I have just finished reading the book which took me about two weeks. I could have finished more quickly, but I wanted to take my time on each chapter to reflect. Honestly, it is a little overwhelming, too, because as I read, I was constantly thinking about my own school and how much work will truly be in store for us if we are to fully commit to the changes required in order to build Common Core fluent students. So, before I get into the specifics of each chapter and their major points, I want to dedicate this post to my overall reflections and personal points of interests- the things that I feel were most important for my situation as a teacher in the San Bernardino City Unified School District and as a GATE teacher, which is really a unique situation in and of itself. However, I hope my opinions can reach others still.
We GATE teachers are often referring the "Big Idea." For me, I walked away from the book feeling these were some of the Big Ideas:
1) Students will need 90 or more instructional minutes per day reading at their level with a focus on moving children up levels of text complexity. Not answering questions, not discussing, but just plain reading. The questions, discussions, collaborations, and creations are not to be forgotten though. In fact, they are quite vital, but teachers need to be careful to not think that students spending 90 minutes reading a text and answering text-dependent questions actually accounts for 90 minutes of READING time. You need to subtract the time they spent answering questions.
2) Students will need 60 minutes of instructional time in a writing workshop. Not answering questions, not necessarily daily writing prompts, but structured writing workshop time where teachers can help students develop their writing skills. So, if a daily writing prompt is in place, it better be structured, meaning teachers are teaching and facilitating a purpose and focus for that particular daily writing.
3) The narrative writing Common Core standards are far more complex and difficult than the '97 standards, but we need to prioritize argument and informational writing, while building on our skills of teaching narrative writing that many of us may already feel strong at. This is where my personal situation diverged a bit. Being in a district that uses Step Up to Writing, I personally feel as though I am stronger at teaching informative or explanatory writing already and will need to prioritize the narrative aspect because of how much more complex and difficult it is from the '97 standards.
4) Higher-order comprehension instruction is a biggie. This is where I felt a little like I may be on track already as, teaching a GATE class, I am used to using the Prompts of Depth and Complexity (Kaplan) throughout my daily instruction, as well as structures for helping students to think more critically and creatively (e.g, SCAMPER). Webb's Depth of Knowledge seems to be trending over Bloom's as well.
5) We need to increase cross-curricular, analytical nonfiction reading. Another idea that I know most teachers in our district, GATE or not, have bought into and committed to already!
6) Teacher-created, informative, instructive, easy-to-deliver, performance, low-stakes (not the high-stakes, multiple choice, pass or die kind of) assessments will be crucial to gauge student progress and teacher success.
So, those are the big ideas I came away with. In my next post, I will dive into the reading standards and flesh out my Big Idea #1- All About Reading!
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