Organizing
We realized as we studied the state’s benchmarks they were not organized neatly. When the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) wrote Language Arts standards they divided them into the usual writing, reading, and listening/speaking. But within each of those categories there were other useful divisions. For example in reading, McREL has a standard that includes benchmarks around general skills and strategies of the reading process. These benchmarks include previewing text, setting a purpose, making predictions, decoding, vocabulary, etc. There is also a standard that focuses on benchmarks for literary text and one for informational text.
Besides those divisions we thought about typical areas of instruction that should be taught in a reading or writing class. For example, we listed word study (which included phonemic awareness, phonics, word analysis, vocabulary, and spelling), fluency, and comprehension as important elements to be taught in reading. We broke comprehension down into comprehension skills (e.g., cause and effect) and literary analysis (e.g., character development). We talked about how comprehension skills could be used in literary or informational text but the literary analysis benchmarks would only be used when studying narrative text.
In writing, we divided the benchmarks into the writing process (and strategies). Besides teaching students that writing is a process, we wanted to include benchmarks that referred to strategies that might be taught to help writers use the process more efficiently. For example, a teacher might teach students to brainstorm as a pre-writing strategy. To teach students to organize their thoughts for a narrative story, the teacher might teach students to use a story map. In addition to the writing process, we made a category for writer’s craft (e.g., voice, organization, sentence fluency, etc.) and conventions (e.g., capitalization, punctuation, grammar usage, etc.)
As the old adage says, there was method to the madness. I have visited hundreds of classrooms across the country and in many of them I see important parts of the reading and writing process being left out. I can’t tell you how many teachers have shared that their students’ fluency skills are holding them back, yet in these same teachers’ classes I have seen no evidence of fluency instruction. Therefore, while studying the benchmarks I wanted teachers to see that it is imperative to teach word study, fluency, reading strategies, comprehension skills, and literary analysis. As we all know, kids don’t learn what we don’t teach them. In the same vein, I also believe that teachers don’t teach what they haven’t planned and haven't created a way of assessing. (If you are a reading teacher, do you intentionally collect data/grades for word study, fluency, and comprehension? If you teach writing, do you collect data/grades for writing process, conventions, and writer's craft?)
Discoveries
We discovered while analyzing the benchmarks that the state had said a lot about which genres students should be able to read and write in different grade levels. We thought this was a good jumping off point to align the reading and writing curriculum. For example, if students were studying informational text, it would be a good idea for them to learn to write a “how-to” or an expository piece. We discussed how text from the reading curriculum could also be used in the writing class. In addition, we talked about how teachers could be intentional about other aspects of instruction. For example, when teaching students about the structures of informational texts in a reading class, teachers need to intentionally connect this instruction in the writing class - writing instruction that is focused on organizing information.
Pacing Guides
The work we did with genres turned out to be a good starting point to put together our pacing guide (We determined that a pacing guide is a list of the benchmarks that would be covered before and between the schools' benchmark assessments.) We had a conversation that certain benchmarks went better with specific genres. Therefore, we could start with a genre and align naturally fitting benchmarks. For example, if a class is studying historical fiction, the study of setting is really important. When teaching narrative writing, dialogue and the mechanics around dialogue should be included. In the end teacher put together a list of benchmarks aligned to genres for each portion of time before and between benchmark assessments. However because of our analysis, teachers were sure to include benchmarks from each strand for reading (word study, fluency, reading strategies, comprehension skills, and literary analysis) and writing (word study, writing process, writer’s craft, and conventions). Let me hear your comments.
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