relatively hard books. But , while it is possible to teach reading with challenging materials --as Common Core requires -- teachers must "up their game" to make this work. The harder a text is for a group of students, the more scaffolding, support, and encouragement they need. There will definitely have to be more rereading, and teachers will have to become more cognizant of why students struggle with a text, as well as more adept at questioning students about those sticking points and providing appropriate feedback and explanation that would allow students to make sense of what they are reading. 

Although Common Core sets those Lexile levels to show what students have to be able to handle by the end of a school year, that does not mean that all of the teaching has to take place at those levels. Each year, students should be engaged in a range of reading experiences, with the appropriate guidance of a skilled and thoughtful teacher. Students should be expected to have a varied diet of both easier and harder books, with more or less teacher support depending on how hard the text is for the students.