Week 2 Shift in Alaska LA standards and AR question #SEACCR

Amber Hanson

SEACCR

Week 2

Essential Question (1): How does the shift in the Alaska Language Arts standards impact teaching and learning in my classroom?

            There are several ways in which the shift in the Alaska Language Arts standards impact teaching and learning in my classroom.  Shift #1: Building Knowledge Through Content-Rich Nonfiction and Informational Text is the one I believe will impact me the most over the next year or so.  This shift involves the change to an equal 50:50 balance between informational and literary text within the elementary grades. While I do understand the purpose behind the shift and totally support it, I am a little nervous on what this means for my classroom.  The hesitation I feel is stemmed mostly because I currently do not know of, nor do I have many examples of informational text within my classroom.  While yes, I do have social studies texts books, as well as our science textbook; I fear that this may be it.  And really, it’s not because I don’t WANT more, more so because I’m not sure what is actually out there.  As a result, I made a drastic shift in my Action Research Question to help aid in making this shift a little smoother.  Honestly I look forward to looking more into it over the next few weeks.

            Thankfully, Shift #2: Reading and Writing grounded in Evidence From Text will not be much of a transition from my current teachings.  Thankfully, as a relatively new teacher the education program in which I was trained, had taught me how to go about asking text based question.   In fact, I actually prefer this type of questioning, as I believed it was one of the key tools I could use to determine if students actually comprehended the text in which they read.  The problem with asking too many questions not based within the text, was that students didn’t actually have to read the text to answer them!  I definitely look forward to this required change to be implemented in all classrooms across the state of Alaska.

            Shift #3 requires have students regular constant practice with complex grade level text and its academic vocabulary.  When I first heard of this shift, I thought it meant that all students must be able to read the complex grade level texts independently, but after further investigation I discovered that it is not so.  I was relieved to know that I would still be able to provide support for my students.  This shift is mostly talking in regards to Exposure to grade level material.  I believe this is completely doable in my classroom. 

            Overall I feel that the shift Alaska has taken with our Language Arts Standards is for the best, and I look forward to the full implementation of our new standards soon!

Essential Question (2): What is the question I would like to research over the next eight weeks?

After my most recent research involving the change over to the new Alaska Language Arts standards, I’ve decided to go in a different direction in terms of my research question (If you’re interested in collaborating with me, let me know!)  The question is as follows:

            How do I use non-fiction text to assist students in learning?

I’ve also just recently posted this new question to twitter, so if any of you would like to reply on there, please let me know!