I M P O R T A N T D A T E S

March 3: 4th grade DRA/SRI 9:00-11:30 in the PDC

March 4: 2nd grade Math workshop 9:00-4:00 in the PDC

March 10: CASL Training, Cohort 2 @ LESA

March 11: HS Social Studies 7:30-2:30 at the HS

March 18: HS Language Arts 11:30-2:00 at the HS

March 19: Curriculum Ad Staff 9:30-11:30 in the PDC

Common Core Parent Night, K-4th grade 6:00-7:30 in the PDC

March 20: Reading Support Meeting 9:00-11:30 in the PDC

March 24: K-6 Math workshop 9:00-3:30 in the PDC

CASL Training, Cohort 1 @ WISD

March 25: 11th grade Language Arts 7:20-10:55 at the HS

March 26: Common Core Parent Night, 5th-6th grade 6:00-7:30 in the PDC

March 31: 7-12 Math workshop 7:30-2:30 in the PDC

H A R T L A N D C O N S O L I D A T E D S C H O O L S

C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R March 2015

Chuck Hughes

Assistant Superintendent

810-626-2114

Dotty Selix

Assistant Director

810-626-2112

Renee Braden

Administrative Assistant

810-626-2107

March 2—March 20: Select 1st graders

CogAT testing

March 4—March 20: 2nd grade

InView testing

Mr. VanEpps talks with parents about the process for

enrolling their children into kindergarten for 2015-16.

Computer Tech David Allward helps our

Hartland Virtual Academy (HVA) students

access their classes on count day.

Page 2 C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R March

Make all your reading thinking intensive…

Mark up the margins of your text with words: ideas that occur to you, notes about things

that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class

discussions or course themes. This kind of interaction keeps you conscious of the REASON

you are reading and the PURPOSES your instruction has in mind. Later in the term, when

you are reviewing for a test or project, your marginalia will be useful memory triggers.

Develop your own symbol system: asterisk key ideas, for example or use an exclamation

point for the surprising, absurd, bizarre. Like your marginalia, your hieroglyphs can help you

reconstruct the important observation that you made at an earlier time. And they will be

indispensable when you return to the text later in the year, in search of a passage or an idea

for a topic, or while preparing for an exam or project.

Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions – “What does this mean?” “Why is he or

she drawing that conclusion?” “Why is the class reading this test?” etc. Write the questions

down (in your margins, at the beginning or end of the reading, in a notebook, or elsewhere).

They are reminders of unfinished business you still have with the text: something to ask

during class discussion, or to come to terms with on your own, once you have had a chance

to digest the material further, or have done further reading.

http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/lamont_handouts/interrogatingtexts.html

So, why wait until college? Obviously kids can’t write in their books, but they can write on sticky notes, in

reader’s notebooks, and on photo copies in preparation for deep conversation and/or other assignments.

Doing this work, in all content areas, To, With, and By ensures greater success for all students.

2014-15 SRI WINDOW

SPRING: 3/2/15 — 5/15/15

4th grade (must be done May 1st -15th) and HS required

Page 3 C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R March

In the article In Step With The New Science Standards

(by Jeff Marshall , Ed. Leadership, Dec. 2014/Jan.

2015) the author shares ways in which the new

science standards will influence the teaching and

learning of science. Mr. Marshall shares that within

the new science standards teachers will need to move

away from lower-order thinking in favor of higher-

order thinking (HCS work with DOK Levels 3-4). The

article makes the connections between the common

core literacy and technical standards (HCS work on

literacy and technology integration) and how all

teachers including science teachers must be willing

to engage students in exploring, studying, and

investigation prior to learning new concepts. The

author shares that while in the end the curriculum is

set by the local district, educators in the classroom

must be provided a more rigorous science experience

for students. This can be done through inquiry-based

teaching which moves away from telling and expects

students to engage in the doing of science.

I enjoyed this article particularly because the author

offers many different strategies and suggestions for

what science might look like in a classroom while

establishing a guide to professional development.

This could come in handy depending on what our

State Board of Education does with the adoption of

the Next Generation Science Standards in late March

or early June.

Authors Linda Griffin and David Ward share how the

Common Core Math Standards require teachers to

truly understand the intent of the standards in order

to “capitalize on teachable moments in ways that

support students’ mathematical understanding and

reasoning” in their article entitled Teachable Moments

In Math (Educational Leadership, Dec. 2014/Jan.

2015). The work we have been doing, 41 district math

teachers, around filling students’ math toolboxes with

multiple strategies has clearly supported this idea. In

today’s math class, teachers must clearly articulate the

standards not only for themselves but also for their

students (HCS work with learning targets “I Can

Statements,” and formative assessment). The authors

share multiple strategies for helping students learn

cardinality (relationships between numbers and

quantities), properties (applying properties of opera-

tions), composing and decomposing (creating or

breaking down), and unknowns (use of variables).

What I liked about this article is how the authors

share that we need to do a better job creating math

problems that require students to use multiple

strategies for solving them instead of providing

problems that all follow the same pattern or formula.

Hey, spice things up for them so that they stay

engaged in the process!

