New Revisions to Previously Adopted ELAR TEKS that may impact your curriculum planning

Don't panic. We're going to be fine. But you need to know what's happening. 

At the meeting of the full board on April 3-5, 2018 the State Board of Education held the first hearing for revisions to the ELAR TEKS that had been previously adopted.  This has some implications for your curriculum writing and preparation. 

You can read about the rationale for the changes and review the changes presented at first reading here: 

https://tea.texas.gov/About_TEA/Leadership/State_Board_of_Education/2019/April/April_2019_Committee_of_the_Full_Board_Item_6/

If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you will see Attachment 1 (ELAR TEKS) and Attachment 2 (SLAR TEKS) .  These documents show the proposed changes.

The SBOE is accepting pubic commentary about the revisions: 

PUBLIC COMMENTS: The public comment period on the proposal begins May 3, 2019, and ends June 7, 2019. The SBOE will take registered oral and written comments on the proposal at the appropriate committee meeting in June 2019 in accordance with the SBOE board operating policies and procedures. A request for a public hearing on the proposal submitted under the Administrative Procedure Act must be received by the commissioner of education not more than 14 calendar days after notice of the proposal has been published in the Texas Register on May 3, 2019.

THINKING in the New ELAR Standards

Thinking, contrary to some comments, is NOT gobbledy-gook. But what does it look like with our instructional materials and pedagogy? People always ask my what in the world I'm talking about when I say that our approach must consider thinking. ELAR is a PROCESS. There is almost ZERO content after you address phonics and basic grammar. Our content IS thinking. And I'm not just talking about memory techniques like mnemonics. And I'm not just talking about cognition, short-term memory and long-term memory. And I'm not just talking about consolidation, storage, and retrieval.

Here's a tiny example:

From Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature.

The phrase "A woman has the right to change her mind" played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than "be like a woman and change my mind."

    The old way of working through this text would be to ask questions about the content of the text. What is Maya Angelou saying about being a woman? But that does NOTHING to teach a kid how you would actually know that. Keeping our questions focused on the text itself without a focus on thinking turns our work into teaching the text and not the reader. I say that all the time, but no one really knows what I'm talking about.

     We certainly do not want most of our questions to be text-specific/dependent. ELAR standards are process based. Some of our questions need to be about what your brain does to make sense of text. For example, what do I do to monitor for comprehension when I come across something in the text that does not make sense? That is not a text-specific question, but it is definitely one we need to ask. Consider what our brains do here that should be taught that can transfer to any text.

    When Maya Angelou states that she does not want to be associated with something “as fickle as luck” in Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now and we don’t know what she’s talking about, what should we do? 

     Well, we look at idioms, personification (luck is a lady), definitions of fickle. We research. We talk about it. Then we think about what it literally means. We think about connections to ourselves, the world, and other texts. Fickle as luck – luck is not knowing whether or not you will win or lose. Fickle people keep changing their mind and you can’t tell what they are going to do. And remember that song, Luck is a Lady? Now we have to connect back to the text. What is Angelou talking about here in terms of being a woman and her journey? Well, we have to go back and think about our connections. Why is not knowing whether or not you will win or lose an insult to being a woman? I have to connect to myself: Do I want people to always wonder whether I’m going to be nice or mean? No. I want people to enjoy my company, not fear it. Do I want to be the kind of silly woman that changes her mind for no reason? Absolutely not. And so on. 

   Some of our work with texts is about recording what we are doing with our brains so we can do it next time we come across something that doesn’t make sense. We have to show kids how to THINK and what to DO. If this was my classroom, I'd model my thinking for them as I read and we'd have an anchor chart of things they could try. Then, when they were reading in shared, interactive, collaborative settings, they'd have some ideas of how to make sense of actual gobbledy-gook.

Here’s a list of what I did and the questions I asked that were not connected to the text:

• ·         I stopped when I realized that I didn’t understand what she was saying. What does this text mean?
• ·         I did some research about what fickle means. What do I do to figure out what words mean?
• ·         I looked up the idiom of fickle as luck. Might there be a figure of speech here that I am not familiar with? How can I find out what that means?
• ·         I thought about what luck personified would be. How can I visualize what that’s like in life, literally?
• ·         I made connections to my own life, the world, and other texts I have read or heard. What have I experienced and what do I know that might give me a hint here about how this is being used?
• ·         Then I thought about what the author is saying – the theme or message. Why is the author using this language here? How does this language help her communicate her purpose and message?
• ·         I asked myself how that example is connected to the text and the author’s meaning. How is this example connected to other ideas in the text?
• ·         And if we are really getting to our standards – what does this inspire me to do in my own writing? Where can I used a similar technique to connect with my reader.

     We MUST consider thinking in selecting our instructional materials and pedagogy. The example above, I hope, explains what we should be looking for. And this is just ONE example. I'd really like to know what YOU THINK! Or am I still speaking gobbledy-gook? 

