Designing Reading and Writing Tasks

Teachers at my school are working to design reading and writing tasks that mimic the ones students will undertake on the PARCC exam, which will engage students in three kinds of reading and writing tasks:

• literary analysis task
• research simulation task
• narrative writing task.

I'd like to share some resources that may help teachers select appropriate texts for students.

Determining the Reading Level

When finding online texts (such as speeches, articles, journals), how can teachers determine the reading level? Here's one simple way:

• Copy and paste the text into Microsoft Word.
• Enable readability statistics (see instructions in photo below).

• Use the chart below to determine if the Flesh-Kincaid reading level falls within the appropriate grade level band stipulated by Common Core State Standards.

Changing the Reading Level

How can teachers change the reading level of a text?  Check out rewordify.com. This FREE site allows teachers to change the reading level of a text, create vocabulary lists, and do some other pretty amazing stuff.

Hopefully, teachers will find these resources helpful.

Close Reading

Yesterday, I attended a session with Timothy Shanahan, author of the first draft of the CCSS Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. He was awesome, and I learned a great deal. I'll limit my sharing to small chunks to avoid overwhelming you! 

I thought I knew the standards (We've torn them apart enough times!), but he pointed out something crucial I had missed and perhaps you have too.

The CATEGORIES are important. 

There are ten standards in reading and ten in writing. They are broken into four categories:

1. Key Ideas and Details 
2. Craft and Structure
3. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
4. Range and Complexity of Texts

Why is this important? 

Shanahan noted most people "don't know how to read the standards" because they are arranged differently than our previous standards. 

• We can't read each standard as a single skill/concept students are to know. Rather, we must read the standard in the context of the category (and in the progression across grade levels) to really understand what learning goal it is asking of students.
• Also, the categories show how to approach close reading, in what order and manner we should lead students to read and reread:
• Category 1--What did the text say? 
• Category 2--How did text say it? 
• Category 3--What does text mean? What is its value? How does this text connect to other texts? 
• Category 4--Do this over and over with students on lots of different kinds of challenging texts.

 Read Shanahan's blog post, "Planning for Close Reading" to hear his own explanation and view his slides below (republished with his permission):

Shanahan ccs sreading_categories from Lisa Huff