*If you would like copies of these articles please contact Chuck Hughes.

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HELPFUL WEBSITES

http://www.readworks.org/rw/more-articles-videos-black-history-month?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=2.10.14%20BHM

Black history focus

http://www.oakdale.k12.ca.us/ENY_Hmwk_Intro_Math

CC Math Units based on Engaged NY

http://www.azed.gov/azccrs/mathstandards/

CC Math flip charts with standard, math practices, explanations and examples

http://www.readworks.org/rw/new-paired-texts-question-sets?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=2.17.15%20Paired%20Text

Paired text sets for multi-document use

https://wbte.drcedirect.com/MI/portals/mi

M-Step sample assessment questions for ELA and Math

Mrs. Villar teaches a new math lesson to her

2nd graders at Lakes.

Dotty Selix leads 5th grade teachers in

Instructional Round work at Farms.

Mr. Rockefeller leads the Creekside Choir during

Board of Education Appreciation recognition. HHS students hear about the Health Occupations Career

Technology Education program from the instructor and current

students in preparation for choosing classes for 2015-16.

C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R Page 5

C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R March

March is Reading Month! As we celebrate reading this month, let’s reflect on the importance literacy has on the development of

the lifelong learner. The single most important way to ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness is the ability to read. Frederick Douglas said, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever

free” and Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis said, “There are many little way to enlarge your child’s world.

Love of books is the best of all.” They both understood that becoming a literate member of society

ensured an opportunity for a prosperous future.

So, how do we get there and what do the reading levels mean?

We get there by providing time to read and write every day across the curriculum. Here are the

expected reading levels by grade:

End of Kindergarten: D = 4 6th grade: W, X, Y = 60 = 925L - 1070L

End of 1st grade: J = 18 7th grade: Z = 70 = 970L-1120L

2nd grade: J = 18, K = 20, L = 24, M = 28 8th grade: Z = 80 = 1010L-1185L

3rd grade: N = 30, O = 34, P = 38 9th grade = 1050L-1260L

4th grade: Q, R, S = 40 = 740L-940L 10th grade = 1080L-1335L

5th grade: T, U, V, = 50 = 830L – 1010L 11th and 12th grade: 1185L-1385L

You may be wondering why levels matter.

It may seem like students should be reading harder books or at a higher

level. Will they make gains if they read easy texts?

Richard Allington’s research is clear, when students read text they choose at 98% accuracy (1-2 errors

for every 100 words) with phrasing, fluency, and 78% comprehension, their reading proficiency

increases. The reason why students can read easy books and increase their reading proficiency is many

faceted.

1. Understanding the story, interpreting the author’s intent, applying themes and ideas to other texts and

life, analyzing character behavior and motivation require less effort when reading is easy.

2. Easy reading allows readers to develop control over more complex sentence structures. These

structures are more complex than their speaking and writing language. These structures provide the

basis for growth in both speaking and writing vocabulary and sentence complexity.

3. A simple book like "Frog and Toad" (level 18/2nd grade) has more vocabulary in it then an episode of

"Everybody Loves Ramond". Learning new vocabulary during reading is essential to understanding

more complex text at higher levels.

4. Students are able to see patterns in words (spelling patterns), increasing their spelling and word solving

skills because the reading is easy and they are "freed up” mentally to notice spelling patterns,

orthographic features, as well as learn word meanings (ex. word roots).

Page 6 C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R March C U R R I C U L U M N E W S L E T T E R

Students who are allowed to choose easy books to read daily in school and at home, discuss books

with peers and receive one-on-one coaching (conferring) with their teacher will make the most gains.

Learning to read complex text requires teacher modeling, coaching and prompting to ensure quality

comprehension, vocabulary development, fluent phrased reading and the transfer of lessons to the

interpretation of life and people. Students learn how to live through the characters, settings,

problems, and messages in books.

Don’t they need harder books to become better readers? No. Many early readers will substitute nonsense words, mumble through words or skip words at levels

where they have to decode more than 2% of the words (below the 98% accurate). In hard texts,

students often neglect new vocabulary and frequently skip over hard or “tricky” words. When a book

is hard, the student is working so hard on decoding unknown words and understanding new

vocabulary that they are unable to reach higher levels of comprehension or perform tasks at DOK

levels 3 and 4.

Most students can decode words in books once they can read at a 3rd grade level. The challenge is not

to decode hard words, but to understand their meaning as well as the author's intent, character’s traits

and motivations, and link lessons across books and to our lives. Interpretation of text and characters,

author’s purpose and new vocabulary acquisition needs to be done in easy to read books during the

school day with a teacher as a coach.

What we need to know? Regardless of their reading level, students need to infer character traits based on the character’s

actions, dialogue and internal thinking. Students need to determine the author's intent/purpose and

transfer that lesson to their own life, people they know, and other texts. This is high level work. Most

of them begin this work in kindergarten, but this is the reading work they need to be doing to be

effective readers of complex text even in 12th grade.

Encourage students to analyze and interpret books, magazines, and movies and discuss their opinions

with others. Students need to use the information they read to inform their decisions, the kind of

person they want to be, and the kind of life they want to live.