Common Core Instructional Shifts
1.
2.
3.
Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction and
informational texts Reading and writing grounded in evidence from text Regular practice with complex text and its academic
vocabulary Updated Text Complexity Grade Bands
Common
Core Band
ATOS
Degrees of
Reading
Power®
FleschKincaid8
The Lexile
Framework
®
Reading
Maturity
SourceRater
2nd – 3rd
4th – 5th
6th – 8th
9th – 10th
11th – CCR
2.75 – 5.14
4.97 – 7.03
7.00 – 9.98
9.67 – 12.01
11.20 – 14.10
42 – 54
52 – 60
57 – 67
62 – 72
67 – 74
1.98 – 5.34
4.51 – 7.73
6.51 – 10.34
8.32 – 12.12
10.34 – 14.2
420 – 820
740 – 1010
925 – 1185
1050 – 1335
1185 – 1385
3.53 – 6.13
5.42 – 7.92
7.04 – 9.57
8.41 – 10.81
9.57 – 12.00
0.05 – 2.48
0.84 – 5.75
4.11 – 10.66
9.02 – 13.93
12.30 – 14.50
Text-dependent Questions
1. How does the author characterize each of the first three presidents? 2. Explain what the phrase, “eternally bookended and overshadowed” suggests about John Adams. 3. Why do you think the author ended her note to readers with a quotation from John Adams? 4. What claim is the author making about John Adams in this note? What evidence does she offer? 1
The Revolutionary John Adams
by Cheryl Harness
A Note from the Author
There stands John Adams, the stout, stubborn New Englander eternally bookended
and overshadowed by tall, glamorous Virginians. On one side, the reserved, heroic
General George Washington, “first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Imagine
having to take up the Presidency — and keep a fragile republic in business — after
that fellow! On the other is the cool, complicated genius of Monticello, Thomas
Jefferson.
As Washington was the father of our country and Jefferson the author of its ideals,
John Adams was the champion of its government. When the Congress was a brave
group of men leading colonists through revolution to nationhood, John Adams was
its leader. This very human Founding Father not only did more than anyone else
when it came to imagining our checked-and-balanced government, he made nearly
impossible wartime journeys to make sure that the American experiment would
succeed. He kept the nation at peace and built up its navy so the Republic would
survive. Not only did John and his heroic partner, Abigail, leave us a wealth of
letters and a close-up look at their remarkable times, they began a dynasty of
brilliant citizens: diplomats, historians, and even another President.
In the nation’s capital, the sun glitters on stone monuments to George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson. John Adams was every bit as brave as the former and as
brilliant as the latter but there is — at this writing— no such monument for him.
Perhaps this is fitting because stone is cold, and he was anything but. The United
States is a proper, living monument to intense, cranky, warm, heart-on-his-sleeve
John Adams — American Champion.
“I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain the
Declaration, and support and defend these States — Yet through all the Gloom I can see Rays of
ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that
Posterity will Triumph …
- John Adams, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 3, 1776
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Desolation Row, 1775 / Braintree, MA
From Abigail Adams to John Adams
If a form of government is to be established here, what one will be
assumed? Will it be left to our assemblies to choose one? And will not many
men have many minds? And shall we not run into dissensions among
ourselves? I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous
creature, and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping,
and, like the grave, cries, “Give, give!” The great fish swallow up the small,
and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with
power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government. You tell me of
degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I
believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise
from the scarcity of the instances. The building up a great empire may now,
I suppose, be realized even by the unbelievers. Yet, will not ten thousand
difficulties arise in the formation of it? The reins of government have been
so long slackened that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those
restraints which are necessary for the peace and security of the community.
If we separate from Britain, what code of laws will be established? How
shall we be governed so as to retain our liberties? Can any government be
free which is not administered by general stated laws? Who shall frame
these laws? Who will give them force and energy? When I consider these
things, and the prejudices of people in favor of ancient customs and
regulations, I feel anxious for the fate of our monarchy, or democracy, or
whatever is to take place. I soon get lost in a labyrinth of perplexities, but
whatever occurs, may justice and righteousness be the stability of our
times, and order arise out of confusion. Great difficulties may be
surmounted by patience and perseverance. I believe I have tired you with
politics. As to news, we have not any at all. I shudder at the approach of
winter, when I think I am to remain desolate.
