comprehension skills being asked of them. Ultimately, students pose these questions for themselves—both unconsciously and deliberately—as they engage in the endeavor. But because metacognition is something students grow into, you can use these questions as comprehension questions to pose after you model how to approach them. The goal is to provide ample practice with these questions so that students internalize them and own them as readers, writers, and thinkers. So be sure to incorporate them into the fabric of your instruction each and every day, having students talk, listen, and write off them.
Instructional techniques/what the teacher does. In the “What the Teacher Does” pages you will find a great many suggestions. Although I don’t always say, “Put your students in groups” or “Put your students in pairs,” I can’t emphasize enough that the goal is for you to do less whole-class instruction and have students work more often in small groups, in partnerships, or one-on-one with you. Periodically you will see references to online resources, which include graphic organizers, visuals, and other tools that support the teaching of particular standards.
Planning templates. For each standard, a one-page planning template provides prompts to help you develop lesson plans that address and connect standards. As you use these pages, they will become resources for future lessons and records of instruction. They will also be beneficial for collaboration with colleagues.
Academic vocabulary: key words and phrases. Each standard comes with a unique glossary, since terms used in multiple standards have unique meanings from standard to standard. Any word or phrase that could be a source of confusion is defined in detail.
How to Use This Book
Different schools, districts, instructional teams, and individual teachers will pick up Your Literacy Standards Companion and have different ideas about how to use it as a tool. And, of course, there is no one right way. Here are some possible ways, which you might adapt, adopt, or ignore as you see fit:
Provide all teachers on a grade-level team or school with a copy of this K–2 edition to establish a common text to work from throughout standards planning and instructional design work.
Use this Companion in tandem with the grades 3–5 edition by Leslie Blauman to dig into the standards in a whole-school initiative.
Use this Companion along with the grades 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12 volumes for district-level planning and professional development work.
Bring your Companion to all meetings for quick reference or planning with colleagues in your school or on your grade-level team.
Use the Companion to aid in the transition from what you were doing to what you will be doing, treating the planning pages that accompany the standards as places to note what you do or which Common Core State Standard corresponds with one of your district or state standards.
Use the Companion as a resource for revisiting your curriculum plans in Year 2 (or beyond!) of implementing the standards to help you develop, refine, and deepen instruction.
Begin or end meetings with a brief but carefully planned sample lesson based on a teaching idea in this book. Ask one or more colleagues in the school to present at the next meeting on how the teaching idea might be applied to other grade levels.
Use the Companion in conjunction with your professional learning community to add further cohesion and consistency among all your ideas and plans.
Reference
Caine, R. N., & Caine, G. (2011). Natural learning for a connected world: Education, technology, and the human brain. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Quick Reference: Common Core State Standards, K–12 English Language Arts
Reading
Key Ideas and Details
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
Craft and Structure
4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.
8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.
Reading: Foundational Skills
Print Concepts
1. Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
Phonological Awareness
2. Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
Phonics and Word Recognition
3. Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
Fluency
4. Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Writing
Text Types and Purposes*
