Seven Reasons to Love the Common Standards

Today the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers released the new draft of the common core standards for public comment. Yipee! I'm so happy to see these.

Here are 7 reasons you should be happy, too.

1. They are common!
Unlike any reading/writing/language standards that we have had in the past, these are truly going to be widely adhered to. In the past, we never could have common tests or common curricula because everyone had different standards. Now there will be the United States and Texas (and these are such good standards, at some point I think Texas might even decide to sign on in spite of their rugged independence.

2. They include both reading and writing.
For all kinds of reasons, schools have traditionally emphasized reading and ignored writing, even though writing instruction and activity can be powerful enhancements to reading (and they are valuable on their own, too). Because the National Reading Panel did not look at writing, reading has elbowed it aside.

3. They are consistent with the research findings.
For those who thought that when the Bush administration was kaput there would be no need to teach decoding skills to young children, that should not be the case. These standards are pretty clear on the enabling skills or foundational skills are important because they help students to meet the standards.

4. They are rigorous.
These standards are really standards--pennants held high! These are not minimal competency standards or standards that describe the performance of kids at the 20th percentile. These really do take students to high levels of literacy. If these are really taught to, we could see more kids hitting the advance level on NAEP-like assessments. Thank goodness.

5. They do not neglect reading in the content areas.
Reading in history and science become increasingly specialized as students move up through the grades, but our standards have rarely reflected this. These standards require some special responses to reading materials that are drawn from well beyond the outer borders of the English class.

6. They are up-to-date.
These standards address technological literacy demands. The new literacies are really included -- something that is not true of most current state standards. Welcome to the 21st century.

7. They emphasize the importance of text difficulty.
Usually standards specify tasks students should be able to but they neglect that those tasks are going to vary a great deal depending on the difficulty of the text. If you ask students to execute that task with an easy text, everyone meets the standard; with a hard text, and few do. These standards don't give that kind of wiggle room, which means parents will get a clearer idea of how their kids are doing relative to everyone else.

There are plenty of other things to like about these standards, but those are my top seven. But take a look yourself and let them know what you think.


http://www.corestandards.org>/"

Connecting Preschool and Primary in Massachusetts and Teaching Suburban ELLs for Manhattanville College

This has been a busy week for me. I met with many teachers at a conference hosted by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The focus was on how to connect instruction across the preschool and primary grades. I tried to connect the work of the National Early Literacy Panel and the National Reading Panel, and had a good time doing it. Massachusetts does such a great job in education, and this is just another example of their leadership. It was sure fun to be included.

Then later in the week I gave a talk about the results of the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth at Manhattanville College in Rye, NY. This conference was getting at something pretty important: the big cities are shedding a lot of their minority and poverty populations. If those kids are pushed out of the city, where do they go? To the suburbs, of course, and for many of those teachers it is a whole new thing. Again, I was honored to take part.

If anyone has any use for the powerpoints from these presentations you can find them online here. Feel free to download.

http://sites.google.com/site/shanahanstuff/this-week-march-2010

Sight Words for Kindergarten? Yes, But Not Too Many

Here is a letter I received this week:
Dr. Shanahan,
I’m writing you out of sheer frustration in doing my own research on the topic of Kindergarten Sight words – perhaps it’s because the answer I’m looking for just isn’t there??

I’m on the hunt for some solid research and have not been successful in finding it (I’m usually pretty good in doing so!) My K teachers are in disagreement about the teaching of sight vocabulary – and it’s a driving force for some angst right now in their team. I just printed the executive summary of the report of the natl early literacy panel…yet as I skim through I see nothing regarding sight word acquisition.

At this point, we have some that believe it’s NOT developmentally appropriate to teach sight words…..others are very skills=based and driven to do so, especially with the 1st grade goal of mastery of 100 high frequency words by Oct 1 of first grade. There are currently 60 high frequency words being measured/hopefully mastered by the end of K in our data books for that level.

Could you provide some insight about this? Specific research for me to back it - - How many? Which ones?

