We've been working on student concept of the Common Core Standards.
Sounds kind of dull, right?
Turns out, exposing 50 eighth graders to varying levels of the same standard is pretty enlightening. Turns out, deep-diving into the Standards explicitly and deliberately enhances the work at hand. In this case, the work at hand was a close-read and analysis of a passage from The Book Thief, lots of pre-writing frontloading and scaffolding in an effort to teach my class how to write a CEA (Claim, Evidence, Analysis) lit paper.
I chose RL8.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.
We close-read the Standards RL6.4, RL8.4 and RL9.4. Students paraphrased (a valuable skill in and of itself albeit pretty low-level in terms of critical thinking) each standard, noted the differences in each, verbalized those nuances, and then applied the standard as best they could to a passage from The Book Thief.
Note: It's very difficult to meet any of the RL9-10th grade standards with a short text, because part of the standard is the culminating impact. However, it is possible to glean a culminating impact of a passage in a paragraph or two. Here' s the passage I chose:
At first, she didn’t look at the woman but focused on the washing bag in her hand. She examined the drawstring as she passed it over. The mayor’s wife, who never spoke, simply stood in her bathrobe, her soft fluffy hair tied back into a short tail. A draft made itself known. Something like the imagined breath of a corpse.
To her left, she saw the woman again, standing by a large desk, still holding the small tower against her torso. She stood with a delighted crookedness. A smile appeared to have paralyzed her lips.
What did the students get out of this process? (ps I don't like the words lesson or activity, so I'm going with 'process')
Was it worthwhile? Most definitely.
What did I, as a Language and Literature teacher get out of this process?
Sounds kind of dull, right?
Turns out, exposing 50 eighth graders to varying levels of the same standard is pretty enlightening. Turns out, deep-diving into the Standards explicitly and deliberately enhances the work at hand. In this case, the work at hand was a close-read and analysis of a passage from The Book Thief, lots of pre-writing frontloading and scaffolding in an effort to teach my class how to write a CEA (Claim, Evidence, Analysis) lit paper.
I chose RL8.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.
We close-read the Standards RL6.4, RL8.4 and RL9.4. Students paraphrased (a valuable skill in and of itself albeit pretty low-level in terms of critical thinking) each standard, noted the differences in each, verbalized those nuances, and then applied the standard as best they could to a passage from The Book Thief.
Note: It's very difficult to meet any of the RL9-10th grade standards with a short text, because part of the standard is the culminating impact. However, it is possible to glean a culminating impact of a passage in a paragraph or two. Here' s the passage I chose:
At first, she didn’t look at the woman but focused on the washing bag in her hand. She examined the drawstring as she passed it over. The mayor’s wife, who never spoke, simply stood in her bathrobe, her soft fluffy hair tied back into a short tail. A draft made itself known. Something like the imagined breath of a corpse.
To her left, she saw the woman again, standing by a large desk, still holding the small tower against her torso. She stood with a delighted crookedness. A smile appeared to have paralyzed her lips.
What did the students get out of this process? (ps I don't like the words lesson or activity, so I'm going with 'process')
- A pretty solid understanding of the purpose of, origin, and language of the Common Core Standard for RL8.4
- A pretty solid understanding of the subtle yet profound degrees of difficulty of the Standards on a vertical scale.
- The ability to measure a task according to a Standard (meets/exceeds)
- An enlightened perspective of the process of education as a whole (i.e. teachers teach to the Standards--we're not just winging it here)
Was it worthwhile? Most definitely.
What did I, as a Language and Literature teacher get out of this process?
- Confidence in weaving NGC 'work' into my ELA curriculum
- Validation that I am moving in the right direction, based on formative assessment, student engagement, and the end-product (CEA's with more depth)
- Motivation to keep this choochoo train on the track