Getting real about ELAR TEKS: Commentary and Instructional Implications for Assessment

Some TEKS insights on a project...

I'm working on TEKS commentary for a lesson in a series on online assessment success: Page to Pixel.  I'm working on how we teach kids to have a more mature approach to consuming cold texts. In the lesson, we begin with a scan of the text and then apply knowledge of genre characteristics to set purposes for reading and annotation.

As I was working through some of these ideas, it reminded me of some things ELAR folks need to fight against and for about how our content works. 

1. After a while, people stop looking at the foundational language skills TEKS. Mistake. There's still a lot of work to do with reading words and spelling them with derivational constancy (meaning and origin.) Efforts with vocabulary and fluency never end. 

2. People are told to put objectives on the board. Like which one? Are you kidding me? At a certain point, single TEK teaching just isn't what ELAR is about. We USE ALL of that stuff to make meaning. If you are only teaching about informational text and a thesis, you've moved into identification and not analysis. It's like eating flour when you really want tres leches. 

3. People talk all the time about teaching titles. We aren't teaching BOOKS. We are teaching people to be critical consumers of text. It doesn't matter what text you use as long as you address the thinking and HOW behind making meaning of it.

4. Background knowledge matters. We do all kinds of gymnastics around preparing kids to read texts. But that's not what thinkers have to do ever or anywhere. People read cold. No prep. No background info. No powerpoint about history and context. We have to teach folks what do do when they know nothing about the text or topic. 

5. Reading is inquiry and research. You can't read a dad gum thing without applying some form of critical inquiry. At least we shouldn't. 

Here's the commentary behind the insights above: 

TEKS Commentary 

 Developing and Sustaining Foundational Language Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--fluency. Students use genre characteristics to prepare for fluent reading before they begin. During reading, the genre characteristics help readers consume key ideas fluently. After reading, fluency is needed to re-enter the text and reconsider evidence for analysis and response. 

 Developing and Sustaining Foundational Language Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--independent reading. 

These charts and organizers are not worksheets to be filled out. We really don’t care what goes in them either. The point is that students know how to use the genre characteristics to guide comprehension before, during, and after reading. We want them to use these ideas and concepts about text fluently and independently. 

 Comprehension Skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking. The students use metacognitive skills to both develop and deepen comprehension of increasingly complex text. A-I.

 All comprehension skills apply to the concepts in the activities described. The culmination of these skills in practice and at the moment of reading acts is a synthesis of reading proficiency we want as outcomes. 

 Response Skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student responds to an increasingly challenging variety of sources that are read, heard, or viewed. 

While the activities and processes described here apply to all of the TEKS in this strand, E is most strongly correlated to the lessons: interact with sources in meaningful ways, such as notetaking, annotating, freewriting, or illustrating. 

 Multiple Genres: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--genres. The students recognizes and analyzes genre specific characteristics, structures, and purposes within and across increasingly complex traditional, contemporary, classical and diverse texts. 

Again, all the standards apply to this lesson. The reader uses the content of these TEKS to make decisions about the analysis approach needed for the tasks. And, as multiple genres are connected to this process, the writer selects the organizational structure of the genre to select the text evidence and compose the response required by the genre listed in the prompts. It’s critical that in teaching these standards, we are sharing how the genre characteristics shape our comprehension and compositional response. 

 An unpopular opinion here. STAAR will not address the cannon or full texts and novels. It’s not that we shouldn’t read these things. It’s just not possible to recreate that kind of reading in assessment. The language is too dense and concepts too involved to even use an excerpt. To Kill a Mockingbird is valid reading for ELAR. So are many of the other classic texts “taught” in our classes. Teaching core texts, however, will not prepare students for thinking and discernment tasks on standardized assessments that use cold reads of text. Teaching MUST address how we make meaning of cold reads using the genre characteristics to comprehend and respond. 

 Author’s Purpose and Craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the author's choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author’s craft purposefully in their own products and performances. A-F. 

All the student expectations apply here as well - because the student is pulling from information about this TEK content to make decisions about the text to be read and the use of one to be composed. 

 Composition - the process and genres. 

ALL are used in this lesson. Learners are fluent in the writing process and characteristics of the genre they intend to compose. Writers select meaningful components of the genre to embed useful components of the source text as support within the genre characteristics required by the prompt. 

 Inquiry and Research: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student engages in both short term and sustained recursive inquiry processes for a variety of purposes. 

Again - all of the standards apply to this lesson. Most folks don’t really think about research…delegating it to end of the year events when the library is closed and no one has technology. But really, the approach to texts on assessment is recursive inquiry. Readers are adding to their body of knowledge by interrogating the source text. And they respond by answering questions as they recursively move between the text and the question options. Or they respond by mining the text for evidence that can support a claim or thesis. Folks - we are teaching an inquiry research process with our approach and response to every text. 

Can we?

What if we upended our scope and sequence and theory of action about what we are actually teaching? Not TKM. Not Lord of the Flies. What if we taught our learners that what we really do in English class is figure out and know stuff so we can do things.