Read On & Better

The focus of our March 15 Inservice day was to continue our learning about informational text from the Common Core State Standards. We have embraced the responsibilities of implementing the Common Core as a professional study; we believe that teaching well means engaging in the continual process of studying students and their work in order to strengthen teaching and learning. We know new levels of literacy are required in the information economy of today, and a much stronger emphasis is needed on higher-level comprehension skills - that higher-level comprehension matters, that critical reading and and analytical thinking matter. Our day complemented the work that we have done in faculty and team meetings throughout the year -learning about teaching our students how to handle text of increasing complexity.

Reading informational text standards:

Reading informational texts for key ideas and details:

• Reading closely and making logical inferences
• Reading to determine central ideas and themes
• Reading to analyze how individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text

Reading informational texts for craft and structure:

• Reading to interpret the language used in the text
• Reading to analyze the structure of the text
• Reading to assess the author's point of view and how it shapes the text

Reading informational texts to integrate knowledge and ideas:

• Reading to integrate knowledge and ideas and think across informational text

These standards are rigorous and the teachers are looking at all Units of Study to embed them so that students become proficient readers of informational text.