A group of teachers and literacy experts from all over the country gathered together with their laptops, pens, and paper to rewrite the influential collections of big-name basal readers. These readers play a significant role in how millions of children in the U.S. learn literacy skills. Teachers from as far as San Diego and Anchorage traveled to a workshop, bringing with them the teacher’s editions of nine popular basals, such as Trophies, Reading Street, and Treasures. The educators, representing 18 school districts in 11 states, came together in response to the Common Core State Standards for English/language arts. These standards require students to improve their understanding and analysis of various texts, and teachers must assist them in achieving this objective.
The workshop was sponsored by two organizations with a vested interest in the implementation of the new standards: the Council of the Great City Schools, based in Washington and representing large urban districts, and Student Achievement Partners, a New York-based nonprofit whose founders played a key role in developing the English/language arts standards. Both organizations recognized that in order to align with the expectations of the standards, teachers need to ask different types of questions than those suggested in the teacher’s editions of popular basal readers. Since many districts lack funding for new textbooks or have not adopted new ones yet, the organizations decided to bring educators together to create new questions for their existing materials. The Basal Alignment Project aims to create a free online repository that will contain a collection of teacher-written, text-dependent questions and tasks that require students to analyze the text further.
More workshops are planned, with one taking place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on May 7-8. Student Achievement Partners has already created a guide to crafting text-dependent questions, which is available on their website. However, most participants at the Baltimore workshop, including literacy coaches, curriculum officials, and English-learner specialists, were just beginning to explore this concept.
David Liben, a former teacher and principal from New York City who is now a senior literacy specialist with Student Achievement Partners, and played a role in writing the common standards, emphasized that the purpose is not to belittle the basal readers. Instead, the aim is to acknowledge that they were designed for different standards. However, he criticized them for focusing too much on simplistic vocabulary and providing questions that students can answer without actually reading the text passages.
Upon analyzing the proposed questions provided in the teacher’s editions, the educators discovered that many of them prompted students to reflect on their emotions or personal experiences without requiring them to refer to the reading passage. For instance, one question asked, "Can you describe a severe storm that you have encountered?" Another inquired, "How do you feel when you are unable to engage in your favorite activities?" The participants immediately recognized the opportunity to revise these questions. Suzanne Takeda, a language arts specialist at the Los Angeles Unified School District, remarked, "These questions do not necessitate reading the text to formulate a response. However, if we shift the focus from ‘your’ experience to Charlie’s experience, they would become text-dependent questions rather than text-to-self questions." Another question entailed predicting Charlie’s actions once the power was restored. Martina Henke, a language arts coordinator from Anchorage, stated that such a question encouraged students to contemplate Charlie’s character and what they had learned about him, aligning more closely with the expectations outlined in the common standards.
As the group analyzed other materials accompanying the Charlie McButton poem, including a suggested summary of its central theme, they encountered an example demonstrating how basals tend to guide teachers in tackling the more challenging aspects on behalf of the students, essentially leaving no room for alternative ideas or interpretations. The suggested summary conveyed the notion, "By venturing into new activities, we can usually discover something we enjoy doing." Rachel Etienne, a literacy specialist from Student Achievement Partners cited this as an illustration of how the current approach often prevents students from generating their own ideas or interpretations of the text.
In an effort to revamp their approach, the educators utilized the guidelines provided by Student Achievement Partners to craft new questions that adhered to the standards, while also considering alternative methods to prepare for class discussions. The guidelines urged them to read each passage, create a concise synopsis that clearly stated the main themes, and then revisit the text to develop text-dependent questions. They were encouraged to identify and categorize vocabulary words, as well as devise culminating tasks pertaining to the reading passage, while also compiling a list of the specific standards that would be covered during the lesson. Their development of queries and tasks for each passage was guided by a set of 17 questions. These questions included considerations such as whether every student had to read the text to answer them, if they required logical inferences based on the text, if they were arranged in a coherent sequence that facilitated a gradual understanding of the text, and if the culminating task drew upon the knowledge and comprehension acquired through studying the passage. Some participants welcomed these guidelines as a necessary counterbalance to current practices. Sue Doherty Fetsch, a consultant from Anchorage, remarked, "Do you remember when we used to rely heavily on experiential activities to engage students? Well, the pendulum swung too far in that direction. Experiential activities aren’t inherently bad, but we can’t rely on them as heavily as we have been."
Mr. Liben stated that there are no easy answers to these questions, and Student Achievement Partners believes in letting children try to figure things out for themselves, with the teacher stepping in as needed. However, it is unclear how these new ideas will be implemented in schools.
During a break, LaTisha Bryant, a literacy specialist from Memphis, Tennessee, expressed concern about the challenge of convincing elementary teachers to move away from relying too heavily on their current teaching materials. She also mentioned that teachers might worry about shifting strategies because they want to adequately prepare their students for state tests. She explained that while Tennessee’s assessments are being revised to include more constructed-response items, there are still many items that require "rote memorization."
Pearson, along with other publishers, has been working to align its reading programs with the standards. Nancy Winship, a vice president at Pearson, stated that the company supports initiatives that help teachers and students prepare for the common core. She commended the efforts being made by teachers to understand the importance of text-dependent questions.
However, it should be noted that the versions of "Reading Street" being examined in the workshop have not been updated to reflect the publishers’ criteria issued by Student Achievement Partners. The newest version of the program, which will be released soon, includes revisions to vocabulary instruction and suggests multiple readings of each passage to enhance comprehension. The questions have also been revised with text-dependency in mind.
Robin Hall, the language arts director of the Council of the Great City Schools, explained that the goal of the workshops is to create new questions for popular grade 3-5 reading passages by August, to be used by teachers in the upcoming school year. The project aims to have questions available for all passages from the selected basals by spring 2013. The workshops aim to help teachers gain a shared understanding of the standards and prioritize accessibility for disadvantaged students, English-learners, and special education students.
