Kansas Curricular Standard for
Reading Education
Approved July, 2003
www.ksde.org 120 SW 10th Avenue Topeka, Kansas 66612-1182 785-296-3201 785-296-7933 fax 785-296-6338 TTY
An Equal Employment/Educational Opportunity Agency
The Kansas State Department of Education does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age in its programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding the non-discrimination policies: KSDE General Counsel 120 SE 10th Ave. Topeka, KS 66612 785-296-3204.
Introduction
Purpose
This document is a revision of the reading and literature standards, benchmarks, and indicators for the Kansas Curricular Standards for Communication Arts (1999). This document will assist Kansas teachers in planning local curricula and assessment for reading, writing, and literature, and will serve as the basis for the development of state assessments in reading and writing. However, this document is not intended to be a state-mandated curriculum. Local curricula should further refine and shape the way that students demonstrate their development in the communication arts. This document was developed with an understanding that all students will be given an equal opportunity to become competent and strategic readers and writers.
A two-column format was adopted to provide teachers, parents, and community with a “user-friendly” document which includes grade-level indicators and one or more instructional examples for each indicator. The instructional examples are not to be used as the sole method for instruction and should not be used exclusively in student instruction. Student mastery of the indicators should not be achieved with a few isolated lessons, but with a variety of well-planned, well-developed, and research-based methods of instruction.
Kansas Reading Assessment
Beginning in the 2005/2006 school year, the Kansas State Reading Assessments will be given yearly, in the spring, at grades, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, and at the “end of opportunity to learn”(OTL) in high school (grades 9-11; but no later than grade 11).
“End of opportunity to learn” was selected for the assessment model at grades 9-11 to allow teachers the opportunity to design interventions for those students not performing satisfactorily on the benchmarks and indicators. In addition, this model should provide flexibility for schools to ensure that students have the opportunity to learn before assessments are given.
Locally selected assessment tools will continue to be required. Districts may choose to test students at either kindergarten, first, or second grades. These tools are an designed to diagnose a child’s strengths and weaknesses in reading. The test will assist the teacher to develop appropriate interventions for students performing below established acceptable proficiency levels.
Definitions
The following are used for the three levels of the document:
Standard: A curricular standard is a general statement of what a student should know and be able to do in academic subjects.
Benchmarks: A specific statement of what a student should know and be able to do at a specified time in his/her schooling.
Benchmarks are used to measure a student’s progress towards meeting the standard. Statements outlining the specifics of what a student should know and be able to do can be found directly following the benchmark. The benchmarks emphasize a focus on alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, literacy concepts, writing, and research.
For the purposes of this document, benchmarks are defined for grades K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and grades 9-12 (cluster), with the recommendation that the Kansas Reading Assessments be administered yearly at grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9-11 (at end of opportunity to learn), Kansas Writing Assessments at grades 5, 8, and 11 and a local Individual Diagnostic Reading Assessment at grade 2.
Indicators: A statement of the knowledge or skills which a student demonstrates in order to meet the benchmark.
Indicators are critical to understanding the standards and benchmarks and are intended to be met by all students. The indicators listed under each benchmark are not listed in priority order, nor should the list be considered as all-inclusive.
Teachers should pay special attention to the benchmarks preceding the designated grade level being taught when a student is not performing and should also pay special attention to the benchmarks following the designated grade level being taught when a student is performing above the grade-level requirements. Special attention has been given to ensure content is identified at least one year before it has been identified for assessment. In order to ensure that students are afforded the opportunity to learn for the assessment, the indicators should be taught at the designated grade levels.
The Kansas Assessments will be composed of items designed to measure the knowledge or skill listed in the indicator. The following coding system will be used to assist teachers with assessment priorities:
Marked Indicators:
· ▲ marked indicator: item selected for state assessment
· teacher will receive a student report from this indicator
· up to 4 -8 items will be written for this indicator
· there are no longer double deltas in the document
Small Deltas:
· ▲ appear within a list of items; distinguishes the items within the list to be tested
Kindergarten - First Grade Marked Indicators:
· these indicators will be used to build assessments for schools with various primary level configurations that do not have a state reading assessment
· this new assessment will be the schools' way to meet the accountability requirements for No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
Certain words are italicized throughout the document. Definitions for the italicized words are listed in the glossary.
