Shift 1: Balancing Informational & Literary Texts

K-5 Teacher Behavior:

  • Modeling comprehension strategies using nonfiction text
  • Explicit teaching of graphic organizers to pull out key points
  • Planning 50/50 balance of pulling resources (leveled readers, articles, books)
  • Integration of content areas (teaching through & with)
  • Provide opportunities for nonfiction read aloud
  • Model clear concise summaries
  • Design/plan activities for written response using key points and summary of informational text (shared writing)

K-5 Student Behavior:

  • Interacting with informational text (group/partner/independent)
  • Interactions to include speaking, listening, reading
  • Use key points to summarize (i.e. book, commercials, graphic organizers)
  • Using a variety of text formats (short articles, magazines, etc…)
  • Using leveled informational text for building fluency
  • Self-selected, project based

K-5 Resources

  • Classroom libraries
  • Bookroom
  • Media center
  • Online resources (Ebsco, Reading A-2)
  • Leveled readers, articles
  • Magazines (Time for Kids, Highlights)

6-8 Teacher Behavior:

  • Reading, writing, speaking, listening across content areas
  • Build a foundation for using a variety of formats and content when choosing text
  • Pair fiction and nonfiction to get a deeper understanding of content
  • Teach reading strategies to attack informational text
  • Becomes facilitator of the world; tour guide of text/world.

6-8 Student Behavior:

  • Learn to discuss (speak & listen) text
  • Read teacher and self selected literature and informational text
  • Summarize informational text using key words
  • Compare/contrast fiction and nonfiction pieces
  • Build stamina and engagement with text
  • Independently choose reading strategy to decode//comprehend text

6-8 Resources

  • paired fiction and nonfiction text
  • exemplar texts
  • magazines
  • newspapers
  • speeches
  • poems
  • Paideia seminars
  • informational databases
  • Socratic seminars
  • Short stories

9-12 Teacher Behavior:

  • research to find informational text
  • balance the use of informational and literary text
  • pair informational text with literary text
  • guide students through different types of informational text
  • provide graphic organizers to dissect to informational texts
  • design text-based questions to use with informational text

9-12 Student Behavior:

  • Examines informational text and continues to learn the different strategies used to read and analyze different types of informational text
  • Uses informational text to build background knowledge for literary texts
  • Uses graphic organizers to dissect texts
  • Learns to analyze informational texts
  • Increases vocabulary through involvement in informational texts
  • Discusses, writes about informational texts

9-12 Resources

  • New York Times Learning Network
  • Newspapers
  • Atlantic Monthly
  • Magazines
  • Web 2.0 tools
  • The New Yorker
  • NCWIse Owl
  • EBSCO
  • Expert Space
  • NC Live
  • ClasScape
  • The Big 6 for research

Shift 2: Building Knowledge in the Disciplines

K-5 Teacher Behavior:

  • Choose increasingly challenging texts across the curriculum
  • Making content relevant and rigorous
  • Explicitly modeling reading strategies, thinking aloud
  • Providing multiple opportunities for learning
  • Scaffolding of learning progressions
  • Planning and collaborating vertically

K-5 Student Behavior:

  • Reading increasingly challenging texts
  • Building background knowledge and making connections, inferences, etc…
  • Using multiple reading strategies
  • Giving students choice and voice
  • Advancement/progress
  • Writing about learning
  • Evaluating and analyzing
  • Collaboration with peers

K-5 Resources

  • Professional Development
  • Visit model classrooms/districts
  • Foldables-online resource
  • Technology
  • Rich content-specific texts
  • Primary and secondary resources
  • Time…prepare, create, collaborate, etc

6-8 Teacher Behavior:

  • Choose increasingly challenging texts
  • Scaffolding
  • Providing connections across curriculum/disciplines
  • Planning and working in grade level teams

6-8 Student Behavior:

  • Reading increasingly challenging texts
  • Showing advancement in reading skills
  • Transferring knowledge and reading skills in multiple disciplines
  • Making connections between disciplines

6-8 Resources

  • Professional Development
  • Visit model classrooms/districts
  • Foldables-online resource
  • Technology
  • Rich content-specific texts
  • Primary and secondary resources
  • Time…prepare, create, collaborate, etc