Instructional Coach

Dear Coach:

Thanks for your letter. Research and experience tell me that sight word instruction is helpful to young children who are learning to read. However, the research is not terribly specific as to how many words should be taught or when so anything I say on that will have to come entirely from experience and the wisdom of others.

I have no qualms in saying that it IS developmentally appropriate to teach sight words to kindergarteners (or even preschoolers). If it weren't developmentally appropriate, then young children simply would not learn the words (but they do). I’ve watched hundreds of Kindergarten teachers teaching words and have reviewed lots of research on the teaching of print to young children, and see no evidence that this cannot be done profitably and well.

Based on its seminal research review (Prevention of Reading Difficulties) the National Research Council issued an implementation guide for schools, a marvelous little book, Starting Our Right: A Guide to Promoting Children’s Reading Success that I used when I was director of reading in Chicago. It suggests that by the end of kindergarten, children should recognize some words by sight including a few very common ones (the, I, my, you, is, are). Unfortunately, it isn't specific as to how many, but this authoritative guide makes it absolutely clear that sight word teaching is appropriate in kindergarten.

However, 60 words sounds high to me (as does the idea that everyone will know the most frequent 100 words by Oct 1 of grade 1). That sounds ambitious (which is good), but I suspect that there will be a lot of failure with it. I’ve always told my teachers that by the end of grade 1 the students should know all of the 100 most frequent words — and a 300-500 other easy-to-decode words as well. Typically, the first 100 high frequency aren’t mastered by most kids until Thanksgiving or so (and that is with considerable effort).

I would suggest a much more modest goal for the end of kindergarten (perhaps 20 words or so, with at least 10 of those being high frequency words). I think your teachers are frustrated not because they are teaching the wrong stuff, but because the standard is set too high to be practical.

They also may be struggling with this teaching if they aren’t well-versed in how to do that. Too often sight word teaching becomes a drill-sequence that is unnecessarily tedious. Try things like having the children dictate language experience stories, and do lots of reading and rereading (including choral reading) with these. Then start pulling words out of these stories and help the children to examine these outside of the context of the story. That kind of teaching goes much faster and will be less stressful for everybody.

What Counts as Preschool Literacy Teaching?

Becky Schaller recently sent the following note to this blog:
I am struck by how different literacy instruction for preschoolers is by your description here than it was ten years ago. Back then, we also included teaching literacy by encouraging pretend writing in the different areas of the room. In the dramatic play area, children might pretend to write out a grocery list. In the block area, they might make a sign. Does literacy during play time count any more? Or is the focus more teacher directed now?

Her question as to "what counts as literacy instruction?" is a fair one. It is easy enough to block out time for activities like writing, but what can be in that space and what can't?

Teaching includes teacher telling and teacher explanation. Indeed, when a teacher stands before a group and shows the children a letter and tells them the letter name is an "R" that is obviously teaching. However, it is also teaching when a teacher leads students in some kind of guided doing (such as when the teacher and students do choral reading with a chart while the teacher points at the words). And so are more independent practice activities, such as the idea of students trying to write grocery lists in the dramatic play area.

However, practice requires that something taught is being explored. Ten years ago a preschool teacher may have had writing opportunities arranged across the classroom, but there would be little direct teaching (the kids would practice writing based on what they learned elsewhere). Now the teacher introduces letters, sounds, words, and shows students how to write. The knowledge from such lessons is secured as children try to use that input within their play.

Practice is part of teaching. Practice needs to be articulated in ways that it leads to more learning, including providing kids with guidance from a more knowledgeable person (some of the time), collaborative practice opportunities, and eventually independent practice). It should include opportunities for feedback and review, too.

Many activities themselves don't differentiate teaching now from teaching 10 years ago: pretend reading, pretend writing, dramatic play, teacher book sharing were all part of the landscape then and they can be now. How connected these practice opportunities are to intended learning outcomes has changed, however.

Ten years ago, many preschool and kindergarten teachers were afraid to tell students stuff or to show them how to do things. Now, perhaps, the fear has shifted, and teachers may be afraid to have kids play with what has been presented. Good teaching includes both didactic lessons and opportunities to practice and play.