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Common Core Performance Coach® English Language Arts

Using a Standards-Based Program to Prepare Students

for Next-Generation High-Stakes Assessments

Common Core Performance CoachTM ELA2

Executive Summary .............................................. 3

The Changing Educational Landscape.............. 4

Next-Generation Assessments ............................. 4

The Role of Text Complexity ................................. 4

The Demands of New Item Types ....................... 6

The Performance Coach Solution ..................... 7

Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) Instructional Framework ............................ 7

Text Complexity in Performance Coach .............. 7

Preparing Students for the New Item Types ...................................................... 8

Preparing Students for the New Performance Tasks ....................................... 9

Differentiation ........................................................ 10

Meeting the ELA Shifts in the Common Core State Standards ............................ 10

Conclusions ............................................................... 13

References ................................................................. 14

CONTENTS


Triumph Learning’s Common Core Performance CoachTM, English Language Arts, prepares students in grades 3–8 for the rigorous, complex texts found in high-stakes, technology-based assessments. It builds students’ proficiency and confidence by reviewing essential concepts and skills and guiding students through coached practice with test item formats, independent practice, and authentic practice test experiences.

This document outlines the research that supports the foundations of Performance Coach:

• extensive practice with the challenging texts, item types, and performance tasks found on standardized tests

• systematic, explicit instruction built on a proven gradual release of responsibility model

• content authentically developed to meet the Common Core State Standards

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Meet the Series

With the creation of Common Core Performance Coach, Triumph Learning has put the substance and spirit of the Common Core Standards into practice.


The Changing Educational LandscapeExpectations have never been higher for both teachers and students. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were created to ensure that students across the country graduate from high school prepared to contribute to and compete in the 21st-century global economy (National Governors Association & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). Along with the promise of college and career readiness, the implementation of CCSS presents a unique challenge for educators and students—adapting to the changing educational landscape as states and districts introduce new teacher evaluation systems, curricula, standards-based report cards, and high-stakes assessment systems.

Next-Generation Assessments

The next-generation technology-based assessments, unlike traditional paper-based, multiple-choice tests that emphasize the recall of discrete facts, include computer-enhanced selected-response items and open-ended performance-based writing tasks that allow students to demonstrate higher-order critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. The new assessments (such as the PARCC

test, Smarter Balanced test, and others specific states produce) reflect the depth and breadth of the performance expectations in the CCSS. Students must be able to read and respond to a range of complex literary and informational texts and interactive media as they complete test items and tasks that conform to the highest level of cognitive demand in Bloom’s (revised) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and Webb’s Depth-of-Knowledge Levels (Hess, Carlock, Jones, & Walkup, 2009; Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, 2011, 2012).

The Role of Text Complexity

Most high school graduates in the United States are reading at levels that put them at risk for failure in college and their career pursuits. According to an analysis of ACT scores, only 44% of students who took the test in 2014 possess the reading skills needed for success in college (ACT, 2014). Studies have shown that the curricular materials students read before their high school graduation are not aligned with postgraduation expectations. Quantitative measures of text complexity have revealed a gap between the texts traditionally used in high schools and those used in college, careers, and civic affairs (Williamson, 2006). In an effort to close that gap, reading complex text “lies at the

“Tests play a critical role in improving teaching and learning. They provide consistent measures that allow teachers, parents, and students themselves to monitor student progress, understand specific strengths and weaknesses, and set learning goals.”—Achieve, 2014, p. 1


heart” of the CCSS English language arts/literacy standards (The Aspen Institute, 2012, p. 1). Anchor Reading Standard 10 requires that all students demonstrate their ability to “Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.” This means that all students must be exposed to literary and informational texts of steadily increasing complexity over the course of their K–12 education.