9-12 Teacher Behavior:

  • Collaborating vertically
  • Sharing literacy strategies between disciplines
  • Providing opportunities for ownership and student investment

9-12 Student Behavior:

  • Increasing ability in each grade level
  • Use common literacy strategies across disciplines
  • Investing in the learning/literacy process

9-12 Resources

  • Professional Development
  • Visit model classrooms/districts
  • Foldables-online resource
  • Technology
  • Rich content-specific texts
  • Primary and secondary resources
  • Time…prepare, create, collaborate, etc

Shift 3: Staircase of Complexity

K-2 Teacher Behavior:

  • Develop unit study
  • Have specific goals in mind for ELA, Sc, SS (any relevant content area)
  • Select grade level appropriate fiction and nonfiction texts
  • May deal with small excerpts or pieces of literature
  • Develop central questions that create thoughtful responses
  • Ask students to clarify answers, give proof
  • Choose vocabulary carefully

K-2 Student Behavior:

  • Feel safe about going out on a limb
  • Lots of sharing, talking interaction
  • Read and reread for same or different purposes.
  • Share proof
  • Involved in writing activities-interactive, shared
  • Make connections

K-2 Resources

  • Video streaming
  • “expert” visit class
  • adequate number of textual resources of fiction and nonfiction

3-5 Teacher Behavior:

  • thoughtful planning with goals in mind
  • integrated unit of study with variety of texts from many genres, appropriate complexities
  • scaffolding-teacher asking open-ended questions with multiple students answering questions

3-5 Student Behavior:

  • Participate in rich discussions
  • Orally and in writing, compare/contrast/analyze/synthesize
  • Students encouraged to read/reread to find proof in text

3-5 Resources

  • Opportunities to build knowledge/experiences
  • Fieldtrips, video streaming
  • Visits from experts (ex. Soil scientist to discuss soil)
  • Wide variety of appropriate texts

6-8 Teacher Behavior:

  • Selecting purposeful text
  • Provide resources for students to explore text
  • Provide open ended questions related to the text
  • Support Socratic Seminar
  • Model respectful discussion behavior
  • Facilitate discussion

6-8 Student Behavior:

  • Identify unknown vocabulary
  • Summarize text frequently (after a few lines)
  • Question word choice of author
  • Infer author’s purpose and meaning from what is stated versus from what is omitted
  • Delve into historical/social importance, relevance, and significance
  • Read and re-read

6-8 Resources

  • Have selected text
  • Make prepared open ended questions
  • Have knowledge of historical background
  • Have knowledge of the text
  • Have a goal in mind of where the focus will go

9-12 Teacher Behavior:

  • Create text based questions
  • Provide Socratic style discussion
  • Students do most of the talking

9-12 Student Behavior:

  • Read and re-read
  • Consider purpose of word choice-pay attention to the thoughts/interactions they have with the text

9-12 Resources

  • Current articles/Editorials/photos/images
  • Classic/Grade level appropriate text
  • Planning time to collaborate with faculty.

Shift 4: Text-Based Answers

K-2 Teacher Behavior:

  • Model everything (write/ teach and train)
  • Lay the foundation
  • Plan ahead
  • Know where to find the answers
  • Guide students back to the text
  • Ask for evidence
  • Model
  • Monitor for connectedness
  • Read across the curriculum
  • Write about what you read

K-2 Student Behavior:

  • Deep conversations
  • Re-reading
  • Explaining the text to others
  • Developing habits for citing texts
  • Speaking and writing across the curriculum
  • Write about what you read

K-2 Resources

  • Text
  • Expectations
  • Rubric for assessment
  • Guiding questions
  • Word work
  • Multiple resources
  • Professional development
  • Technology
  • Time

3-5 Teacher Behavior:

  • Plan ahead
  • Know where to find the answers
  • Guide students back to the text
  • Ask for evidence
  • Model
  • Monitor for connectedness
  • Read across the curriculum
  • Write about what you read
  • Re-write descriptive feedback
  • Let go
  • Scaffold
  • differentiation

3-5 Student Behavior:

  • Deep conversations
  • Re-reading
  • Explaining the text to others
  • Developing habits for citing texts
  • Speaking and writing across the curriculum
  • Student to student descriptive feedback
  • Student inquiry of texts

3-5 Resources

  • Text
  • Expectations
  • Rubric for assessment
  • Guiding questions
  • Word work
  • Multiple resources
  • Professional development
  • Technology
  • time

6-8 Teacher Behavior:

  • Let go more
  • Give choices of texts

6-8 Student Behavior:

  • Write like an investigator and read like a detective
  • Listen like “yo mama”

6-8 Resources

  • texts
  • above grade level texts
  • interdisciplinary units/studies
  • relate to literature

9-12 Teacher Behavior:

  • Let go completely
  • Write for life
  • Less is more
  • Less kum-ba-ya and more cite to text
  • Balanced informational and literary texts
  • Fewer words and the webs around them
  • Synthesize ideas across multiple texts
  • In many ways there’s just reading

9-12 Student Behavior:

  • Deep conversations
  • Re-reading
  • Explaining the text to others
  • Developing habits for citing texts
  • Speaking and writing across the curriculum
  • Student to student descriptive feedback
  • Student inquiry of texts

9-12 Resources

  • Text
  • Expectations
  • Rubric for assessment
  • Guiding questions
  • Word work
  • Multiple resources
  • Professional development
  • Technology
  • time

Shift 5: Writing from Sources

K-5 Teacher Behavior:

  • Modeling the 3 types of Writing-not just the narrative
  • Providing quality mentor texts of informational, persuasive, and narrative texts
  • Using the anchor standards, gade standards for planning instruction
  • Scaffolding students with writing skills throughout the day

K-5 Student Behavior:

  • Writing across the curriculum
  • Using text resources to support writing
  • Synthesizing the information from multiple sources for writing
  • Using facts to support ideas in writing
  • Researching
  • Writing in different modes, not just the narrative

K-5 Resources

  • Great short, rich mentor texts
  • Professional resources to support teachers with instructional planning
  • Primary sources
  • Professional development on how to teach informational and argumentative writing
  • Writing Instructional Guides from District

6-8 Teacher Behavior:

  • Modeling /asserting/defending/combining/gathering
  • Scaffolding
  • Establishing real purposes
  • Increasing choice of complex text
  • Providing grammar and mechanics in context
  • Less talking, more writing

6-8 Student Behavior:

  • Asserting
  • Defending
  • Conveying experiences
  • Choosing words based on audience
  • Combing kinds of writing
  • Using technology to create, refine and collaborate
  • Gathering information, evaluating resources and citing material
  • Meeting deadlines
  • Making improvements
  • Writing about topics that matter

6-8 Resources

  • Quality professional development
  • Exemplars
  • Primary and secondary sources
  • ELO’s
  • Online writing instruction

9-12 Teacher Behavior:

  • Set higher expectations
  • Model
  • Learn how to effectively write for multiple purposes (argue, persuade, convey)
  • Scaffolding with differentiation
  • Infuse grammar with direct instruction for basic knowledge as needed (blended model)
  • Cross Curricular Writing Focus (based on content area)

9-12 Student Behavior:

  • Write arguments
  • Support claims
  • Convey ideas, concepts, and information thorugh the selection of sources
  • Write with precision, accuracy, and clarity
  • Research to answer questions or solve problem
  • Synthesize Multiple Sources “Write like an investigative reporter
  • Investigate
  • Form opinion
  • Persuade
  • Example Activities: RAFT, Authentic Writing (real world),Research/Graduation Project,Partner Writing

9-12 Resources

  • Professional Development (modeling/cross curricular writing)
  • Exemplars
  • AP Teachers and instructions (D B Qs)
  • Primary and Secondary Sources
  • Online Writing Instruction
  • DCS Essential Learning Outcomes

Shift 6: Academic Vocabulary

K-5 Teacher Behavior:

K-5 Student Behavior:

K-5 Resources

6-8 Teacher Behavior:

6-8 Student Behavior:

6-8 Resources

9-12 Teacher Behavior:

9-12 Student Behavior:

9-12 Resources