1. ELA/Literacy Common Core Transition Team Text-Dependent Questions
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ELA/Literacy Common Core Transition Team Text-Dependent Questions

2. Our Goals
Study and implement best practices aligned with the Common Core State Standards.
Teach from lessons learned in the classroom, so that we have credibility and authenticity with others.
Reflect and collaborate with colleagues in creating units and lessons that can be replicated.
Serve as leaders in the district and school with Common Core implementation.

3. A Reminder: Basics are Essential!
Before we can take on the daunting task of creating assessments that mimic PARCC proto types, we must understand and embrace the basics of instruction and best practices built around the Common Core Standards. This is essential for our cadre members to become teacher-leaders in the field of the Common Core Standards.

4. Table Talk
What challenges did you face in looking for text in your content?
What did you learn from the text complexity analysis?
What resources did you discover that would be helpful to others? Please post the resources on the appropriate chart paper.
Turn in your texts at conclusion of group talk.

5. Analysis of a Common Core Lesson
Read silently the lesson entitled, “Words We Live By.”
As you read the lesson, annotate and complete the corresponding handout.
Please complete the exercise with integrity. This is an important first step in our work today.

6. Analysis of a Common Core Lesson
What elements of this lesson are unique to anything we have done in education previously?
Based on the text-dependent questions provided in this lesson, how would you define a text dependent question?
How does the teacher set up the initial reading of the text?
What types of questions are suggested for the culminating writing activity (e.g. narrative, expository, argumentative)? Based on these questions, what does the teacher expect the students to learn from this text?
How could a teacher ensure a high level of student engagement for this lesson?

7. The CCSS Requires Three Shifts in ELA/Literacy
Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction
Reading, writing and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational
Regular practice with complex text and its academic language
The shifts are a high-level summary of the biggest changes signified by the adoption of the CCSS.
They represent the most significant shifts for curriculum materials, instruction, student learning, and thinking about assessment. Taken all together, they should lead to desired student outcomes. Communicate the shifts to everyone who will listen! Everyone working in your school and district should have a solid understanding of the shifts required in both ELA/Literacy and Mathematics. They are a great starting point for learning about and understanding the CCSS.
You can test any message or effort regarding the CCSS against these touchstones. From state, district, school, or classroom – how does X support the ideas of the shifts.
They are meant to be succinct and easy to remember.

8. Time – In and Out of the Text
More instructional time spent outside the text means less time inside the text.
Departing from the text in classroom discussion privileges only those who already have experience with the topic.
It is easier to talk about our experiences than to analyze the text—especially for students reluctant to engage with reading.
1st bullet – The shifts require experience within the text – building knowledge primarily through reading, using evidence that can only be found in text, and exposure to academic vocabulary found in those very texts.
2nd bullet – For example, reading about tornadoes, then asking students to talk about a time when they were in a tornado only allows the students who have had this experience to engage. The expectations outlined by the CCSS are requirements for ALL students. By grounding the discussion in the text itself, all students are given an equal opportunity to engage. The text becomes a shared experience in learning about any topic.
3rd bullet – As texts and reading becomes challenging – it’s easier for students to disengage with the text and go to what they know (or think they know based on their experience.) Requiring students to persevere through difficult text builds critical reading muscles.
4th bullet – Those reading muscles are what students will need to be successful in college and career – reading difficult subject matter or technical job related information without anybody to support them is the critical skill necessary for success.

9. Text-Dependent Questions...
Can only be answered with evidence from the text.
Can be literal (checking for understanding) but must also involve analysis, synthesis, evaluation.
Focus on word, sentence, and paragraph, as well as larger ideas, themes, or events.
Focus on difficult portions of text in order to enhance reading proficiency.
Can also include prompts for writing and discussion questions.
TDQ’s should not require background knowledge (stores of background knowledge can be added to by collecting the evidence from the text to further build knowledge, or can be tapped into to make meaning of the text.)
Questions that involve analysis, synthesis, evaluation actually point towards the most difficult parts of text. Literal question do not.
TDQ’s will drive the CCSS in the classroom if questions are asked about words, sentences, paragraphs, big ideas, themes, relationships, etc.
TDQ’s are an opportunity to address the academic (tier two) vocabulary and syntax that are features of complex text – the features that make text difficult for students.
This means that good questions actually make students stronger and more capable readers.