It is critical that all students develop the skill, concentration, and stamina to read complex texts. The ultimate goal of instruction therefore is to move students in the direction of independent reading at successive levels of text complexity, culminating in college and career ready reading proficiency. (The Aspen Institute, 2012, p. 2)

Before the adoption of the CCSS, many students who read below grade level were provided “off-level” reading materials as their sole text sources (see also Providing Instruction and Practice Opportunities for Close Reading of Complex Text, Ruby, 2014). Educators now agree that academic equity depends on increased rigor in

the curriculum (Fisher, Frey, & Lapp, 2012). All students, regardless of their reading ability, must be exposed to challenging grade-level texts that require them to struggle, persevere, and ultimately succeed with the appropriate scaffolding from teachers and peers.

Broadly speaking, text complexity is a measure-ment of the inherent difficulty of reading and comprehending a text. The process of measuring that difficulty has evolved over time. In the past, determinations of text complexity were either entirely subjective based on the evaluator’s preferences or were based solely on quantitative criteria, such as word frequency, average sentence length, and text cohesion. Generated by algorithms, these quantitative analyses could not account for qualitative differences among texts or reader variables, such as motivation, purpose for reading, and prior experience.

The CCSS now call for the use of several factors—quantitative, qualitative, and reader and task factors—in determining text complexity and identifying texts as appropriate for certain grade bands. (See Figure 1.) In addition to this shift in determining reading difficulty, Appendix A of the

Figure 1 (from Council of Chief State School Officers, 2012)

Text Complexity: A Three-Part Model


CCSS raises expectations of grade-level reading ability by realigning grade bands 2–3, 4–5, and 6–8 with Lexile ranges (quantitative measures) that have higher endpoints (National Governors Association & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010).

Text Complexity in High-Stakes Assessments The creators of the PARCC and Smarter Balanced Summative assessments used the CCSS framework to determine text complexity when selecting reading passages. Test developers used quantitative measures, such as Reading Maturity Metric, TextEvaluator, and Lexile, as well as guidelines for making qualitative judgments about potential stimulus print and multimedia texts (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC], n.d.). Texts such as poetry, drama, transcripts, and step-by-step processes were assigned a grade level based solely on a qualitative evaluation.

The Demands of New Item Types

The high-stakes assessments are designed to assess students’ ability to closely read and interact with complex grade-level texts. Ensuring that the selected reading passages are the appropriate type and complexity is an essential starting point for test developers. As they proceeded to build the passage-item sets, the assessment consortia and states used a variety of item types and formats to address the full range of English language arts/literacy standards in the CCSS.

Selected Response (SR)This item format presents a series of options from which students choose the correct response. Unlike the multiple-choice questions in many traditional assessments, the SR items in next-generation reading assessments are analytic items that require students to analyze the situation, consider multiple options or evidence, and make a judgment (Darling-Hammond & Pechone, 2010).

Evidence-Based Selected Response (EBSR) These items combine an initial question with a follow-up question. The second question asks students to identify evidence from the text that

supports their answer to the first question. In this way, EBSR items assess student progress toward Reading Anchor Standard 1, which requires that all students demonstrate their ability to “Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.”

Constructed Response (CR) This item type requires students to construct, or write, a response rather than selecting the correct response from possible options. For short CR items, students may have to enter a single word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph.

Extended Constructed Response (ECR) For ECR items, students are asked to write elaborated answers and explain their reasoning or defend their opinions. ECR items allow students to demonstrate content knowledge as well as complex thinking skills, such as formulating comparisons and contrasts; proposing causes and effects; identifying patterns or conflicting points of view; categorizing, summarizing, or interpreting information; and developing generalizations, explanations, justifications, or evidence-based conclusions (Darling-Hammond & Pechone, 2010).

