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Amanda Weatherly

Common Core Connections


ECI 545
April 1, 2013









Dr. Seuss once stated, The more you read, the more things you will know. The
more that you learn, the more places you'll go. (Dr. Seuss, 1988). Being able to read
and write is the key to success in our society. Literacy is the door of opportunity that
determines how far a person can travel in life. As a teacher, one of my greatest
opportunities and challenges is to guide children through the reading and writing
process so that one day they will be able go any place they choose. The expectations
for twenty-first century learners are increasing exponentially. As a result, teachers are
having to refine and critique their instructional approach in order for students to be
successful in their next academic endeavor. By examining different theories of how
students develop into conventional readers and writers, teachers can incorporate a
variety of strategies into their lessons. Thus, making the material accessible to a larger
number of students. This paper examines my development as a literacy instructor and
describes how I incorporate different strategies and techniques into my lessons to
prepare students for the future.
The Theory of Literacy Development, created by Holdaway, greatly impacts my
philosophy of reading instruction. In order to read, students must master Concepts
About Print (CAPS) and emergent reading strategies. These contain topics such as
directionality, spacing, using phonemes to stretch out words as well as using pictures. I
use Holdaways four processes of literacy development to model essential skills and
reading strategies with my kindergarteners. According to Holdaway, reading is a natural
process where children mimic the adults in their lives (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). As part

of this theory, parents are the primary models for reading. In my classroom, I try to
serve as a parent model for those children who do not have literate parents nor
parents who model reading at home (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). One modeling strategy
Holdaway recommends incorporating is the use of big books during shared reading
experiences to engage and guide students through the four processes of literacy
development (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). Shared readings, especially with big books,
create a comfortable environment for students and gives each child the opportunity to
access the material while feeling successful. In my classroom, we follow a structure
similar to Holdaways four processes of literacy development.
First, my students observe me modeling the appropriate reading strategy for the
day using big books. Then, I give them an opportunity to practice using the skill with my
support and encouragement. This means I have students come up to the book and,
with appropriate scaffolding, model to the other students the strategy we are working
on. Sharing the experience makes students feel as though they are teaching others and
invests them in the reading experience. After modeling, the book is put in our classroom
library so that students can independently practice. Often times, I notice children will
pretend to teach each other the strategy during independent reading time. Giving
students an opportunity to independently critique and refine their reading skills without
adult observation creates a sense of empowerment and a desire to master the skills
taught. When a child feels confident using the strategy, he or she performs the skill
during guided reading or buddy reading.
While Holdaways theory was originally developed for literacy instruction, I guide

my students through the same four processes in other content areas as well such as
math and writing. From my teaching experiences, I have observed that children
naturally want to mimic adults in their lives. Using Holdaways Theory of Literacy
development in the classroom, I can facilitate a natural series of steps that children
progress through to become masters of their own learning.
In addition to Holdaways theory, I use Skinners Theory of Operant Conditioning
to guide my students through the process of becoming conventional readers. Skinners
program learning creates a series of instruction that is broken down into small,
successive steps that are carefully designed to maximize the likelihood of students
success, and to minimize the likelihood of students frustrations and failures (Tracey &
Morrow, 2012). My kindergarten team has created a strategic curriculum map that
aligns with Skinners program of learning to ensure that a childs prior experience does
not become a factor in determining whether he or she can become a great reader.
Each behavioral objective or target behavior is modeled and practiced with the use of
a reward to create a positive environment and a desire to continue the modeled
behavior (Tracey & Morrow, 2012).
Building independent reading stamina in kindergarteners is an important
objective emphasized in the Common Core. Incorporating the chaining aspect of
Skinners theory has helped make my students feel successful throughout their
independent reading development (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). Before interacting with
books for the first time, the students and I created a checklist of behaviors good readers
exhibit. Initially, I had them read for one minute independently; then, they were

rewarded for displaying any form of the behaviors we listed on our Good Readers chart.
As the school year progressed, their expected reading time gradually increased. The
time was initially broken into smaller chunks, so that students were able to slowly build
their stamina in order to be more successful.
Furthermore, I implement Skinners behavior management technique, known as
shaping, to reward my students for reading independently. In the beginning, any
reading behavior they exhibited was rewarded (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). Now, my
expectations are much higher so they are rewarded for only displaying the exact desired
behavior. Thus I have manipulated the schedule of reinforcement to gradually refine my
students reading behaviors (Tracey & Morrow, 2012).
Skinner and Holdways theories have played a significant role in my teaching
style and the delivery of literacy instruction. Through professional development
opportunities, literature, and graduate courses, I have explored other instructional
theories. I have broadened my instructional approach to incorporate the use of these
different theories with the intent of reaching more students. Bronfenbrenners four
circles of influence, which is part of the Sociocultural theory, is one of the new theories
that has recently impacted my literacy planning.
The Sociocultural theory focuses on how ones past and present culture affects
cognitive reasoning. One of the leading theorist, Bronfenbrenner, studied how the
different layers of culture impact a childs development (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). He
developed the four concentric levels of influence and explained how these four spheres
collaborate to affect ones identity.

