Aligning Literacy Instruction with the Common Core State Standards

Literacy is exploding with complexity and opportunities! Today’s literacy needs, in conjunction with expectations in the Common Core State Standards, call for explicit and direct literacy instruction. In particular, Disciplinary Literacy instruction increases students’ comprehension of increasing levels of complex text, as demanded in Standard 10. This type of instruction may represent a significant change for English Language Arts teachers and teachers in different disciplines, as indicated in Achieve’s, On the Road to Implementation, (2010).

One question that has arisen is how Disciplinary Literacy instruction coexists with Reading Across the Content strategies. What Disciplinary Literacy experts and studies have disclosed is the lack of generalizability of strategies. That is, secondary students require discipline-specific instructional support as text complexity increases, as noted in the groundbreaking work by experts including the Shanahans: “In literacy development, progression to higher levels in the pyramid means learning more sophisticated but less generalizable skills and routines.” This passage continues, “By the time adolescent students are being challenged by disciplinary texts, literacy instruction often had evaporated altogether or has degenerated into a reiteration of general reading strategies" (Harvard Ed. Review, 2008). As text complexity increases at the secondary level, disciplines requires specific instruction that builds upon strategies provided previously to fully comprehend increasing levels of complex texts. Intermediate students may also benefit from this type of explicit instruction as noted in the Carnegie Final Report, “The skills that students learn up until fourth grade are absolutely critical to later success, but they are simply not enough. Literacy demands change drastically in grades 4-12.” Both the textual demands, and the types of texts used, vary widely across different content areas. “Each content area in middle and high school demands a different approach to reading, writing, and thinking. Texts read in history class are different from those read in biology, which in turn are substantially different from novels, poems, or essays read in ELA” (Carnegie, 2010).

It is important for literacy concepts to coexist and build upon current practices for the secondary levels. The Leadership & Learning Center’s Disciplinary Literacy: Redefining Deep Understanding and Leadership for the 21st Century (Piercy and Piercy, 2011) and onsite seminar are designed to provide guidance and support to both English Language Arts teachers and teachers in different disciplines for implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Interactive instructional models and guidance in selecting complex texts, aligned with the cognitive demand within the Common Core State Standards’ Learning Progressions, as described in Larry Ainsworth’s, Rigorous Curriculum Design, are included. Through collaboration between teachers in different disciplines, students will be able to access higher levels of complex texts with the support of discipline-specific instruction and Standard 1’s text-dependent questioning, to enhance deeper understanding. Maryann Wiggs and I are providing models of ELA instruction described in this Blog during the Common Core Tour. Please consider joining us when the Tour arrives near you!