New Challenges in Common Core State Literacy Standards

In my last blog, Common Core State Standards Emphasize Literacy in All Subject Areas, I commended the usefulness of the new Common Core State Standard (CCSS) literacy block. Collectively, these reading-and-writing-in-subject-area-standards define college and career readiness performance skills in three broad realms:

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, Grades 6-12

As I suggested in my earlier blog, while our 2011-12 orientation to the CCSS rolls out and we consider how to apply reading and writing standards per distinct content areas, we will most likely engage in lively, collaborative exchanges among language arts and other subject teachers. Language arts specialists will be able to lend expert advice to subject area teachers, but those teachers will illuminate unique literacy needs in their specific subject content. Although we can anticipate enjoyable discourse, we should also prepare for challenges that lie ahead. As we go through this orientation process, let’s be realistic about literacy standards. We needn’t dread new literacy demands, but we do need to take a good look and thoughtfully plan for success.

With that mindset, consider the following scenario.

At the request of their building principal, a group of high school language arts, social studies, and science teachers gather to examine the new Common Core State Standards in Reading and Writing for Literacy. Since all of these teachers regularly ask students to read and write, they expect their team meeting will quickly affirm that in their building, at least, literacy teaching across the curriculum is an accomplished fact. As the meeting begins, everyone has copies of the three sets of standards listed above, and they are prepared for a quick read.

Team members decide to take turns reading orally until all of the reading and writing for literacy standards and sub-sections have been heard. The reciting commences and quickly transitions to contemplation as each teacher imagines the student who reads specific course content and writes in unique subject contexts with full standard mastery. The room grows more and more quiet. In the stillness following their reading, one teacher comments, “There is a lot here.” Another adds wistfully, “If my students could do all of this….” And finally a third voice speaks softly, “I never have liked to write.”

Therein, lie both the excitement and trepidation surrounding the literacy standards. Because these particular standards stretch way beyond traditional English classes and reach into history, social studies, science, and technical subjects, they effectively pull in teachers of all subjects. Moreover, since content literacy is integrated throughout the elementary standards and independently iterated for grades 6-12, we conclude that in terms of CCSS expectations, literacy is prominently present in all subject areas at every grade level.

No teacher, regardless of personal fondness or lack of partiality for reading and writing, is exempt. (Yes, I do hope that districts include fine arts, industrial arts,  physical education…all subjects.)

Am I suggesting that teaching students to read and write well is new for districts across the nation? Absolutely not! Teachers have long cared about their students’ literacy in specific subject areas. However, the CCSS literacy standards provide a new clarity about these skills and identify a measurable bar by which teachers can evaluate, not only students’ abilities, but their own understanding of reading and writing pedagogy in one context as opposed to another.

This conversation is by no means complete in one blog; in fact, it is barely launched. But I like to keep blogs relatively short. I hope that you, my readers, jump in. Add your musings, your insight, and even your humor as you wish. 

Next time, we'll delve further into the matter of teaching literacy in every classroom, in every subject area.