Unlike most previous state standards, the Common Core State Standards require an integrated approach to lesson development in which teachers build students’ competence toward multiple standards simultaneously. As an example, the teachers’ four-week unit focused on the following standards in reading literature (RL), writing (W), speaking and listening (SL), and language (L):
• Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. (RL.9–10.2)
• Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation. (W.9–10.7)
• Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively. (SL.9–10.1)
• Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. (L.9–10.5) (NGA & CCSSO, 2010a, pp. 38, 46, 50, 55)
The purpose of the team’s common formative assessment was to determine if students could draw evidence from a short piece of text to support their analysis. Teachers asked the students to read the preface from Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (Hillenbrand, 2010). The passage recounts a scene from the life of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic athlete whose plane was shot down over the Pacific in 1943. On their twenty-seventh day floating on several rafts that had been tied together, he and his wounded colleagues clung to life, while the sharks circled. The sound of a plane overhead briefly raised their hopes, which quickly turned to horror when they realized it was a Japanese bomber attacking them. Zamperini and the men hurled themselves into the water to escape the machine gun fire. Believing the bomber had left, they dragged themselves back into the one surviving raft, but the bomber returned to attack once more, and the other men were too weak to go back in the water. Zamperini alone went overboard. The passage ends with a cliffhanger: “the sharks were done waiting. They bent their bodies in the water and swam toward the man under the raft” (p. xviii).
Students were instructed to read the passage, write a brief summary (no more than two hundred words), and then cite two examples from the passage that manifested social or biological selection.
Following the formative writing assessment, the members of the collaborative planning team meet and focus their attention on answering two of the key questions that guide their school’s professional learning community: (1) how will we respond when some students don’t learn, and (2) how will we extend and enrich the learning for students who are already proficient?
“I had lots of kids ask me if they could read the book,” chuckles Rob Mansfield. “Maybe we should add it to next year’s unit.”
Others nod in agreement, and Lauren Harrison, the department chair, invites each of the tenth-grade teachers to share their results. As each speaks, she catalogs the scores on the whiteboard. Mitch Ellison says, “Seventy-two percent of my students scored a 4 or better on our six-point holistic writing rubric. I took a closer look at the papers of those who scored 3 or lower to see if there was any pattern. Within that group, 64 percent had difficulty with citing two examples in the text that supported their claim.”
“Any other patterns?” asks Ms. Harrison. “What troubles did the other students have?”
Mr. Ellison continues, “Here’s where it starts to get a little confusing for me. Broadly, I’d say it’s conventions, but that’s pretty general. I don’t know that I have any useful information that can help the ones who had trouble.”
For the next twenty minutes, members of the team share their results, and Ms. Harrison adds numbers to the chart. They move to problem solving and eventually develop an error-analysis sheet so that each can re-examine the papers of those students who did not score well on the assessment (see figure 1.1). They determine that they will return the papers to these students and ask them to circle errors they found during rereading. The teachers decide that circling alone, rather than correction, is sufficient.
Figure 1.1: Error-analysis form for writing conventions.
Visit go.solution-tree.com/commoncore for a reproducible version of this figure.
“These are first drafts,” says Mr. Mansfield. “If students can notice their errors, we don’t need to reteach it.”
The teachers then use the error-analysis sheet to form groups for reteaching unnoticed errors.
Later, Ms. Harrison comments, “We all had a clear sense of which students would need reteaching on using evidence to support claims, but conventions and mechanics are trickier. The whole class doesn’t need this instruction, but it’s vital for those who do. With this method, we’re getting better at identifying who needs some short-term intervention.”
Conversations like this are possible when teachers have had the opportunity to work together in collaborative planning teams. To teach the Common Core State Standards well, teachers need to collaborate with their colleagues. In doing so, they can ensure learning for all students. It is imperative that collaborative team members work to answer the four critical questions of a PLC as they devote attention to the CCSS (DuFour et al., 2008).
1. What do we want our students to learn?
2. How will we know when they have learned it?
3. How will we respond when some students don’t learn?
4. How will we extend and enrich the learning for students who are already proficient?
In other words, teachers need to plan together, look at student work together, identify needs for reteaching together, trust one another, and ask for help when needed. Figure 1.2 provides a meeting record that we have found useful in helping collaborative teams work together. As part of their overall PLC work, collaborative teams focus on the four critical questions and begin to build a school culture in which student learning drives the discussions of teachers and administrators. In the case of the tenth-grade teachers, the third teacher practice question drove the discussion.
Over time, teams will modify and change this meeting record, but to start, it is likely useful to focus on each aspect of the tool. At the top of the form (“Collaborative Team Meeting Logistics”), teachers record the grade level, the date of the meeting, who was facilitating, and who was in attendance. Given that there are different phases that a collaborative team uses to complete the work, we ask that the team agree on its focus for each of its collaborative meeting times. Importantly, there may be two or more foci during