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Jaclyn DeForge, our Resident Literacy Expert, began her career teaching first and second grade in the South Bronx, and went on to become a literacy coach and earn her Masters of Science in Teaching. In her column she offers teaching and literacy tips for educators.

One aspect of the Common Core that I get asked questions about all the time is thematic text sets.  What are they?  How do you know which books to use?  What types of texts should you be pairing together?

Fear not!  I’ve compiled some examples of text sets that cover one topic and span multiple genres and reading levels and over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing these sets with you.  Some of the titles you may already have in your classroom library, and others I think you’ll enjoy discovering.

Theme/topic:  The Moon

Grade: 2nd

Informational Text:  The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons (Shared Reading)

• provides scientific information about the moon
• can be used to address informational text standards

Nonfiction Poetry:  A Full Moon is Rising by Marilyn Singer  (Read Aloud)

• provides scientific information about the moon
• provides information regarding moon-related festivals, traditions, holidays, and celebrations
• can be used to address informational text and literature standards

Realistic Fiction: Owl Moon by Jane Yolen  (Guided Reading)

• the moon plays a central role in the setting of the story
• can be used to address literature standards

Realistic Fiction:  Surprise Moon by Caroline Hatton (Independent Reading)

• discusses celebrations and festivals related to the moon 
• can be used to address literature standards

from A Full Moon is Rising

What books would you put on this list?  Add your favorites in the comments!

Jaclyn DeForge, our Resident Literacy Expert, began her career teaching first and second grade in the South Bronx, and went on to become a literacy coach and earn her Masters of Science in Teaching. In her column she offers teaching and literacy tips for educators.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of meeting with a literacy expert who was SUPER involved with the creation of the Common Core Standards (!!!!!), and she gave me some important feedback about the Appendix B supplement  I posted last week. To refresh your memory, what we’ve done is compiled a supplement to Appendix B that includes both contemporary literature and authors/characters of color, and that also meets the criteria (complexity, quality, range) used by the authors of the Common Core. We were lucky enough to have this literacy expert take a look at our supplement, and she gave some great suggestions:

1. The texts selected for Read Aloud can be outside the text complexity bands for each grade cluster.
2. Texts that are Read Aloud in lower grades can be read as Independent Reading in upper grades.

We’ve incorporated these ideas into our Appendix B supplement. So, without further ado, click here for a PDF of our new and improved multicultural supplement to the Common Core’s Appendix B.

Know who else is excited about the updated Appendix B list? This guy:

“Smiling Dog” by Benjamin Liew

Further Reading:

What’s in your classroom? Rethinking Common Core recommended texts

Why Window and Mirror Books are Important for All Readers

Educational Sales Associate Jaclyn DeForge began her career teaching first and second grade in the South Bronx, and went on to become a literacy coach and earn her Masters of Science in Teaching. In this series for teachers, educators, and literacy coaches, Jaclyn discusses different strategies for ensuring students hit end-of-year benchmarks in reading.

These days, the words testing or assessment tend to bring up many conflicting emotions among educators, but determining where your students need to be at the end of the year and how you (the teacher)are going to keep track of individual progress toward each standard is a key part of proactive planning.

With my students, it was really important to me that they feel ownership of their success by being able to clearly see how their actions affected their achievement, so we did a lot of individualized goal setting and consistently measured our progress toward said goals.  The result was a classroom full of empowered children who were aware of where they were strong and what they needed to work on, and confident in the knowledge that there was a plan as to how we were going to get there.  This transparency in teaching can absolutely yield huge rewards, but it does take some proactive planning.

Over the next several weeks, my posts will be dedicated to the goal setting process in reading: where to set each goal, when to assess, how to keep track of progress toward the goal, and how to set each student up with concrete steps toward reaching their goal through the running records assessment and reading conferencing.

When reflecting on the “where” (i.e. what you would like each individual student’s independent reading level to be at the close of the school year), the Common Core Standards directly address text level complexity, and provide specific Lexile Levels ranges of where students should be reading by the end of the year to hit the standard.  Quick summary:

• 2^nd – 3^rd graders are expected to be able to read and comprehend books that fall within the 450-790 complexity band (approximately levels L-P), 2^nd graders with scaffolding and 3^rd graders independently. 
• 4^th and 5^th graders are expected to be able to read and comprehend books that fall  within the 770-980 complexity band (approximately levels O-V), 4^th graders with scaffolding and 5^th graders independently.

From this, we can infer that K-1^st graders need to be able to read and comprehend books that fall within the 200-450 complexity band (approximately levels A-K), kindergarteners with scaffolding and 1^st graders independently.   For more information, directly consult the Common Core Standards, Appendix A, page 8.  I’ve attached a chart that approximates what a 1/2 a year, a year, a year and a 1/2, and 2 years of reading growth look like from each beginning of year reading level as a guide.

Here are a few questions to mull over when considering where to set individual student goals:

• How far behind do you anticipate your students to be?  Or conversely, how fa
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