students incorporate digital media when presenting their ideas – this increases the engagement and mirrors the standards.
Anchor Standards for Language
Conventions of Standard English: Having a command of grammar and usage in writing and speaking, and of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling in writing.
Knowledge of Language: Using what one knows about the way language works in various contexts to communicate more effectively and to better comprehend when reading or listening.
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use: Being able to figure out new words and phrases on one's own by using context clues, looking at word parts, and consulting reference materials when appropriate. Being able to make sense of figurative language and words with multiple meanings. Acquiring and effectively using both academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a way that shows “college and career readiness” when reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Language Don'ts and Do's
Don't assign students huge lists of isolated vocabulary words and expect them to learn to use them by simply looking up the meanings and copying them down. Don't teach grammar and conventions in isolation or out of context. Don't expect students to acquire grammatical structures and apply them in their own writing and speaking if they're only doing grammar drills and worksheets.
Do evaluate the text types that students will be reading and writing and teach them the academic words and structures they will need to access these tasks. Provide opportunities for students to practice this vocabulary through meaningful interactions with their peers and in authentic reading and writing situations. Teach students the grammatical structures associated with specific text types in context, identifying both “good” and “bad” examples to help students identify and then apply the desired structures in their own writing.
Chapter Two
Creating the Conditions for English Language Learners to Be Successful in the Common Core Standards
Farmers and gardeners know you cannot make a plant grow … What you do is provide the conditions for growth.
If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.
These two opening quotations illustrate the important role that Social Emotional Skills (also known as noncognitive skills, along with many other labels75) can play in students learning the academic skills listed in the Common Core Standards. In this chapter, we discuss why students developing these Social Emotional Skills can improve their ability to master the knowledge described in the Standards and how teachers can support that process.
It's important to note that this notion is not one that is just coming out of our heads. In fact, it's being promoted by the originators of the Common Core Standards and education researchers.
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), along with the National Governors Association and the school reform group Achieve, developed the Common Core Standards.76 One of CCSSO's initiatives is the Innovation Lab Network, a group of 12 states that is focused on piloting what they consider particularly innovative school practices.
CCSSO issued a report from the Network in 2013 titled “Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions: The Innovation Lab Network State Framework for College, Career, and Citizenship Readiness, and Implications for State Policy.”77 The report recommends that:
Along with mastery and application of essential content as typically prescribed and monitored in state standards, assessments, and accountability systems, it is necessary that students cultivate higher-order cognitive and meta-cognitive skills that allow them to engage in meaningful interaction with the world around them. Further, members agreed that these knowledge and skills are not achieved in a vacuum but require the development of underlying dispositions or behavioral capacities (such as self-regulation, persistence, adaptability) that enable lifelong pursuit of learning. (p. 3)
The report goes on to state that these “Socio Emotional Skills,” “higher-order cognitive and meta-cognitive skills,” and “dispositions” are “mutually reinforcing”78 with the academic knowledge in the Common Core Standards. In other words, all elements can be learned better when they are taught side-by-side.
Coincidentally (or not) these targeted “skills” and “dispositions” also appear to be the primary qualifications that employers are looking for in potential employees, according to multiple surveys.79
CCSSO is not alone in highlighting the role of “Socio Emotional Skills” (the report uses that term instead of the more common “Social Emotional Skills”) in the Common Core.
The school reform group Achieve, another of the three CCSS originators, encourages that the Standards be used as a “platform” for educators to help students develop self-motivation, metacognition, and self-control.80
In addition, the American Institutes for Research concludes that “CCSS makes the assumption” that students have these kinds of Social Emotional skills.81
To sum it up, it is safe to say that those behind the Standards recognize, as teachers have long known, that if students do not feel motivated, confident, and curious, very little of the “knowledge” being taught is likely to engage them.
We are not placing this topic near the beginning of our book to suggest that that these “skills” and “dispositions” need to all be taught prior to the content of the Common Core Standards. Rather, we are including this chapter to emphasize that, as the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and others suggest, they should be taught alongside Common Core content knowledge.
Without them, it's like teaching someone to sing by providing them with the words, but not the music.
CCSSO lists many “skills,” which they define as “strategies,” and “dispositions,” which they define as “mindsets.”82 The CCSSO suggests that acquiring these skills and dispositions can facilitate students in learning the knowledge in the Common Core. We agree that all the skills and dispositions the CCSSO lists are important. However, we are only highlighting ones that, based on our teaching experience, we feel are especially useful to learning in the classroom. It's important to keep in mind that there is also a great deal of overlap between many of these skills and dispositions – for example, where might metacognition end and critical thinking begin?
The “skills” of goal-setting, metacognition, critical thinking, and creativity/innovation, and the “dispositions” of agency, self-control, and persistence/resilience are the ones we review in this chapter. In addition to teaching CCSSO-recommended skills, the strategies and lessons we suggest incorporate the Standards at the same time. In other words, they are “three-fers”:
1. They teach the Socio Emotional Skills and Dispositions that the CCSSO report says are critical for students
Teachers are like gardeners. (2010, August 19).
Popova, M. (n.d.). Pioneering scientist Rachel Carson on wonder, parenting, and why it's more vital to feel than to know.
Kamenetz, A. (2015, May 28). Nonacademic skills are key to success. But what should we call them?
Council of Chief State School Officers. (2013, February).
Council of Chief State School Officers. (2013, February).
Ferlazzo, L. (2013, February 16). The best info on skills employers are looking for in job-seekers.
Achieve. (2012, December).
Dymnicki, A., Sambolt, M., & Kidron, Y. (2013, March).
Council of Chief State School Officers. (2013, February).