Thus far in my teaching, I have primarily focused on my students microsystem,


immediate environment, and mesosystem, the layer of interaction between the two
microsystems (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). I emphasize the importance of positive
interpersonal relationships between a childs two primary microsystems, home and
school, to create a cohesive mesosystem. In order to broaden my teaching, I am
incorporating Bronfenbrenners third circle of influence, the exosystem, into my literacy
instruction. A childs exosystem includes local, national and worldwide events (Tracey
& Morrow, 2012). While the child might not have direct interaction with this sphere, the
social interactions from our culture impact development. I am tapping into this sphere
through literature in order to improve my students comprehension.
Choosing read alouds, both fiction and nonfiction, about different cultures and
events helps children make connections between their lives and the outside world. By
exposing them to other cultures and events, I am helping them create new schemas
which ultimately affect a childs comprehension. According to Tracey and Morrow, the
Schema theory is important to the acquisition of new knowledge (Tracey & Morrow,
2012). Richard and Pearson further elaborate in their article, A Schema-Theoretic
View of Basic Processes in Reading Comprehension, that the interaction between
existing knowledge and new knowledge is the meaning of comprehension (Anderson &
Pearson, 1984). I want to assist my students in creating, modifying or restructuring their
schema to include new vocabulary and experiences related to the world around them.
Then they will be able to use this new knowledge to comprehend books they read in the
future. According to the book, Reading to Learn in the Content Areas, a readers world

knowledge and specific knowledge of a topic play a crucial role in the comprehension
process (Richardson, Morgan, & Fleener, 2012 ) Making students aware of their
exosystem, will help them acquire new knowledge and use that knowledge to construct
meaning from a text. For the Common Core Connections project, my partner, Carmen,
and I wanted to experiment with the application of the Sociocultural theory by making
students aware of their exosystem.
In kindergarten, we are currently focusing on community and the environment.
Carmen and I wanted to choose books that would integrate social studies with reading,
writing, speaking and listening. Our first text, titled My Community by J. Jean
Robertson, was a simple non-fiction text. According to Appendix A of the Common
Core, this text has a single level of meaning, explicitly stated purpose, and clear,
concise language (Appendix A, 2010). We used this book to build background about
community helpers and expose students to content vocabulary such as community, mail
carrier, and librarian. While this book does not discuss events and ideas in a worldly
context, students must be aware of their immediate surroundings before they can
connect to things happening in their exosystem.
During this lesson, we focused on students referencing the text to support their
answers. The text was structured to give readers clues describing a particular
community helper and then the author identified the helper described at the end. In
order to force students to focus on the words and not the pictures, I would read each
page and then show students the picture afterwards. This forced students to visualize
and predict the helper based on the words. While we asked a mixture of lower and

higher order thinking questions, all questions required the students to support their
answer with the text. We used further questioning such as, How did you know that?
and What evidence from the text made you think that? to scaffold students to further
elaborate on their answers.
In addition, the lesson integrated speaking and listening objectives from the
Common Core. After I read each community helper description, I would have students
turn and share their prediction with a partner and explain why they thought the author
was describing that helper. Giving students an opportunity to process and share
information in a small group helps them build confidence and gather ideas before talking
to the whole class. In my classroom, the students are paired heterogeneously so that
students who need additional support work with those who have strong comprehension
and language skills. During turn and talk time, I walked around to listen and sometimes
scaffold the groups. I observed that some students were able to incorporate content
vocabulary and reference the text without prompting. Other students needed my
support by referring them back to the text and sometimes using sentence starters such
as A mail carriers job is to... to help them verbalize their thoughts.
We integrated technology into the lesson by showing students a Smartboard
slideshow in conjunction with reading the book. On each page of the slideshow there
was a different picture of the same community helper being read about in the book.
For example, the mail carrier in the book was a female and the image on the
Smartboard was of a male mail carrier. The purpose of these images was to give
students another visual of that helper in order to broaden their schema. At the end of

