Pathways to the Common Core, Chaps. 1-5

Wow.  These first five chapters have inspired a lot of different emotions in me.  Someone call TFA, because this book is #TRANSFORMATIONAL!

These first five chapters have challenged me to reflect deeply upon my literacy instruction, specifically my reading instruction.  I can't help but think that according to the standards, I am not teaching reading in a rigorous way.  The first thing that I picked up on was the authors' mention of the fact that "the Common Core deemphasizes reading as a personal act" and "puts aside theories of reader response" and the "text-to-self connections" (Calkins, Ehrenworth, & Lehman, 2002, p. 26, 39).  This hit me hard.  I had honestly never considered how the standards do not prioritize reading as "transactional," as a personal act of engaging with characters and information.  I definitely feel uncomfortable about this, and somewhat defensive.  Although I completely understand the importance of preparing students for critical and analytic reading, I do not think that this requires us to completely depersonalize the act of reading.  Is the analysis that reading requires really what motivates and interests students to start reading?  Do avid readers just love the analysis that some reading requires?  Isn't developing a love for reading "just for fun" important?  It is a false dichotomy to discuss the teaching of reading as either a "personal act" or as an analytic act.  I think that we can achieve both with our students.  I know that it is easier (in my opinion) to teach reading as a personal act, so I personally must push myself to be a reading teacher that prioritizes the development of my students' textual analysis skills.  My reaction also might be a defense mechanism in order to protect myself from feeling like I have failed my students this year.  While that sounds dramatic, I have definitely not prioritized my students' encountering and comprehending of grade-level complex text.  When I was reading about the importance of exposing our students to complex texts, I immediately thought about how this would be possible with my students who are on a first grade reading level, for example.  Although these questions have not been completely answered, I was struck by the truth of this statement: "'All students, including those who are behind, [must] have extensive opportunities to encounter and comprehend grade-level complex text as required by the standards.  Far too often, students who have fallen behind are given only less complex texts rather than the support they need to read texts at the appropriate level of complexity'" (p. 48).  This is a great point, and something that definitely helps me start thinking about ways in which I can provide appropriate scaffolding to my struggling readers.  

The content in these five chapters squared with some of my thinking about the overall view of the Common Core literacy standards.  "So the first notable achievement of the Common Core reading standards is that they distill reading to a single set of nine reading skills that readers can carry across texts and up grade levels.  The second notable aspect of the Common Core reading standards is that these nine skills all require deep comprehension and high-level thinking" (p. 24).  As teachers, we often feel burdened and governed by the number of the standards that we have to teach.  However, the reading standards are meant to be focused on nine reading skills.  This encourages me as I know that I have benefited very much from the 6 main reading strategies that are laid out in Strategies that Work.  Although these strategies are not perfectly aligned to the Common Core standards (a fact that I'm still grappling with), I know that I feel more relaxed and reassured when I think about my role as a reading teacher -- not to teach a thousand different standards that the students need to memorize, but rather flexible strategies and skills that readers can apply to many different situations.

The authors' breaking down of the reading anchor standards has brought my attention to a few practices that are lacking in my instruction -- the constant re-assessing and coaching that students need from me in order to progress in their fluency, comprehension, and analysis.  In this day and age, American teachers are constantly being told about the importance of assessing.  However, the assessing that has been emphasized is obviously the standardized, multiple choice testing that everyone hates.  I think that is the reason why I have never prioritized assessing in my classroom, because I am already required to assess in so many unnecessary ways (in my opinion).  This is extremely problematic, though.  Calkins, et al., directly state that "it is important to reassess often" (p. 45).  They explicitly mentioned the importance of assessing by keeping up with running records or other reading assessments often, and not just once or twice a year.  This is definitely not the first time that I have heard this, but to be honest, I have not prioritized this type of assessment in my room.  I'm realizing that I don't know my students as readers as well as I would like to admit -- I do not know the specific skills and needs of every one of my students.  Even though I pride myself on giving my students multiple opportunities to work together and to engage in discussions about books, I do not give enough attention to the independent growth of each rider.  The rich discussions that we do have about the books that we are reading are either whole-group or in book clubs, and although these are good practices, they do not provide the kind of information that one-on-one conversations with individual readers do.  I'm starting to wonder if my students actually can indeed independently visualize, predict, infer, or summarize, or if they can only do it in a group setting.  This quote was very convicting for me: "We caution that it is not enough to simply do this work in shared experiences such as through read-aloud or whole-class novel discussions -- to many kids hide during that work, and you don't know if they can really do the high-level work on their own, in their independent reading...teachers demonstrating or orchestrating high-level work do not necessarily achieve transference.  You'll want to make sure, therefore, that instruction moves immediately from demonstrating reading skills to coaching students to do this work on their own and giving them feedback as they try it, whether it is in book clubs or independent texts" (p. 68).  I cringe when I think about how sometimes I assume that the work that we do in groups is not being transferred to students' independent reading habits.  I definitely need to start thinking more about how I can facilitate my students' individual ownership of these reading skills, and I need to act more as a coach so that they can feel supported in this process.  To be honest, I'm not sure how to do this, so I hope that I gain more insight as I continue reading this book.