Abigail Adams, from a letter. Born Abigail Smith in Massachusetts in 1744, Adams
wrote that she “never was sent to any school. I was always sick” and that her education
consisted mostly of her grandmother’s “happy method of mixing instruction and
amusement together.” She married John Adams, the second U.S. president, in 1764 and
gave birth to John Quincy, the sixth U.S. president, in 1767. She counseled her husband
in March 1776 to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them
than your ancestors.”
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A Guide to Creating Text Dependent Questions
http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/text-dependent-questions
Text Dependent Questions: What Are They?
The Common Core State Standards for reading strongly focus on students gathering evidence,
knowledge, and insight from what they read. Indeed, eighty to ninety percent of the Reading
Standards in each grade require text dependent analysis; accordingly, aligned curriculum
materials should have a similar percentage of text dependent questions.
As the name suggests, a text dependent question specifically asks a question that can only be
answered by referring explicitly back to the text being read. It does not rely on any particular
background information extraneous to the text nor depend on students having other experiences
or knowledge; instead it privileges the text itself and what students can extract from what is
before them.
For example, in a close analytic reading of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” the following would
not be text dependent questions:
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Why did the North fight the civil war? Have you ever been to a funeral or gravesite? Lincoln says that the nation is dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Why is equality an important value to promote? The overarching problem with these questions is that they require no familiarity at all with
Lincoln’s speech in order to answer them. Responding to these sorts of questions instead requires
students to go outside the text. Such questions can be tempting to ask because they are likely to
get students talking, but they take students away from considering the actual point Lincoln is
making. They seek to elicit a personal or general response that relies on individual experience
and opinion, and answering them will not move students closer to understanding the text of the
“Gettysburg Address.”
Good text dependent questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure
careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would
not have seen on a more cursory reading. Typical text dependent questions ask students to
perform one or more of the following tasks:
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Analyze paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole 4
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Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated Creating Text-Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading of Texts
An effective set of text dependent questions delves systematically into a text to guide students in
extracting the key meanings or ideas found there. They typically begin by exploring specific
words, details, and arguments and then moves on to examine the impact of those specifics on the
text as a whole. Along the way they target academic vocabulary and specific sentence structures
as critical focus points for gaining comprehension.
While there is no set process for generating a complete and coherent body of text dependent
questions for a text, the following process is a good guide that can serve to generate a core series
of questions for close reading of any given text.
Step One: Identify the Core Understandings and Key Ideas of the Text
As in any good reverse engineering or “backwards design” process, teachers should start by
identifying the key insights they want students to understand from the text—keeping one eye on
the major points being made is crucial for fashioning an overarching set of successful questions
and critical for creating an appropriate culminating assignment.
Step Two: Start Small to Build Confidence
The opening questions should be ones that help orientate students to the text and be sufficiently
specific enough for them to answer so that they gain confidence to tackle more difficult
questions later on.
Step Three: Target Vocabulary and Text Structure
Locate key text structures and the most powerful academic words in the text that are connected
to the key ideas and understandings, and craft questions that illuminate these connections.
Step Four: Tackle Tough Sections Head-on
Find the sections of the text that will present the greatest difficulty and craft questions that
support students in mastering these sections (these could be sections with difficult syntax,
particularly dense information, and tricky transitions or places that offer a variety of possible
inferences).
Step Five: Create Coherent Sequences of Text Dependent Questions
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The sequence of questions should not be random but should build toward more coherent
understanding and analysis to ensure that students learn to stay focused on the text to bring them
to a gradual understanding of its meaning.
Step Six: Identify the Standards That Are Being Addressed
Take stock of what standards are being addressed in the series of questions and decide if any
other standards are suited to being a focus for this text (forming additional questions that
exercise those standards).
Step Seven: Create the Culminating Assessment
Develop a culminating activity around the key ideas or understandings identified earlier that
reflects (a) mastery of one or more of the standards, (b) involves writing, and (c) is structured to
be completed by students independently.
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Writing Arguments
What claims do the Tom Lea painting, the Ernie Pyle dispatch, and the Randall
Jarrell poem make about war?
Write an essay that analyzes the strength of the argument each of these texts posits.
Use textual evidence to support your analysis.
“That 2,000 Yard Stare” by Tom Lea, 1944.
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ERNIE PYLE: The Death of Captain Waskow
AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 - In this war I have known a lot of
officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the
trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.
Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since
long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in
him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.
"After my own father, he came next," a sergeant told me.