the lesson, we used the Smartboard as a graphic organizer to record information


learned from the book. The students had to recall and summarize information from the
text and use their own personal experiences to create a description of each helpers job.
After reading the book, we used a graphic organizer on the Smartboard to
informally assess students comprehension of the book. Most students were able to
summarize information from the book and use their personal experiences to explain the
different jobs each helper has in the community. The assessment was differentiated so
that all students with varying comprehension levels could participate and feel successful
in the activity. One part of the activity was reading the name of the community helper
written on the Smartboard. Another portion was to match a picture of the community
helper to the word and then paraphrase each helpers job. The Smartboard
assessment and my observational notes informed me that the lesson successfully
activated some students prior knowledge and began building background for others. In
addition, I was able to identify a few students who still need more support referencing
the text.
After reflecting on the lesson, I feel as though all of my students either added to
their current schema or they created a new schema about people in the community.
The purpose of the lesson was for students to gain an understanding of the definition of
a community helpers and be able to describe the different jobs some helpers have.
Most of my students were able to reference the text to support their answers without
prompting but some needed additional scaffolding to help them find evidence. My
English language learners, were not able to elaborate further on their answers due to

lack of language. However, the lesson and the book did help those students make
connections to helpers in our community and begin to build new vocabulary. For our
next lesson, Carmen and I chose a book that required students to integrate their
background knowledge of people and places in our community with those around the
world.
The second text, Be My Neighbor by Maya Ajmera and John D. Ivanko, was
much more complex than the first book according to Appendix A of the Common Core.
This text has multiple levels of meaning, complex themes, and incorporates multiple
perspectives (Appendix A, 2010). The book features headings about different aspects
of the community such as Places to Play. The photographs in the book illustrate a
variety of communities portraying different perspectives related to each heading. In
addition, the book introduced students to new vocabulary words like neighborhood. We
used this book to bring students awareness to other communities and help scaffold
them to make comparisons between our own community and those around the world.
In order for the students to be able to make connections between communities,
we had to activate their prior knowledge about the people and places in our community
of Carrboro. We began the lesson with pictures showing different aspects of Carrboro
displayed on the Smartboard. These images were of places we had visited on field trips
and people whom we have read about or interviewed about their jobs. Activating
students community schema before reading the book was crucial in helping them
comprehend this complex text.
During the read aloud, I would read each heading and then ask students to use

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the text and graphics to compare how the communities featured are similar and different
to ours. In order for students to make comparisons, they had to recall prior
experiences, analyze the information in the book and synthesize all of their knowledge.
We incorporated turn and talk into this lesson to give students a chance to articulate
their own thoughts as well as hearing those of others before sharing with the whole
class. Most students were able to easily explain how our community was different than
those in the book, but identifying similarities was more challenging. In contrast to the
first book, the students mainly used the pictures as evidence to support their answers. I
guided the students to reference the text by asking them What words from the book
made you think that?.
If I were to teach this lesson again, I would have students listen to the text
before showing the pictures. This would force them to use the text as evidence. I have
noticed that when students are shown the pictures during the reading, they tend to
focus solely on the visuals instead of the words. According to the book, Text
Complexity: Raising Rigor in Reading, young children attend to print 3-7% of the time
and spend more time looking at the pictures (Fisher, Frey & Lapp, 2012).
A challenge of this lesson was to help students grasp the abstract concept of
distance and how that can affect a culture. Students in kindergarten are in what Piaget
would identify as the Preoperational stage of development. In this stage, students ages
two to seven have very concrete thinking (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). To help students
understand how far away some of the places in the book are from our community we
used Google Earth. Each time a new community was introduced, we would fly to that

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location on the map. The students began noticing that to reach some of the places we
had to travel very far and sometimes across the ocean. They also observed that some
places in the book were located near the water which is different than our community.
Google Earths interactive mapping component not only helped students grasp distance
but also make comparisons between each communitys physical features.
After reading the book, we assessed the students comprehension by having
them write about people and places in the community. In kindergarten, the Common
Core says students should be able to recall information and provide sources to answer
questions (National Governors Association, 2010). Before students started writing, we
brainstormed places and people in the community and I wrote them on chart paper.
This gave students a source of information to use during the assignment. In addition,
brainstorming insured everyone understood the assignment and had an idea of what to
write about. Our list included places and people from our community as well as those
mentioned in the book proving that students comprehended the complex text and were
able apply the knowledge in a different context.
Overall, the book Be My Neighbor brought awareness to the outside world and
described the similarities and differences between people around the world live. During
this lesson, the students struggled more to provide textual evidence when answering
questions than they did with the first book. However, the idea of a world beyond
Carrboro is still very abstract to kindergarteners. The pictures from the book provided
more of a concrete reference and made it easier for them to comprehend. Whether the
students used pictures or words as evidence, everyone understood that the world does

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not look just like what we see in Carrboro.