Extended Standards:
The extended standards, benchmarks, indicators, and clarifying examples are intended to be used in developing curricular materials for students with disabilities and/or who are eligible for the alternate assessment. These standards are designed for students who require substantial adjustments to the general curricular, yet allow that curricular to maintain a clear connection to the general education standards. The extended benchmarks, indicators, and examples have been developed to provide high expectations for these students.
As these extended standards were being developed, the Kansas Curricular Standards for Language Arts were followed as closely as possible. The four basic standards appear here. After careful consideration, a fifth standard was added. That standard addresses communication for the purposes of social interaction.
One difference in the extended reading and writing standards, from the general education standards, is that grade levels have not been specified for the indicators under each benchmark. Rather, the benchmarks and the indicators have been organized in a hierarchical fashion (where possible), reflecting the wide variation in performance expectations for these students. To understand the reason for this change, it is helpful to compare this approach with the one used in the general education standards. The general education standards establish challenging performance expectations through the use of indicators that become increasingly more difficult for higher grade levels. The state assessments are based on these indicators, resulting in a report of the percentage of students who successfully meet or do not meet the levels established for each grade level.
Because of the extremely wide range of abilities of students who are eligible to take the alternate assessment, it is not possible to establish grade-specific expectations and still maintain high standards. Instead, a range of indicators has been developed, which describe possible performance expectations for all of these students across grade or age levels. The range of indicators includes some of the indicators established for the general education standards.
Modified Indicators:
Information regarding modified indicators will be written at a later date.
iv
Please be aware that pages 1 – 19 of the
Kansas Curricular Standards for Reading Education
document are part of the Kansas Extended Reading Standards which can be found in its revised form at
http://www.kansped.org/ksde/assmts/ksalt/ksalt.html
Standard 1: Reading KINDERGARTEN
Reading: The student reads and comprehends text across the curriculum.
Benchmark 1: The student uses skills in alphabetics to construct meaning from text.
Kindergarten Knowledge Base Indicators /Instructional Examples
The student…1. ▲identifies sounds of both upper and lower case letters of the alphabet (Letter-sound Relationships).
2. ▲identifies names of both upper and lower case letters of the alphabet.
3. distinguishes letters from words by recognizing that words are separated by spaces.
4. ▲demonstrates phonemic awareness skills by hearing and orally manipulating sounds (e.g., ▲phoneme isolation, ▲identification, ▲categorization, blending, segmentation, deletion, addition, substitution).
(Phonemic Awareness)
5. identifies and makes oral rhymes and begins to hear onsets and rimes (e.g., alliteration, intonation).
(Phonological Awareness)
6. ▲demonstrates an understanding of graphemes and phonemes (i.e., sound-symbol relationships) in written and spoken language.
(Phonics) / The teacher…
1. (a) links the sounds of the letters to print symbols.
(This is a year long activity.)
(b) combines upper and lower case instruction. Classrooms could go on a letter scavenger hunt to look for the sounds of the letter(s) being studied.
(c) connects to classroom alphabet chart. Students make individual ABC Books which align with classroom alphabet.
(d) connects sounds and symbols to students’ names.
(e) uses phonemic awareness skills to manipulate the middle sounds, specifically short vowels.
(This is a year long activity.)
(f) provides phonological awareness activities involving music, rhythm, and movement as quick brain breaks or energizers.
2. (a) uses a multi-sensory approach when helping students match letters to sound symbols.
(This is a year long activity.)
(b) uses magnetic letters to develop and provide visual discrimination of letters.
(c) models and demonstrates one-to-one match.
3. (a) distinguishes letters from words by recognizing that words are separated by spaces.
(This is a year long activity.)
(b) uses pocket charts with sentences that show amount of space between each word.