"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He'd go to bat for us every time."
"I've never knowed him to do anything unfair," another one said.
I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow's body down. The moon
was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley
below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.
Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules.
They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the
left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up
and down as the mule walked.
The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the
mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the
bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.
The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his
feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick
man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the
low stone wall alongside the road.
I don't know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at
being alive, and you don't ask silly questions.
We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat
on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.
Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything
more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in
the shadow of the low stone wall.
Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went
out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came
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down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Captain
Waskow," one of them said quietly.
Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the
low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a
long row, alongside the road. You don't cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie
there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.
The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to
leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt.
Waskow's body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to
themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.
One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That's all he said, and
then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked
down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.
Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half
light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face,
and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I'm sorry, old man."
Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead
captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:
"I sure am sorry, sir."
Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there
for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face,
and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.
And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the
captain's shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the
wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.
After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line,
end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and
pretty soon we were all asleep.
About Ernie Pyle
Indiana native Ernie Pyle was one of World War II’s most famous reporters, in an era
when journalists covering combat were as celebrated as movie stars. One of his bestknown dispatches concerned the death of Captain Henry T. Waskow on December 14,
1943, during the Battle of San Pietro Infine in Italy. The officer was twenty-five years
old.
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Pyle himself would live only sixteen months after the death of the “beloved” Capt.
Waskow. On April 18, 1945, the forty-four-year-old journalist was traveling in a Jeep
with Colonel Joseph B. Coolidge and other soldiers on Ie Shima, a small island near
Okinawa, when a burst of machine-gun fire strafed the procession of vehicles. When the
barrage of bullets finally stopped, Pyle asked Coolidge, “Are you all right?” before the
sniper fire started up again, killing the reporter instantly. Hours after the tragedy, a
“visibly shaken” Coolidge tearfully told a New York Times reporter, "I was so impressed
with Pyle's coolness, calmness and his deep interest in enlisted men. They have lost their
best friend."
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner By Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
"A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and
inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this
gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he
revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the
foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing
explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." -- Jarrell's note.
The poem was published in 1945.
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The Gift Outright
BY ROBERT FROST
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
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Remembering Frost at Kennedy’s Inauguration
BY LINDA PASTAN
Even the flags seemed frozen
to their poles, and the men
stamping their well-shod feet
resembled an army of overcoats.
But we were young and fueled
by hope, our ardor burned away
the cold. We were the president’s,
and briefly the president would be ours.
The old poet stumbled
over his own indelible words,
his breath a wreath around his face:
a kind of prophecy.
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One Today by Richard Blanco
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
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mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across café tables,
Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello| shalom,
buon giorno |howdy |namaste |or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together
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The New York Times Learning Network
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/guest-lesson-reading-one-todayand-other-inaugural-poems/
Discussion questions for Richard Blanco’s inaugural poem
1. Watch the video of Richard Blanco reading “One Today” and then read the poem underlining what you think are its most important words. Explain why you think these particular words and images are important to the poem’s meaning. 2. In the first and seventh stanzas, the speaker makes reference to geographical places. What do these places suggest? What do they mean to Americans? 3. Throughout the poem we find many references to labor and work. Identify these lines and phrases. What kind of work does the speaker in the poem honor and respect? What are these lines saying about America and Americans? 4. This poem was first read on Martin Luther King Day in Washington, D.C. Explain the allusion entailed in “the ‘I have a dream’ we keep dreaming”? 5. The sixth stanza begins “Hear” and goes on to catalogue the ordinary sounds of a day. What do the multi-­‐lingual versions of “Hello” suggest about the America Blanco is describing? Why do you think he calls out “buenos dias / in the language my mother taught me”? What do these lines suggest about the poet’s relationship with that language? 6. In 2006, then-­‐Senator Obama wrote The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream offering a vision of how a united nation could tackle our common problems. Richard Blanco writes in the poem’s concluding stanza, “hope – a new constellation / waiting for us to map it, / waiting for us to name it – together.” Relate these lines to the notion suggested by the title of President Obama’s book. 7. Identify lines in the poem that reflect the occasion for which the poem was written. How do the lines you have chosen suggest issues surrounding the inauguration of a president? 8. Read the poem again selecting a line or phrase that struck you as luminous or beguiling. Write for 5 minutes about what the line caused you to think. Turn to a partner or small group, read the poem aloud once more, and discuss the selected lines. 15