Developing Core Literacy Proficiencies, Grade 7

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• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781119192572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Enseignement des langues

The Developing Core Literacy Proficiencies program is an integrated set of English Language Arts/Literacy units spanning grades 6-12 that provide student-centered instruction on a set of literacy proficiencies at the heart of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

• Reading Closely for Textual Details
• Making Evidence-Based Claims
• Making Evidence-Based Claims about Literary Technique (Grades 9-12)
• Researching to Deepen Understanding
• Building Evidence-Based Arguments

The program approaches literacy through the development of knowledge, literacy skills, and academic habits. Throughout the activities, students develop their literacy along these three paths in an integrated, engaging, and empowering way.

Knowledge: The texts and topics students encounter in the program have been carefully selected to expose them to rich and varied ideas and perspectives of cultural significance. These texts not only equip students with key ideas for participating knowledgeably in the important discussions of our time, but also contain the complexity of expression necessary for developing college- and career-ready literacy skills.

Literacy Skills: The program articulates and targets instruction and assessment on twenty CCSS-aligned literacy skills ranging from "making inferences" to "reflecting critically." Students focus on this set of twenty skills throughout the year and program, continually applying them in new and more sophisticated ways.

Academic Habits: The program articulates twelve academic habits for students to develop, apply, and extend as they progress through the sequence of instruction. Instructional notes allow teachers to introduce and discuss academic habits such as "preparing" and "completing tasks" that are essential to students' success in the classroom.

The program materials include a comprehensive set of instructional sequences, teacher notes, handouts, assessments, rubrics, and graphic organizers designed to support students with a diversity of educational experiences and needs. The integrated assessment system, centered around the literacy skills and academic habits, allows for the coherent evaluation of student literacy development over the course of the year and vertically across all grade levels.

UNIT 1

READING CLOSELY

FOR TEXTUAL DETAILS

DEVELOPING CORE LITERACY
PROFICIENCIES

GRADE 7

“We reckoned now that we were at the Pole”

GOAL

In this unit you will develop your proficiency as an investigator of texts. You will learn how to do the following:

1. Examine things closely (images, videos, websites, and texts).
2. Ask and use questions to guide your close examination.
3. Find the key details—clues—that tell you something.
4. Make connections among those details.
5. Use those connections to develop an observation or conclusion.

TOPIC

In this unit, you will learn about polar exploration and read texts written by some of the most famous explorers of the North and South Poles. You will discover that the first party to reach the South Pole was actually involved in a “great race” to get there with another exploration party from a different country. You will encounter images, videos, and websites that tell you more about polar expeditions and read what are called historical narratives—true accounts written by explorers about their experiences. You will also read a short story that will help you feel what it might be like to try to survive in extreme cold, as explorers must do.

ACTIVITIES

You will start by examining two photo collages to develop your skills of looking closely for key details, then work on these same skills with a video and websites. When you read, the details you look for will be things such as key information or statistics, explanations, and mental pictures the author creates through images and sentences. You’ll also look for important words that you need to understand because they tell you something about the topic and how the author views it. You will learn how to use questions the way an expert investigator does—in this case to dig deeply into what you are seeing or reading. Those questions will also guide the discussions you will have with other students and your teacher. From your investigation of the texts, you will come to your own understanding of the topic of polar exploration—which you will then share with others through a final written explanation and a discussion you will lead.

READING CLOSELY FOR TEXTUAL DETAILS LITERACY TOOLBOX

In Reading Closely for Textual Details, you will begin to build your Literacy Toolbox by learning how to use the following handouts, tools, and checklists organized in your Student Edition.

HANDOUTS

To support your work with the texts and the tools, you will be able to use the following informational handouts:

Reading Closely Graphic

This graphic helps you understand the relationship among the various steps you will follow as you use questions to read a text closely: approaching, questioning, analyzing, deepening, and extending.

Guiding Questions Handout

This handout organizes a set of good, general questions to use when you are reading any text—called Guiding Questions. The questions are organized in rows that match the questioning process in the Reading Closely Graphic (approaching, questioning, analyzing, deepening, and extending) and also by four areas that we often pay attention to when we read a text.

Attending to Details Handout

This handout presents descriptions and examples of the kinds of details you might look for as you read a text, for example, facts and statistics, explanations of things, images and wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to the Core Literacy Proficiencies: Becoming a Literate Person
• Unit 1: Reading Closely for Textual Details: “We reckoned now that we were at the Pole”
• Unit 2: Making Evidence-Based Claims: “We organized!”
• Unit 3: Researching to Deepen Understanding: Water: Why is it so valuable?
• Unit 4: Building Evidence-Based Arguments: “Doping can be that last 2 percent“
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