Unpacking ELAR Assessed Curriculum for Ease of Use

     My friends and I have been working on solutions for unpacking standards and writing curriculum documents. As Sherella and I talked, be bemoaned the spaghetti reality that is ELAR. We asked these questions: 

• How do we put all of this together in a way that is easy to look at and understand what we are supposed to teach? 
• How do we show that comprehension involves author's purpose and craft + text structures + text characteristics + uses of language + metacognitive skills all at the same time? 
• How do we cluster the standards in such a way that teacher realize that a lesson about point of view (7.9E) that gives the definitions of subjective and objective point of view isn't really what we are teaching nor how it will be used in life or assessment? 
• How do we help new teachers or untrained folks with the content and the pedagogy? 
• How do we unpack this stuff that results in something we can use to plan better lessons? 
• How do we unpack this stuff that we can use with kids? 
  How can we unpack this stuff in a way that doesn't take 40 million years to complete and hundreds of pages to print? 

     Being the geek I am, I used constant comparative analysis and axial coding to reveal themes and connections. Coding with color font and highlighted cells revealed how each Standard (Knowledge and Skills + Student Expectation) houses overlapping Strands and Assessment Reporting Categories. 

    Here's an example: Most teachers look at what they are supposed to teach and see: 

7.9E: identify the use of literary devices, including subjective and objective point of view.

     Teachers then plan a lesson where students look at texts and explain which ones are written with a subjective point of view and which are written with an objective point of view. Pardon the pun, but that's not the point. 

     Here's the "formula": [Author's Purpose and Craft (Strand) + "influence meaning" (purpose) + "communicate meaning" (comprehension) + literary devices: point of view (language)] * "applies" author's craft "to develop his or her own products and performances"

     Here's the color coding key I used for the research:

Genre Characteristics

Literary Elements

Literary Genres

Nonfiction

Argument

Comprehension

Text Structure

Characteristics/Language

Metacognitive Skills

     In other words, the "point" is to help learners with two tasks (as opposed to two pieces of knowledge) and multiple strands (as opposed to one TEK). Here's what we unpacked to craft guiding questions that address content + skills + genre + rigor + assessed curriculum. 

With literary texts, how does the author influence and communicate meaning through choices of point of view, including subjective and objective point of view? What does the point of view reveal or hide? (Example: Because the story is told by the friends, we see how their reactions are different than the main character. Antaeus English I 2019 STAAR). 

As a writer of literary texts, how do I influence and communicate meaning through choices of point of view including, subjective and objective point of view? What does the point of view reveal or hide? (Example: What point of view is best to show an unreliable narrator in the story I am writing? In what ways do I used language and character development to make that happen?) 

     We started with Author's Purpose and Craft because that's where all reading and writing begins. And that's how readers first experience texts (Rosenblatt). We loaded all the standards afterward as if they are connected to the heart of Author's Purpose and Craft. 

     Cheryl, Sherella, and I are going to be talking about this more. Would you like to join the conversation? Here's the mock-up drafts of our thinking: 

7th Grade Assessed Curriculum Unpacked (Literary)

7th Grade Assessed Curriculum Unpacked (Nonfiction)

7th Grade Curriculum Unpacked (Writing) Note: Assessed Curriculum for writing has not yet been released.

Deliberate, Effortful Strategies under Conscious Control become Skills under Automatic Control

Judy Wallis: And what we hope is these deliberate, effortful strategies under conscious control become skills under automatic control. 

 I'm always honored when Judy Wallis reads and considers my efforts. She always seems to dive into the basis and research underneath what I'm experiencing. And when she references an article, I know that it is something worth serious consideration. 

My friend Bama Coward used to say: A strategy is not something you do with a pencil. As usual, Judy has the research at her fingertips. Clarifying Differences Between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies is a must read for practitioners of critical and transformative ELAR pedagogy. Afflerback, Pearson, and Paris nail important considerations about how we initially teach and what our goals are for helping kids internalize and use those strategies in ways that become automatic skills in their comprehension and composing processes. Where are my kids on the continuum of strategies and skilled reading? 

New TEKS Overview: Interconnected Strands

Monday and Tuesday, I worked with a dedicated group of teachers and leaders at Childress ISD. Yes. These teachers came for staff development on the last week of school. Why? Because they want time to think about and plan their curriculum and textbook selection processes. Brilliant.

As we worked through the documents, I came away with a deeper understanding of the design and interconnectedness of the standards - even though I have been working with variations of the document for several years now. 

Here are two videos that describe my new learning. Thank you to Victoria Young and Jennifer Wilkerson who led CREST (Coalition of Reading and English Supervisors of Texas) in understanding the structure of the TEKS and how we can go about reading them to begin our curriculum planning.

Video One: TEKS Strands and Substrands

Video Two: Interconnectedness Across Strands within a grade level.