4. (a) provides students with letter tiles, magnetic letters, or markers and white boards. The teacher begins with auditory practice in demonstrating which words begin with the same sound, saying the first or last sound in a word or combining separate sounds to say the word or breaking the word into its separate sounds. After the demonstration, the students use manipulatives to construct words.
(b) provides students with letter tiles or letter cards, then,
· demonstrates segmenting words into sounds (e.g., What sounds do you hear in the word "dog")
· demonstrates sounds in short-term memory and combine them to form a word (e.g., What word do we have when you put these sounds together: /m/, /a/, /t/?)
· demonstrates detecting and manipulating sounds within words (e.g., Is there a /g/ in the word "bug"?)
· demonstrates sequences of sounds in words (e.g., How many sounds do you hear in the word "fun"? - /f/, /u/, /n/)
· demonstrates isolated beginning, medial, and ending sounds (e.g., "What are the first sound, middle, and ending sounds in "dog"?)
(c) supplies an appropriate rhyming word to complete a familiar nursery rhyme or predictable text with rhyming lines.
5. (a) reads nursery rhymes and riddles to the students to express phonological awareness.
(b) uses songs such as "Apples and Bananas" and "Down By the Bay" to encourage student learning.
(c) uses posters, big books, or overhead transparencies to present and practice and to locate rhymes.
6. (a) tosses an alphabet ball (a blown-up beach ball with alphabet letters on it). Whatever letter the teacher's thumb is on, the student identifies that letter and the letter's sound.
(b) demonstrates that some words have more than one phoneme (e.g., The word "step" has four phonemes /s/, /t/, /e/. /p/) with Elkonin boxes.
(c) demonstrates that graphemes/chunks may include one or several letters (e.g., b, d. g, or ch, sh, th).
(This is a year long activity.)
(d) has the students manipulate letter tiles to match spoken letter sounds. The teacher then shows the students the connections between the letter tiles or letter cards with written word on the board or overhead.
(e) helps students understand why they are learning the relationships between letters and sounds.
(This is a year long activity.)
(The instructional examples provided in this document are only examples of teaching strategies and are not intended to endorse any one specific idea or concept. These examples should not be used exclusively for instruction.)
Teacher Notes:
Standard 1: Reading KINDERGARTEN
Reading: The student reads and comprehends text across the curriculum.
Benchmark 2: The student reads fluently.
Kindergarten Knowledge Base Indicators / Instructional ExamplesThe student…
1. demonstrates an understanding of concepts of print (e.g., front-to-back, top-to-bottom, left-to-right) and begins to track print.
2. locates periods, question marks, and exclamation points.
3. imitates the rhythm of speech in emergent oral reading. / The teacher…
1. (a) provides multiple opportunities for book-handling and/or modeling concepts of print, one-to-one match, and return sweep.
(b) demonstrates and explains the concepts of print to the students when reading aloud/shared reading/instructional groups.
(c) provides the opportunity for students to make their own books, for example, a short repetitive story with one word per page, eventually creating longer stories.
(d) works with sign language interpreter to demonstrate the inflectional patterns of sign language.
2. (a) models oral reading using voice inflection to accentuate the punctuation and asks the students which form of punctuation is being represented or expressed.
(b) works with sign language interpreter to demonstrate the rhythm of sign language.
3. (a) reads aloud and creates shared reading and cross-age reading opportunities.
(b) reads aloud a book that has been selected by a student.
(c) models echo reading. The teacher reads a picture book story to the students. The second time the teacher reads the story, the teacher reads a sentence and has the students echo the teachers’ modeling by reading the same sentence using the same intonation and phrasing as the teacher.
(d) uses Paired Reading to provide practice in oral reading. This can be a reading pair between a student with an adult or a student with another student. One person in the pair must be able to model good reading fluency.
(The instructional examples provided in this document are only examples of teaching strategies and are not intended to endorse any one specific idea or concept. These examples should not be used exclusively for instruction.)
Teacher Notes:
Promote reading habits with students (especially those students with limited resources at home) by allowing them opportunities to check out personal-interest books from the school library.
Standard 1: Reading KINDERGARTEN