Strategic Content Literacy Assessment (SCLA) ELA PD March 2016

Agenda Discuss and Create Assessments for Learning: Cognitive Strategic Content Literacy Assessment (SCLA)

SCLA Provides students with an opportunity to become engaged with a common representative content area text Students are asked to respond to several cognitive tasks representative of the kinds of thinking found in the discipline.

What Does a SCLA Measure? Cognitive Processes Connection to prior knowledge Summarization of the text Differentiation between important and unimportant information Drawing inferences Making connections within the text Vocabulary Metacognition

How Does It Work? Select a short piece of text and create 4-6 questions to elicit targeted cognitive processes. Introduce passage and task to students, asking the students to read and circle unfamiliar words as they go along. Create a scoring guide for the class and record data for each student.

How Does It Work? Look for patterns in students’ performances: Which tasks did most students perform well? What common difficulties appeared? Use the data to inform instruction. A teacher might select one or two strategies, unfamiliar vocabulary items, or subject area concepts as goals for subsequent teaching. Adaptations may need to occur for ELLs such as limiting what they read, allowing diagrams and drawing for most responses, or inviting ESL teacher to work with a small group of students to facilitate ELLs responses.

Sample SCLA Text: Excerpt from Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX(the law that changed the future of girls in America) Identify the cognitive process you used to read the text. Identify the cognitive processes being measured.

Creating a SCLA Take out the text you brought along with you. Think about the cognitive processes you want to measure. Generate 4-6 Cognitive Processing Questions you want to ask your students. Share your text and a couple of questions, identifying the cognitive process being measured.

Scoring Rubrics Scoring guides can vary, depending on cognitive process measured and the discipline. Use the rubrics to look for patterns and weaknesses among students. Create mini-lessons to be used in guided literacy groups.

Closing SCLA is a formative assessment to use in addition to what you are already doing. They are not graded for correctness, but they are assessed for appropriate cognitive processing.

Submit your SCLA to me by Friday. Final Thoughts Questions? Submit your SCLA to me by Friday.