The TEACHING CHANNEL has a wealth of information on how to deliver the common core standards at all grade levels. For this post, I pulled out the high school video (I will write about elementary and middle school later on this week) because this is the population who is most at risk of dropping out of high school. This is the group that schools are struggling with to better support them in their academic pursuits. If they are to have a good future in the business world, they need better skills than what school programs are currently delivering.
For a look at the dramatic transformations taking place in this new learning arena, study the clips of actual model classroom instruction in high schools in New York City. The teachers selected have been working with the new standards for a year and are impressed with the results they are seeing in their students--all of their students including ELLs. Notice the shift from straight literature to 70% informational text and 30% literature. With this shift, teachers are better preparing students to do the work that will be expected of them in the work force or college. Students will be able to interact with unfamiliar text and be in a position to derive meaning from it thanks to teachers spending time guiding them in unpacking knowledge from such materials.
Other content teachers will also be addressing informational text reading in their classes as well thereby making every teacher a language teacher. With every content teacher reinforcing key academic vocabulary (ex. predict, analyze, etc.), students will be better prepared to tackle more demanding (as in grade level and beyond) assignments. Such challenges will offer English language learners and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds more life choices than are currently available to them.
This is a major turning point in US education. It is an exciting time to be an educator!
COMMON CORE ELA STANDARDS SECONDARY
Denise
ELL TEACHER PROS
No comments:
Post a Comment