I "like" Education Week on facebook and today one of their posts really caught my attention.

"In response to the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts, a group of about 70 teachers and literacy specialists got together to rewrite the basal readers, getting teachers to ask questions different from those found in teachers’ editions."

Below is a link to the article they were referring to....

Teachers Embedding Standards in Basal Reader Questions

I was wondering what would happen in terms of curricula that we currently use when we (Oregon) adopt the core standards. The reading program (Treasures) that we currently use is aligned with the Oregon state standards. When I looked over the common core state standards, they are definitely different. So, in a district where we are expected to teach the adopted curricula with fidelity, I wonder how we do that when the curricula we have adopted no longer match the standards that we are supposed to use....

It's all so confusing.

This article somewhat answered that question. The companies who write the curricula are making attempts to update their products, but there are also teachers who are making strides to figure out ways to make the current curricula more aligned with the new standards. One area in particular where they are focusing is on the comprehension questions that go along with the basal stories. The common core state standards focus on higher order thinking and critical thinking, so the lame questions that often accompany the basal readers need to go! That makes total sense.

But, one part stood out to me and made me cringe (just a bit!) was the idea that "text to self" connections should be phased out (or at least not part of comprehension questions until a student has read a story multiple times). In all my reading about being culturally responsive, being able to help kids relate to the material and content is a very important piece of the puzzle. The perspective in this article, however, is that kids need to be able to understand the content of the text and what the text is relaying rather than focusing on how they feel about it. The article states that when kids are in the "real world" and working, when they read text, they most likely will not be asked to reflect on how they feel about it, but will need to understand the information. I get the idea, yet I think that the article represents "text to self" connections as more about "feelings" than they truly are.

Text to self connections contribute to comprehension of the content because the reader is making connections between personal experiences/prior knowledge and new information. Sure, text to self connections should not be the main focus of comprehension questions, but I definitely think they are an important aspect of comprehension, especially for students whose personal experiences may not align directly with the content being read. I love the push for more critical and higher order thinking, but I don't think it should be at the expense of allowing kids opportunities to make sense of information by talking about how the information pertains to them/their lives. Also, text to self is one in a series of three with "text to text" and "text to world" being the other two. If the new standards want to emphasize students gaining a better understanding and ability to discuss what the text is relaying, then I don't think either of those other types of connections is any better than text to self. They both focus on relating the text being read to something other than the text being read, which takes the focus off the specific message/content in the text being read....

What do you think? Should text to self be a thing of the past?

culturally responsive instruction

I found out yesterday that I was accepted to teach a course on culturally responsive instruction for my district's "university." Teachers have an opportunity to take classes taught by other district teachers and earn credit through Portland State University. I applied last year and was approved, but the interview team also approved several other people who also wanted to teach about the same topic. None of us ended up getting enough people registered in our classes, so none of them actually ended up happening.

This year I am the only one teaching a course on that topic, so hopefully I will be able to muster up 10 people to take the course so it will run! It will meet one Saturday during the summer and then two Monday evenings in October for 2-3 hours each.

My proposed dissertation is on the topic of how teachers get to know their culturally and linguistically diverse students and how teachers who use scripted curricula go about creating culturally responsive lessons, so I have been very interested in culturally responsive instruction and reading all about it for the last three years. But, I am still really nervous to teach a class on it! At some point soon, I am very interested in beginning to teach adults (in addition to staying in the classroom with kids), so this is a perfect segue into that. But, despite all of the work I have done, I am far from an expert and always second guess myself when it comes to this new endeavor!

My goal for the class is to somewhat replicate the experience that I had participating on my school's CARE team this year. CARE stands for collaborative action research for equity. We had to choose a few focal students (students of color) and then take steps to get to know more about them and their families which is referred to as "below the line" information. Then we had to create culturally responsive lessons that were geared towards engaging those students, building relationships with those students and having them build relationships with their peers etc. But, I'd also like the class to be meaningful for teachers who have already done the CARE training and want to do more with culturally responsive instruction. The class is only worth 1 credit, but since it's my first toe dip into teaching adults, I really want to make it rock.

So... for inspiration, I just bought Lisa Delpit's new book. She wrote Other People's Children and a few others. Her most recent book was just published in March, 2012. I am excited to start reading it because I feel like it might be a good text to use for my course or maybe just to pull from.