10. Three Types of Text-Dependent Questions
When you're writing or reviewing a set of questions, consider the following three categories:
Questions that assess themes and central ideas
Questions that assess knowledge of vocabulary
Questions that assess syntax and structure

11. Non-Examples and Examples
Not Text-Dependent
Text-Dependent
In “Casey at the Bat,” Casey strikes out. Describe a time when you failed at something. In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King discusses nonviolent protest. Discuss, in writing, a time when you wanted to fight against something that you felt was unfair. In “The Gettysburg Address” Lincoln says the nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Why is equality an important value to promote?
What makes Casey’s experiences at bat humorous?
What can you infer from King’s letter about the letter that he received?
“The Gettysburg Address” mentions the year According to Lincoln’s speech, why is this year significant to the events described in the speech?
Text-dependent questions require students to pay attention to the text at hand and to draw evidence from that text.
What does this look like in the classroom?
Teachers insist that classroom experiences stay deeply connected to the text on the page and that students develop habits for making evidentiary argument both in conversation, as well as in writing to assess comprehension of a text.
Students have rich and rigorous conversations and develop writing that are dependent on a common text.

12. Creating Text-Dependent Questions
Step One:
Identify the core understandings and key ideas of the text.
Step Two:
Start small to build confidence.
Step Three:
Target vocabulary and text structure.
Step Four:
Tackle tough sections head-on.
Step Five:
Create coherent sequences of text-dependent questions.
Step Six:
Identify the standards that are being addressed.
Step Seven:
Create the culminating assessment.
This is not a formula – not every text will require the same process. These are guidelines.
Questions that directly address difficult sections of the text help with breaking down complexity. Help student to extract and create meaning where they otherwise wouldn't.
How many questions is enough? It varies from text to text.
Check “alignment to the standards" last, but use the language of the standards in the questions as much as possible.
Over the next few slides we’ll see examples of text dependent questions that address various features of the text.
Refer to the handout – “Long Guide to Creating Text Dependent Questions”

13. Core Understanding and Key Ideas
Reverse-engineered or backwards-designed
Crucial for creating an overarching set of successful questions
Critical for creating an appropriate culminating assignment
Clarity your own understanding regarding the core understanding, themes, and key ideas, so it can serve as your guidepost for creating questions. A coherent sequences of text dependent questions will lead students towards understanding these ideas for themselves.
In literature the core understandings and big ideas can focus on the theme, interactions of characters, events in the story, important events, or any other features that are central.
In informational texts the core understandings and big ideas can be closely aligned to the important ideas, the author’s purpose, claims, or arguments.

14. Vocabulary Which words should be taught?
Essential to understanding text
Likely to appear in future reading
Which words should get more time and attention?
More abstract words (as opposed to concrete words)
Words which are part of semantic word family
secure, securely, security, secured
By teaching your students the meaning of a word that is the member of a larger family of related words, you are given them the power to learn many words from a focus on one.
Little in reading is better documented than the links between word knowledge and successful reading and learning outcomes.Concrete words are mastered much more quickly than are abstract words. Academic words are far more likely to be abstract and will need as much attention as you can provide. These words are also the ones that students are likely to encounter over and over again.

15. Syntax and Text Dependent Questions
Syntax can predict student performance as much as vocabulary does.
Questions and tasks addressing syntax are powerful.
Example:
Who are the members of the wolf pack? How many wolves are in the pack? To answer this, pay close attention to the use of commas and semi-colons in the last paragraph on pg The semi-colons separate or list each member in the pack.

