Writing and the common core

Writing and the Common Core
State Standards
Esther Wojcicki
Founder, Palo Alto High School Journalism Program
California State Teacher Credentialing Commission Teacher of
the Year in 2002.

Discussion topics today

• What are the Common Core State Standards in
Writing and Language Arts?

• The challenge: including non-fiction in the
classroom

• How to meet the State Standards
• requirements in your classroom

• Examples from the real world

Not much has changed in 100 years

• Little or no project based learning
• Lots of worksheets—now online
• Little student control of learning
• Collaboration is seen as cheating

• CHANGE IS IN THE COMMON CORE STATE
STANDARDS

What should school today look
like ?
CREATIVE, INNOVATIVE, EXCITING,
COLLABORATIVE

Teach kids to share
CREATIVE COMMONS

Probably not in a school near you

80% of teachers
LECTURE full-time

Schools today discourage creativity

• TESTS, TESTS, TESTS
• STANDARDIZED CURRICULUM
• SCRIPTED EDUCATION
• WORKSHEETS

All kids have tremendous capacity for
innovation

We educate innovation and creativity out
of them with all the testing and
controlled curriculum

We are educating kids for a future that
we don’t know

We need to teach them to think,
to find information for themselves.
not to memorize useless facts

How do you get creativity into the
schools?

Add project based learning into
the scripted curriculum

Make school RELEVANT

Let them explore and write
about their world

WHY JOURNALISM?

Journalism is the
most effective and authentic project based
learning
for all students

WHY?
It’s real

Why Journalism?

• It ties directly to the Common Core
State Standards

• The Common Core State Standards
can help change the classroom

CCSS---Key Design Consideration

Research and media skills blended into the Standards as a
whole
....students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate,
synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct
original research in order to answer questions or solve
problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and
extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old
and new. The need to conduct research and to produce and
consume media is embedded into every aspect of today’s
curriculum...

WRITING STANDARD

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.10 Write routinely over
extended time frames (time for research,
reflection, and revision) and shorter time
frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a
range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes,
and audiences.

Journalism is research,
primary research

It provides….the ability to gather,
comprehend, evaluate, synthesize,
and report on information and
ideas, to conduct original
research….

WRITING STANDARD

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.7 Participate in shared
research and writing projects …

Come up with a story idea

Pay attention to
what is happening
in the world around you

ability to gather information...

How to Search
intelligently
on the web

JOURNALISM MEANS INTERVIEWING

Students need to know how to interview, how to
ask good questions, how to do primary
research. Students learn by doing…(John
Dewey)

WRITING STANDARD

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.3.3 Write narratives to
develop real or imagined experiences or events
using effective technique, descriptive details,
and clear event sequences.

Example: PERSONALITY FEATURE

At the beginning of the school year, have
students interview each other and write a
personality feature (profile) about each other

The NY Times Learning Network has
100s of resources supporting
the teaching of journalism

Personality Seventh grade was when it all started. The
feature song “Careless Whisper,” by George Michael,
hooked Orion into the musical world, and kept
lead by 9th him there. With its catchy melody by his side,
Orion was able to excel at alto saxophone, and
grader find a supportive group of friends that share
similar interests as him.

“It’s the song that got me into music.” Orion
says, when referring to “Careless Whisper”. He
and his friends have been playing that song for
several years now, and it still holds a special
meaning for them. Orion described how he
and his five other band friends played Careless
Whisper after band practice one day. “We
played it over and over,” he said. “We even got
some of the teachers to come out and dance!
Our friends came out and walked with us and
they talked, and we just kept playing.”

Other people to interview
• Adminstrators
• Teachers
• Student leaders
• Parents
• Grandparents
• Community members
• Business people

JOURNALISM MEANS PUBLISHING

Top Three and Free ways to publish

Blogger
WordPress
Tumblr

JOURNALISM is Opinion Writing.
It ties to CCSS

• All kids are opinionated starting at birth…by
the time they are in elementary school they
want to run the show.

