Tag Archive: Things Fall Apart

A Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core — Part 2 — Complex Texts

April 4, 2013

All-Quiet-Western-Front-Common-Core

Should students be required to read texts chosen by the teacher?

Recently, I posted an overview of the non-freaked out approach to the Common Core that I’ve been experimenting with in my ninth grade world history and comp/lit (ELA) classes during the last year and a half or so. In this post (Part 2), I’m going to dive into the what, why, and how of getting students to read, appreciate, and grow through grade-appropriate complex texts.

What are complex texts and why do they matter?

If you’ve been hearing “complex text” phraseology thrown around like crazy lately, it’s because one of the central shifts that the Common Core promotes is the idea that, instead of only giving students books that are within their zone of proximal development (“just right” books), we should be asking students to read texts that are appropriately complex for their age.

(Check this out if you’re wondering how “complexity” is defined by the Common Core.)

This doesn’t mean the CCSS are opposed to things like choice reading or book love; rather, it stems from one of the central arguments in the research appendix (namely, that the average complexity of assigned reading in high school has been decreasing over the years, while the average complexity of required reading in college/career settings has been increasing).

Now, there’s more than one way to tackle this Common Core shift. In this post, I’ll primarily be sharing the approach I’ve chosen, but I’ll end by addressing some common questions and an alternative approach that I learned of recently during a PD led by Penny Kittle. Read the rest of this entry »

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Common Core R.CCR.9 Explained

July 7, 2012

R.CCR.9–that’s the ninth College/Career Readiness anchor standard within the Reading strand of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA / Literacy–reads as follows:

Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

There are two key teacherly tasks in preparing to teach this standard.

Choosing multiple related texts

For R.CCR.9, texts can be related topically or thematically. Let’s look at a few examples of how this might look:

TOPICALLY LINKED, MULTI-GENRE

For example, when reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, my ninth grade students and I also examine Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” and this coming school year I’m going to add open letters to and from King Leopold II during Belgium’s imperial heyday (taken from The Human Record: Sources of Global History since 1500, by Andrea Overfield).

Altogether, these texts will consist of various genres, and some of them will contain starkly contrasting themes, but they will all topically deal with colonization and imperialism around the turn of the 20th century.

TOPICALLY LINKED ARTICLES

All right, so maybe their slogan is a bit over the top, but this is still my #1 resource for finding R.CCR.9 articles.

For finding multiple related articles about the news and issues of today, I haven’t found a better resource than The Week. This news magazine is totally free and totally awesome. I’ve heard it described as the Reader’s Digest version of the Wall Street Journal, and I can see why: every day, The Week posts articles that summarize the various takes on a given hot topic.

Some examples from today’s articles:

Basically, you could call R.CCR.9 the anchor standard proudly sponsored by TheWeek.com. (And no, they don’t pay me to say that; they should, but they don’t).

THEMATICALLY LINKED, MULTI-GENRE

But let’s say you’re interested in having students explore thematic relationships between texts. I did something like this last year when I taught John Knowles’ A Separate Peace. Our guiding question for our reading of the book was, “Is Gene evil, or did he simply do an evil thing?” This got us thinking and talking about the theme I wanted students to explore: are humans basically evil, or are they basically good people who do evil things?

Unfortunately, this unit fell right before winter break, so I did not have time to develop it as fully as I would have liked. However, if I had, here are some ideas of texts that could have linked thematically with our study of A Separate Peace:

  • Looking at the writings of various Enlightenment thinkers on human nature
  • Looking at an article or excerpts from Freud dealing with the id, ego, and superego
  • Studying a current events case that relates to our thematic driving question, such as the George Zimmerman / Trayvon Martin tragedy

Choosing the purpose of your text comparisons

The other half of this standard deals with two purposes for analyzing multiple texts: either to build knowledge or to compare the approaches authors take.

TO BUILD KNOWLEDGE

In the colonialism/imperialism example above, my purpose for analyzing all of these related texts has nothing to do with the authors’ approaches, but it has everything to do with helping my student build knowledge (remember, building knowledge is one of the six big “shifts”that the CCSS calls for).

I love that the CCSS makes the vital connection between reading multiple sources and building knowledge. This is the only way my students can truly understand the complexities and the dark underbelly of colonialism; they need to get elbow-deep in the grime of multiple, conflicting texts.