16. Structure and Text-Dependent Questions
Text-dependent questions can be crafted to point students’ attention to features of text that enhance understanding (such as how section headers and captions lead to greater clarity or provide hints regarding what is most important in informational text, or how illustrations add to a narrative).

17. Structure and Text Dependent Questions
Examples:
“Look at the illustrations on page 31. Why did the illustrator include details like the power outlets in the walls?”
“Dillard is careful to place opposing descriptions of the natural and man-made side-by-side. How does this juxtaposition fit with or challenge what we have already read? Why might she have chosen this point in the text for these descriptions?”
Text structure can be addressed through text dependent questions.
See the examples in the slide.

18. Reading Strategies and Text-Dependent Questions
Text-dependent questions generally call on students to employ reading strategies.
Strategies are no longer taught in isolation.
The text and readers’ need to comprehend it should determine what strategies are activated - not the other way around.
The text itself is the driver for what strategies would logically be employed to comprehend it fully. Text dependent questions and tasks need to be created in such a way that they activate the reading strategies that would be useful and appropriate to solve some comprehension challenge the text presents. Reading strategies are taught in service to the reader's comprehension of the text.
In fact, the major reading strategies are contained in the Reading Standards 2 -9 for both literature and informational text. Other high value strategies such as comprehension monitoring and rereading for understanding are activated throughout the process of answering the questions because the demand for text evidence pushed the reader back to the text and constantly asks for a check on understanding.
If participants are getting stuck on this point - since it represents such a shift from current practice, it may be useful to take the anchor standards for reading and either name each one for the group or ask people to work in small groups to do it for themselves.
This should help reassure teachers that by creating questions that are aligned with the standards they will get frequent opportunities to have students practice using reading strategies and can build in their customary teaching and modeling of strategies into those same organic opportunities.

19. Increased Ability to Use Text Evidence Increasing Range and Complexity
Bands
11-CCR
9-10
6-8
4-5
2-3
K-1
Standard One
Standard Ten
Bands
11-CCR
9-10
6-8
4-5
2-3
K-1
Standards Two through Nine
Increased Ability to Use Text Evidence
Increasing Range and Complexity
Standard 1 – use of evidence, and standard 10 – appropriately complex text and the range of text called for at each grade level should accompany the other standards. They are always present on the K-12 continuum, but they themselves are not standards that drive question making. The search for text evidence should activate key strategies such as re-reading and monitoring for comprehension, but more specific strategies are present when standards 2-9 are present in the questions.
Good text dependent questions will always keep reading standards two through nine in play. Which standards in particular depends on the text at hand.

20. Culminating Tasks Should relate to core understanding and key ideas.
A coherent sequence of text dependent questions will scaffold students toward successfully completing the culminating task.
Example:
“The title of this selection is ‘Because of Winn-Dixie.' Using your answers from the questions above and class discussion, explain why this is an appropriate title for the selection. Be sure to clearly cite evidence from the text for each part of your answer.”
“Officer Buckle’s final safety tip is 'ALWAYS STICK WITH YOUR BUDDY.' How did he and Gloria each learn this lesson for themselves throughout the story?”
Standards aligned culminating tasks must be text centered since they take more time than any other individual part of the work with the text.
If done well, the sequence of questions, and students' notes from discussion and written answers to them, should provide lots of raw material for developing a solid response to a culminating writing assignment or other appropriate ending activity. This is another way text dependent questions provide scaffolding that will help students build their capacity to approach complex and challenging text independently.

21. The Common Core Lesson Plan
Briefly review the Common Core State Standards for your discipline .
What elements must be present in a Common Core lesson plan?
Make a list on chart paper in your group.
Be prepared to share with everyone.

22. Creating Your Own Common Core Lesson
In your group, identify a text all of you are willing to teach within the next month.
Plan a 2 day lesson that includes the essentials of a Common Core lesson.
The electronic template may be used as a guide for the creation of your lesson.
Once your lesson is complete, your group members will implement the lesson and return with supporting materials for next time.
Send an electronic copy of your group’s lesson to Kathy.