Technology Enhanced (TE)This is sometimes called Technology-Enhanced Constructed Response (TECR). Using a digital platform, TE items elicit interactive responses from students as they drag and drop, cut and paste, identify a hot spot (where the user clicks on a specific area or image to respond to a question), move items, or highlight or shade text. The TE items in the PARCC End of Year and Smarter Balanced Summative assessments use technology to capture student comprehension in authentic ways that were previously difficult to score by machine for large-scale assessments (PARCC, 2014). The item guidelines used by the Smarter Balanced assessment (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, 2012) explained: “With the advent of online assessments, many capabilities now exist for multi-media stimuli, interactive reference materials, and richer, more interactive responses from students” (p. 29). The same guidelines, however, caution against using technology for its own sake


when static format items would be as effective in measuring students’ knowledge and skills.

Performance Tasks Performance tasks are used in some assessments. These multistep items require students to read two or more source materials on a given topic and then write a narrative, informative/explanatory, or opinion piece in response to the readings. This allows students to demonstrate their depth of understanding, their writing and research skills, and their ability to analyze and synthesize information, which traditional assessment questions cannot adequately assess. For each performance task, students produce several scorable responses, products, or presentations that demonstrate higher-level thinking.

The Performance Coach SolutionTriumph Learning’s Performance Coach is developed specifically for the CCSS and the new generation of assessments. Performance Coach addresses the current CCSS framework for text complexity and the new item types and performance tasks on next-generation assessments. Performance Coach is based on the Gradual Release of Responsibility Instructional Framework and differentiation and is organized by strand: Literature, Informational Texts, Writing, and Listening; each lesson focuses on a specific genre. The program consists of a Student Edition, a Teacher Edition with specific instruction for each lesson, and Practice Tests. The program may be used:

• As a comprehensive review of all CCSS skills presented with grade-level content. (Use the entire sequence of Lesson Plans and assessment components in each chapter.)

• To diagnose students’ beginning skill levels and provide targeted instruction. (Use Practice Test 1 at the beginning of the school year. Use the Student Edition and Teacher Edition Chapter Reviews and Performance Tasks to address student needs.)

• To supplement another curriculum with end-of-year remediation, exploration, or extension. (Use Lesson Plans and Additional Practice, as needed.)

Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) Instructional Framework

Like other programs in the Triumph Learning Common Core Coach Suite™, Performance Coach has a highly structured, explicit approach to instruction with mediated scaffolding. The GRR model (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) is a student-centered instructional framework designed to release responsibility for learning from teacher to student in a gradual and purposeful manner. It embodies the principles of several educational theories. Among them are Piaget’s work on schema; Vygotsky’s work on the Zone of Proximal Development; Bandura’s work on attention, motivation, and retention; and Wood, Bruner, and Ross’s work on scaffolding instruction. Building on the original GRR model, Fisher and Frey (2008a) underscored the importance of scaffolding, or providing temporary supports that a student can hold on to as responsibility for learning shifts from teacher-led activities to students independently applying new skills and strategies. Instructional moves take into account each academic task and the students’ knowledge and experience. Within a lesson, scaffolding may increase and decrease as the learning objectives and cognitive demands change. Figure 2 provides an outline of the Performance Coach lesson and the GRR model used.

Text Complexity in Performance Coach

To support the nuanced understanding of text complexity in the CCSS framework, Triumph Learning considered the interactions of three important and equal elements when evaluating the complexity of the texts that were selected and created for Performance Coach. The Three-Part Model, shown in Figure 1, is in keeping with what is known about texts and readers (Hiebert, 2011).

Matching learning needs with adequately complex texts and the appropriate level of teacher-led support can be daunting. Triumph Learning has taken the guesswork out of:

1. identifying grade-appropriate complex literary and informational texts,

2. measuring the complexity of each text, and


3. planning instruction that teaches students how to successfully navigate challenging texts and gain knowledge about the world.

To help teachers make important instructional decisions, Performance Coach provides text complexity information at point of use in the Teacher Edition. An example is shown in Figure 3. Text Complexity Details assist teachers in planning targeted genre study and test preparation practice. The Qualitative section also includes an overall text scale measure. Analyses are provided for literature, informational texts, and models of genres such as poetry, drama, technical texts, and listening

passages, which do not lend themselves to traditional measures of complexity, such as readability formulas.