TO COMPARE AUTHORS’ APPROACHES

On the other hand, it’s also valuable to compare how different authors approach a given topic. This looks like a job for–insert superhero music–TheWeek.com! Because journalists provide such a wide array of tacks toward the same topic, articles are a great method for achieving this purpose.

I also fantasize about having my students read not only Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but also Orwell’s 1984. It would be amazing to have students compare each author’s approach satirizing the direction that they saw their worlds moving toward.

Just get started

As I contemplate each anchor standard, I keep coming away with the strong impressions that, first, these are doable and valuable, and, second, they aren’t difficult to start trying.

That’s the key; just start.

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Common Core R.CCR.6 Explained

June 30, 2012

R.CCR.6–that’s the sixth College/Career Readiness anchor standard within the Reading strand of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA / Literacy–reads as follows:

Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

In other words, how does where a writer or narrator is coming from (point of view) and going towards (purpose) affect what he/she writes (content and style)?

How does point of view shape a text?

Point of view–or, where the text is coming from–is worth time in the classroom if the time goes beyond teaching point of view as just another lit term. Asking students to identify whether A Separate Peace is written in first-person or third-person point of view is mundane; questions like these don’t answer a “So what?” What if point of view related questions looked more like these?

  • In Knowles’ A Separate Peace, an adult Gene tells of his years at Devon. Yet, considering Gene’s deep involvement in the story’s key conflict, is Gene a reliable narrator? Give evidence to support your answer.
  • In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, there is a sudden shift between the narrator’s point of view in Chapter 12 and in the two-paragraph epilogue that ends the book. What does this shift mean? Is this shift an effective way to end the novel, in your opinion?
  • In Sallinger’s Catcher in the Rye, what problems does Holden Caufield’s narration present to the reader? How does Holden’s narration contribute to the style of the novel.

Questions like these provide a critical way for approaching point of view, and students 6-12 are ready to engage in this type of thinking with the proper scaffolding. Kids want to do more than identify whether a story is first- or third-person; they want to analyze, discuss, and argue about the complex issues that point of view brings up. This is what R.CCR.6 is getting at.

While point of view in literature provides one stream of interesting material, it provides even greater opportunity for discussion when considering informational texts.

Point of view and purpose in informational texts

Whether reading informational texts in the ELA classroom, analyzing documents in history class, or reading articles in a science class, understanding the interconnectedness of point of view and purpose are integral for R.CCR.6 and for life as an intelligent adult.

For example, let’s consider a series of documents in The Human Record: Sources of Global History since 1500, by Andrea Overfield:

  1. “Agreement between Charles D. Rudd, et al., and Lobengula, King of Matabeleland, 1891,” (308-309)
  2. “Letter of King Lobengula to Queen Victoria,” (309)
  3. “George Washington Williams, Open Letter to King Leopold II of Belgium, 1890,” (310-312)
  4. “King Leopold II, Open Letter to the Officials of the Congo Free State, 1897,” (313-314)
  5. “Ndansi Kumalo, His Story, Reflections of an African Warrior,” (315-317)*

Simple questions will get students ready to consider point of view, purpose, and these five documents as a unified whole:

  • Who wrote this? How do you know?
  • What was the purpose of this document? How do you know?
  • E.g., In Document 2, the purpose is seek justice for the deception of Document #1. King Lobengula is informing Rudd’s Queen of the deceptive conditions under which Lobengula signed Rudd’s “agreement”
  • How do point of view and purpose shape the style of each of these documents?
  • E.g., Williams is writing to his friend, who also happens to be a powerful king, but he is extremely disillusioned by the difference between Leopold’s claims about the Congo and what actually is happening there; thus, his style is fascinating: he is both humble and bold, repeatedly calling Leopold “your majesty” but also brutally honest about the despicable conditions in the Belgian Congo.
These types of questions are great fodder for both discussion and writing. They beg the use of textual evidence, which could tie into two of the “Six Shifts” (“Text-based Answers” and “Writing from Sources”). As is often the case, once you get an overall grasp of the standards you will find that you’re hitting a lot of the specific standards without even knowing it.

*These primary source documents would allow for interesting study in a world history unit on imperialism, but they also provide excellent framing for an ELA classroom preparing to read Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

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