• Give them an opportunity to write about
something they care about and be
independent

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.1 Write opinion pieces in
which they introduce the topic or name the
book they are writing about, state an opinion,
supply a reason for the opinion, and provide
some sense of closure

MY THREE DAUGHTERS—MY FIRST
CLASS—VERY SELF DIRECTED

PARENTS ARE A CHILD’S FIRST
TEACHERS

• They are also the most influential of all the
teachers.
• Parents are part of the educational team

MY PHILOSOPY WITH MY CHILDREN

• Trust
• Respect
• Independence
• Collaboration
• Kindness

WORKS IN THE CLASSROOM,
TIES INTO CCSS
• It empowers students
• Fosters collaboration
• Helps teachers implement the project based
CCSS curriculum
• Motivates students
• Makes kids feel valued

857 students
drop out every
hour

Reasons for dropping out

• School not relevant to real world
• Feel disconnected to school
• Difficult home life
• Economic issues

Help them feel connected
• Give them a chance to express their ideas
(OPINION WRITING)
• Let them work together in groups (MORE FUN
TO WORK WITH YOUR FRIENDS)
• Have them write everyday about what is
important to them (or react to what is going
on in the world) (USE GOOGLE DOCS TO
SHARE)

EXAMPLES OF STUDENT OPINION
WRITING

• STUDENTS CAN WRITE ABOUT
– Local issues
– Family issues
– School issues
– International issues
– Class issues
– So many topics

WRITING STANDARD

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.2 Write
informative/explanatory texts in which they
name a topic, supply some facts about the
topic, and provide some sense of closure.

NEWS WRITING
Ties to the CCSS

WRITING STANDARD

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.8 Recall relevant
information from experiences or gather
relevant information from print and digital
sources; take notes and categorize information,
and provide a list of sources.

NEWS WRITING
What is News Writing?

• Collecting information and or data
• Distinguishing fact from opinion
• Evaluating sources
• Evaluating information
• Writing it up in the inverted pyramid
format, most important to least
important

You don’t need a dedicated
journalism program

• Opinion writing can be done in an English
class, a social studies class, a science class

• Easiest classes to integrate journalism into is
5th through 9th grade English classes

Book Reviews instead of
Book Reports

Have students read professional book reviews
• Ask them to support their opinions about the
book with examples and quotes
• You can still ask them to evaluate plots,
characterization, theme....
• Have students peer edit using Google Docs
• Publish the reviews in a blog online

WRITING STANDARD

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.5 … focus on a topic,
respond to questions and suggestions from
peers, and add details to strengthen writing as
needed.

WRITING STANDARD

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.6 …..use a variety of
digital tools to produce and publish writing,
including in collaboration with peers

Everything turned in online & shared

From: Key Design Consideration

Standards for 6–12 ELA requires much greater
attention to a specific category of
informational text—literary nonfiction—than
has been traditional.

Key Design Consideration--CCSS
Students need to be proficient in reading
complex informational text independently in a
variety of content areas.

Have kids read the news everyday
• EXAMPLES
– New York Times
– Local newspapers
– Time Magazine
– Atlantic Monthly
– HuffingtonPost
– Many more….

Kids are not afraid of making mistakes

But through schooling we
stigmatize mistakes
By the time they graduate they are
good at memorizing but not
thinking

WHY ???
• Why don’t schools change??

• 1. Schools of education have not changed
• 2. Teachers teach the way they were taught
• 3. Teachers are reluctant to give up any
control to students
• 4. Teachers are given scripted curriculum

Everyone is interested in education

Let’s see if we can make a difference in getting
kids
engaged (not threatened)
in their learning

Let’s see if we can implement the CCSS

Videos to watch
SEARCH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v9yZco8bwI8

The power of Docs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TYPjJK6LZdM

Video at the end
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9PvlEWAr5I

Writing and the common core

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