In about 30 minutes I have a skype appointment with my adviser and I am anxious to see what he has to say about my dissertation proposal. I was really hoping to defend at the end of this month, but at this point, that is not realistic. I did my part and wrote my proposal draft and turned it in two weeks ago, but there are other issues that are holding up progress. I still need to find one additional person to serve on my committee and despite asking several people, I have not been able to get someone yet. That is frustrating because I need to find one person and then also an alternative and then the university can take up to 4 weeks to approve the committee. I am worried that the time line I was really hoping for (which would have me collecting data over the summer) is not going to happen. That means I will probably be collecting data starting in the fall and finishing my dissertation in 2013 instead of by the end of 2012. I guess I shouldn't be in such a rush, but I was really hoping to use the time off from work this summer to get my interviews done. It's going to be a lot harder during the school year. My ultimate goal is to have the entire dissertation done by the time Grace turns 1.

Speaking of Grace....she is doing great. Today is our first day home without Daddy Sneaker. He took 10 days off from work, but returned today. Fortunately my very best friend Cristina is flying in tonight so I get a few days with her. It's just so nice to have extra hands to help with the baby so I don't have to do everything one-handed. So far though, we are doing pretty good on our own today and I am hoping to get in a good nap this afternoon once my skype call is over and Grace gets fed again.

babycakes

introducing...

Baby Sneaker!

also known as Grace

born April 7th @ 3:59 am

7 pounds 1 ounce

21 1/2 inches long

She's kind of cute, huh?

tell me more

Wow, so much love on that last post about common core state standards! I loved all the comments...kind of forgot what it's like to get so many responses to a post! I guess Sneaker Teacher has been lacking in the "teacher" department and overflowing a bit more on the "soon to be mama" department recently. For this reason, I have revived my family blog as my place to talk about all things baby so this blog can continue to be a place for teacher talk! But don't worry, I will of course share the news when Baby Sneaker arrives, but as of now we are still waiting....

So, this is what I am wondering today...

Imagine you live in a world where every single one of your students had an iPad to use during the school day.

What would you do with them? How would you use them?

Do you know of any good apps for Kindergarten kiddos?

Common Core State Standards

I took a huge stack of Instructor magazines and Reading Teacher journals from my desk and dove in this afternoon. I subscribe to several educational magazines/journals, yet when they come in the mail, I just put them aside and don't read them because I feel like I never have the time.

Now, I have all the time in the world--until Baby Sneaker blesses me with her presence that is!

One article I came across in Instructor magazine was about Common Core State Standards. I've definitely heard about them, but until today I had never really tried to learn more about them. The article lists 4 links to check out, so I did.

www.commoncore.org

www.corestandards.org

illustrativemathematics.org

nctm.org

I actually only checked out the first two and the second one is where I found pdf documents that actually list the new standards. It was really interesting to check them out.

Some of the goals behind the common standards are to increase the requirements for higher level thinking among students (which hopefully then puts less emphasis on standardized fill in the bubble tests) and to build more consistency in standards across states. I would be interested to see how current state standards compare across states because in some regards I feel like our current standards for Kindergarten here in Oregon are higher than the ones I just viewed. Yet, there are some differences that give me hope for some good changes in the future. It will be really interesting to see how these common core standards play out in terms of instruction, report cards etc. 

One of the main things I noticed was that many of the Kindergarten standards begin with the words "with prompting and support..." I kind of like that it's acknowledged that kids in Kindergarten still require prompting and support. We seem to operate Kindergarten just like First Grade these days, so I wonder how the new standards will affect that. In some grade levels I think that maybe standards do need to be more vigorous, yet in Kindergarten I think we are already operating at maximum capacity in terms of what we are asking kids to do (especially in half day classes!).

 I also like that the math standards place emphasis on two mathematical areas and encourage extended practice in just those areas. Our math program bounces around so much, that I think it would be refreshing to take a step back and really reorient ourselves to be working on what matters.

On the one hand I think that common core state standards are just another way to streamline education and push for everybody to be doing the same rather than crafting instruction that fits our kids. Yet, at the same time, I think consistency among states is a good thing and I think the process of creating common standards will create more clarity in what is expected of students at each grade level.  

What do you think? Is your state adopting the common core state standards?