NEW ELAR TEKS: Why Looking at Just Your Grade Level is A BAD Idea

This question came today: Quick question- do you know if a document exists with just the new 6-8 ELA TEKS?  I have the K-12  document and the Lead4ward document, but I simply want to look at a side-by-side of grades 6-8.

And I heard some Kinder folks complaining: I don't need to know what you are doing in 12th grade. I don't even know how to spell rhetoric. We don't do that in kinder. 

Uhhh. You should. See Literary Analysis for the Littles.

Yes. The document is long. No. You don't teach that grade or skill. I get it. But here's why, Dear Reader, you should get over it and keep your ridiculously large printout of the TEKS intact with grades K-12 all on one page.

First: I would recommend that you do NOT look at 6-8  without the other grades. The standards are written in learning progressions with the terminal outcome at the end. You cannot understand where you are aiming if you are not looking at the whole row, especially the end of the row. Imagine a plane that is off by one degree but flies 700 miles along that trajectory. They will never arrive and will be further away from their destination than from where they began. 

For example, if you are looking only at 2nd grade 10F - identify and explain the use of repetition, you miss WHY we would want to do so. That entire row is about building capacity of students to analyze author's purpose and craft in a way that leads them to understand repetition rhetorically - especially in how that repetition impacts how they comprehend as well as how they compose. Basically – each row in the standards add collectively to a central idea/thesis that you may miss if you are not looking at what the whole row is about. All the grade levels work together to culminate into that purpose/thesis.

Second: The standards are written in learning progressions that clearly articulate the gentle slide from one grade to the next as well as defining the floor and ceiling of each grade level. A 6-8 might be ok for 7^th, but they’d still miss the terminal objective and perspective. For the example mentioned in the previous point, the rhetorical use of repetition required in 2nd grade has morphed into explaining the purposes of hyperbole, stereotyping, and anecdote. If the 6th grade teacher (or curriculum writer) is not aware of where the fifth grade ended and does not connect the purpose, use, and craft of those devices on comprehension and composition...moving to 6th grade to talk about the differences between rhetorical devices and logical fallacies will be like opening a can of potato chips only to find a... 

and then being surprised that kids don't understand and have never heard of such a thing. Might as well blame those elementary teachers like we always have.  In reality, kids don't understand because planning the connection between the grades without understanding the trajectory and purpose of this row will actually cause gaps in student performance. Teachers MUST be aware of where they kids have been as well as where they are going. Remember - you learn new stuff by connecting it to the old stuff you already know. Known to the new. 

Third: Since the standards are written as learning progressions, the standards help us identify gaps and prepare for tutoring, RTI, SLO, etc. And maybe even ABC,123. I’m hearing Michael Jackson, but I digress. If your kids don't understand the rhetorical devices such as direct address, then you can look to see if they can do the things required by the previous grades. When you find out where the understanding breaks down, you teach from there and quickly scaffold students up to where they need to be. "Remember in 2nd grade when you talked about how nursery rhymes like Hickory Dickory Dock have rhythms that sound like what they are describing? When you read the poem aloud, you almost hear a clock ticking. Writers do that on purpose. Now in 6th grade, we are learning about a new technique that writers use to help readers see, feel, or believe their words. Just like the writer nursery rhyme used rhythm to help the reader visualize the clock, this writer talks directly to the reader to get his attention. Listen to this example: 'But here's why, Dear Reader, you should get over it and keep your ridiculously large printout of the TEKS intact with grades K-12 all on one page.' In 6th grade, we call this writer's tool a Rhetorical Device. The direct address to the reader is a rhetorical device that helps the writer emphasize his point to the reader.'" (Note also the rhetorical purpose and effect of sarcasm - all in fun.)

Fourth: If you still want to see just 6-8, the TEKSRS system will have a simple before grade, the current grade, and the next grade chart. Not sure when.  The best I can recommend for you right now is the work from Vicky Gibson. She's prepared some Big Sheets – that might be more of what you are looking for as a supplement to the K-12 vertical alignment... and possibly avoid the problems I've described above.  Gibson explains how you can use the documents here.Just be careful about being too focused and myopic on only grades 6-8. After all, ABC, 123 isn't much good without the rest of the letters and numbers. Neither are our TEKS. 

STAAR Writing: Elaborate that!

Right now, most of you are in the final push for STAAR writing. In most of the papers I am reading right now, teachers are asking kids to give specific examples for their reasons. They ask kids to give an example from their own lives, from a book or movie, or from history. While there are other things to say about that, the problem remains that kids state those examples and that's about it. We tell them to elaborate and explain them fully, but the reality is that they don't.

What exactly does that mean...elaborate? Explain fully? And HOW does one do that? It's not enough to tell kids to explain so that Joe Schmo down the street can understand.

Explicit and concrete strategies help students know HOW to elaborate.

Here are my favorite go to strategies:

Five Whys

Prove It

Depth Charge

Pitchforking

Ba da Bing

Cafe Squidd

Starring