After having taught both lessons, the second text was much more challenging for
students to comprehend, which was to be expected due to its increased complexity.
While I read complex fiction text to my class often, I was surprised by how many more
students struggled with the non-fiction books. Most of my students were able to apply
the strategies they use to comprehend fiction books, such as visualizing, to the simple
text, My Community; however, they relied heavily on the pictures during the second,
more complex text. Thus, I need to read more non-fiction, complex texts and model to
my students the same strategies we use to comprehend fiction books. Using
technology in both lessons made students more engaged in the activities. Overall, both
lessons were successful in scaffolding students to find evidence to answer text based
questions and analyze information to make connections.
The Common Cores objectives require more rigorous learning and thinking than
the previous State Standards. Students are tasked with finding evidence, reading and
comprehending more non-fiction literature and processing complex texts. However,
even though the standards have increased demand, literacy theories created long
before are still applicable and provide students with best instructional practices. During
both lessons, I applied strategies from Holdaways Theory of Literacy Development to
guide my students through comprehending the simple and complex text. First, I
modeled thinking aloud to help build metacognitive awareness and accountable talk.
Then I gave students an opportunity to practice using the comprehension strategies and
accountable talk with my guidance and support. While some students quickly

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understood how to analyze a text, find evidence, and communicate their ideas
effectively, others will need more modeling and practice before mastering the
objectives.
The Common Core and literacy theories have meshed well in my classroom and
have helped a majority of my students become successful. The strategies
recommended by the different theories are easily adaptable for any lesson. While some
are no longer applicable, like the Whole Language theory, most were developed based
on good teaching practices for all learners. As a teacher, I am not struggling with
presenting information to my students, I am struggling to teach all the standards by the
end of the year. It has been a challenge for me to integrate multiple standards into one
lesson and still effectively model each objective. Kindergarten is a foundational year for
children and the strategies taught during this year are crucial for the development of
further learning. Most children need explicit instruction with multiple opportunities for
modeling and practice. Sometimes, combining more than one objective in a lesson can
be too confusing and complicated for students to understand. My kindergarten team is
working to integrate multiple objectives into lessons while maintaining strategies and
teaching practices outlined by literacy theories.
Throughout my year of implementing the new standards, I continue to be amazed
by how young students are rising to the standards expectations. Last year I taught first
grade and it was my responsibility to teach students how to find evidence to support
their answers. Kindergarten focused more on making self to text connections and
building background knowledge. Before implementing the Common Core, I questioned

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how children so young would respond to such a rigorous curriculum, but I have seen
first hand that children rise to our expectations. This year all my kindergartners are able
to support their answers with either textual or visual evidence. I have learned that
children of any age can be taught strategies and skills with the support of quality
teaching practices and the guidance of a knowledgeable educator. This assignment
has made me more aware of childrens cognitive development and different strategies I
can implement in the classroom to help them go any place they choose.
References:
Anderson, R. C., & Pearson, P. D. (1984). A schema-theoretic view of basic processes
in reading comprehension. In Handbook of reading research (p. 255). New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Council Of Chief State School Officers, & National Governors Association Center For
Best Practices. (2010). Appendix A. In Common core (pp. 5-6). Washington, DC:
National Governors Association Center For Best Practices. Retrieved from
http://moodle.wolfware.ncsu.edu/file.php/33996/ELA_Appendix_AAppendix_A_5_-1.pdf

Dr. Seuss. (1988). Oh, the places you'll go! New York: Random House.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Lapp, D. (2012). Text complexity: Rising rigor in reading.
Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

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National Governors Association Center For Best Practices. (2010). Common core
standards. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards

Richardson, J. S., Morgan, R. F., & Fleener, C. E. (2012). Assistance in learning. In
Reading to learn in the content areas (pp. 79-82). California: Wadsworth.

Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2012). Lenses on reading. New York: The Guilford
Press.

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