Common Core State Standards Symposium

Common Core State Standards Symposium

Offered by UCLA Center X: Transforming Public Schools

Saturday, September 29th, 2012

8 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Session 1 Workshop: What Can I Do About the Common Core in History? (K-12)
Information taken from Lisa Hutton's PowerPoint:

• "The standards establish a 'staircase' of increasing complexity in what students must be able to read so that all students are ready for the demands of college- and career- level reading no later than the end of high school."
• Major Instructional Shifts in ELA: 1.) Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction, 2.) Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from text (evidence, close analytic reading, and text dependent questions), and 3.) Regular practice with complex text and its academic language.
• How is it related to History-Social Science: connect with History-Social Science analysis skills (historical thinking); staying focused on reading, talking, and writing using evidence from texts (add more text-based tasks); reading multiple sources or texts including primary and secondary sources
• Goal is to "Read like a historian..."
• History-Social Science lessons: Standards --> Big Idea/Concept --> Inquiry Question --> Text/Source #1 --> Text/Source #2 --> Text/Source #3 --> Culminating Task --> Evaluation.

Helpful websites:
http://sheg.stanford.edu/
http://http://beyondthebubble.stanford.edu/
http://www.achievethecore.org

Session 2 Workshop: Text, Prompt, Student Writing: Models for Teaching and College-Ready Learning (9-12)
Given by Faye Peitzman (UCLA)
UCLA Writing Project: http://centerx.gseis.ucla.edu/writing-project

• "What does 'college-ready' look like? The UC's Analytical Writing Placement Exam (AWPE) provides useful models of texts that are complex, but rich and well-written; writing prompts that demand analysis, but offer respectable leeway for crafting responses."
• Analytical Writing: "Analytical writing ... is not a different scheme for writing at all; it is writing with a particular purpose and attitude. That purpose is not simply to describe experience or arrange information in various configurations, but to explain the significance which that experience or information has for the writer and to propose that it should for the reader. Analytical writing extends the gathering and transmitting of information into the dimension of drawing inferences, values, and applications from it. That is why the ability -- and willingness -- to think and write analytically is a prerequisite for all university work." -- From Teaching Analytical Writing, p. xviii

Session 3 Workshop: Evaluating Sources: Common Core and Non-Fiction Texts (6-12)
Given by Daniel Buccieri, NBCT/UCLA Writing Project Fellow

Best workshop of the day for me!!! Used "The Boston Massacre" as a sample lesson.

Common Core Reading Standards:

• Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
• Identify aspects of a text that reveal author's point of view or purpose.
• Analyze the relationship between a primary source and secondary source on the same topic.

Common Core Writing Standards:

• Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
• Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events...
• Write narratives to develop real experiences using effective technique, relative descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.