Understanding Common Core ELA

Video Transcription

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you're having a great day today. Today, we're going to be looking at understanding the Common Core, especially as it relates to English Language Arts. For today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by one of my favorite fun authors, Lemony Snicket, which says, "never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."

By the end of the lesson today, you are going to be able to review the origin of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards, as well as analyze the Common Core English Language Arts Standards. First, let's focus in on the history. The development began in 2009 when a number of different key players came together, governors, state commissioners, leaders from all across 48 different states, two territories, and the District of Columbia that were brought together through the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices known as the NGA Center, and the Council of Chief State School Officers, known as CCSSO to really focus in on the elements that were necessary in English.

These Common Core Standards really focus in on the college and career readiness skills, as well as those K through 12 standards, looking at what students should be able to do from elementary through high school, really focusing in on those anchor standards, seeing how those are then divided out into the various strands and indicators that really help English Language Arts teachers focus in on what each grouping of students needs to know, and then specifically what students need to know as they graduated from high school and went on to either college or to their career. Next, let's look at some of the key shift areas that took place with in language arts.

First, you'll notice that the Common Core calls for regular practice with complex texts. This is encouraging students to encounter those difficult texts for their grade on a regular level in order to push those skills. The Common Core Standards really ask that teachers focus in on various text types.

The Common Core also calls for a shift in specifically focusing in on strong academic language and vocabulary. This is looking both at the fluency of students vocabulary use, as well as their phonological knowledge, really honing in on the phonics of the words. Broadening that vocabulary has been shown in many, many different ways to help increase reading ability as well.

To focus in on reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from text both literary and informational, this is a huge shift that's happening all across language arts where students are asked to speak in terms of evidence that they find from those texts rather than just their own opinions. This push has really helped strengthen students' ability in their argument and opinion writing. To build knowledge through content rich nonfiction, the Common Core really pushed the nonfiction side of language arts and opened the gates for connections between other content areas.

In K through 5, focusing in on fulfilling the standards, requiring a 50-50 balance between informational and literary reading. You'll notice that especially early on they're really looking at that common encounters with literature on a daily basis and how do we work through that. In grades 6 through 12, there is much greater attention focusing in on the specific category of literary nonfiction. That's a huge shift, like we said before, from the traditional standards.

When we look at anything that's new, we really want to investigate the positives and the negatives. So some of the negatives. These are not national standards. Although it can be perceived that way because they are adopted by the majority of states, all states do you have the option to adopt them or not.

Now this can be a negative because the standards then are assessed in different ways, making it doubly difficult to give those state-by-state comparisons. Standards can be assessed through the partnership for assessment of readiness for college and careers. Some states assess using smarter balanced, and some states develop their own test assessments, again, making it difficult for us to look state by state and say are all of our students learning at the same level? Do we need to give some resources somewhere else and others not?

Finally, some positive news is the SAT, the AP, and the ACT tests are all beginning to incorporate these Common Core Standards in to their assessments. This is really helpful when we're looking at explaining to our students the benefits of what they're learning, especially as those going in to college will be able to use that knowledge on nationalized tests.

Now that we've come to the end of the lesson, you are able to review the origin of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards, as well as analyze those standards. I'd love to take a little time now for reflection. As you reflect on this information, what are the challenges you foresee as you start to work with students in English language arts so that they are fully prepared for the new elements being incorporated into the SAT, the AP, and the ACT exams?

Now I want to take a moment for reflection. For more information on how to apply what you learned in this video, please view the additional resources section that accompanies this video's presentation. The additional resources section includes hyperlinks useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource.