Literacy Standards: A New Opportunity to Teach Reading and Writing in Every Classroom

When I first began to examine the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), I was thrilled to see that an entire section was dedicated to literacy. During my elementary education undergraduate study, as an English major I had accepted the idea that reading and writing reigned in the realm of language arts classes and traveled across the curriculum only as silent tools, present but seldom addressed. But now, in the CCSS Literacy Standards, suddenly literacy steps up front and center in every subject area. Literacy standard titles indicate the breadth of their applicability. (To see their full text, click the link below and go to pages 61-64.)

Reading for literacy in history/social studies, Grades 6-12
Reading for literacy in science and technical subjects, Grades 6-12
Writing for literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects

In earlier blogs, I’ve alluded to both the excitement and trepidation that these literacy standards may generate. Teachers of all kinds might catch a new vision of cross-curricular collaboration through shared standard language, but non-language arts teachers might also experience anxiety as they wonder how to take reading and writing to a new level in their specific subject content.

In order to consider how the CCSS literacy standards might infiltrate diverse subject areas, we need to first understand the CCSS anchor standards. One might say that the CCSS language arts structure begins with anchor standards. There are ten reading anchors and ten writing anchors. Each of the ten reading anchors sprouts one grade level version for every grade from kindergarten through 8th grade, and grade-span versions for 9-10 and 11-12. The same is true in writing.

The same ten reading anchors and ten writing anchors also serve as anchors for literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Not a word is changed. Thus, the CCSS anchor system can literally bind together all reading and writing across the entire curriculum.

We should note one distinction between K-5 and 6-12. Reading and writing anchor standards do apply to all grades K-12, and every K-8 grade or high school grade span does have its matching grade-level version. In contrast, literacy standards begin with grade 6. This is because as the CCSS language arts team crafted the literacy standards, they assumed that literacy was already fully integrated throughout elementary subject area lessons.

Therefore, 6-12 non-language arts teachers can look to the literacy standards for guidance, while K-5 teachers must review the regular CCSS reading and writing anchors and be careful to incorporate them into lessons across their curriculum.

In the interest of keeping blogs relatively short, I don’t want to delve into literacy within any one subject area here. However, I hope to come back to this in upcoming blogs. In the meantime, your comments regarding the literacy standards, especially as to how you plan to use them are welcome.