Preparing Students for the New Item Types

Developed specifically for the CCSS and the new generation of assessments, Performance Coach develops students’ ability to read, understand, and respond to complex on-level passages. As students practice using genre-specific lessons, they review standards-based instruction and receive scaffolded practice with new test item types.

Three-Part Framework for Gradual Release of Responsibility Model

Phase Teacher Student

“I DO IT”Direct Instruction/Focus Lesson through Getting the Idea

• States goals/establishes coherent objective or purpose (both content and language)• Establishes instructional task• Provides direct instruction• Identifies strategies• Makes decisions about differentiating

instruction and tasks

• Listens actively to teacher• Takes notes; makes drawings• Connects to previously learned materials• Asks questions

“WE DO IT”Guided Practice through Coached Example

• Begins shift of cognitive responsibility to student• Determines what students learned

previously and what they recall• Questions, prompts, cues• Provides additional modeling and

think alouds• Provides differentiated instruction in

small groups• Engages student thinking• Provides strategic scaffolding; “lean

coaching”

• Asks and answers questions• Works with teacher and peers• Assumes some cognitive responsibility;

thinks independently

“YOU DO IT ALONE”Independent Practice through Lesson Practice

• Completes shift of cognitive responsibility• Provides feedback• Evaluates student work• Checks for understanding

• Assumes some cognitive responsibility; thinks independently• Applies new learning to practice

independently• Completes independent work• Uses Practice Tests to simulate real

test sessions

Figure 2


Each lesson begins with Getting the Idea, a teacher-led review of the concepts, skills, and strategies students need to meet end-of-grade expectations. With teacher guidance, the class then works through a passage-item set, answering challenging text-dependent questions that require higher-order thinking skills. Embedded hints and guiding questions in the Coached Example section of the lesson help students navigate the text and cite evidence to support answers to questions. Each lesson culminates in students independently reading a longer on-level passage. An on-page Reading Guide helps them monitor their comprehension and apply skills and strategies to answer a set of text-dependent comprehension questions presented in multiple formats.

“To prepare students for the new assess-ments, teachers must be able to teach students the literacy skills they will need and provide multiple opportunities for practice.” (Mahurt, 2013, p. 24)

Performance Coach builds students’ competence and confidence by introducing them to a wide variety of item types in both the Coached Example and the Lesson Practice sections of each lesson. In addition, many items have two or more parts, in keeping with both PARCC and Smarter Balanced

formats. Experience with challenging formats and multipart test items will improve students’ high-stakes test performance. Rather than having to “unpack” unfamiliar test formats, they will be able to focus on responding in the best way to each test item, which results in a more accurate assessment of the skills and knowledge they have actually learned (Mahurt, 2013).

Preparing Students for the New Performance Tasks

Performance Coach was designed to help students become skilled, fluent readers and writers. It prepares students for the performance tasks in high-stakes assessments by teaching them how to understand writing prompts and how to plan and execute a thorough, well-written response. In a special chapter devoted to the writing process, they gain valuable practice with all aspects of the authoring cycle.

Each writing lesson in Performance Coach begins with direct instruction in the characteristics of the writing genre. Students then read, evaluate, and discuss a mentor text or exemplar passage. This contextualizes genre study and helps students apply the author’s craft, text organization, and new language conventions to their own writing. Mentor

Figure 3

Sample of Text Complexity Information for Grade 5 Passage


texts have a positive impact on the quality of students’ independent writing (Corden, 2007) and contribute to their creativity (Sturgell, 2008). In Coached Examples and Lesson Practices, students read additional mentor texts and answer text-based questions presented in a variety of item formats, including constructed response. For further writing practice, the Teacher Edition includes Journal Prompts. Each chapter culminates in a Chapter Review with Performance Task that measure students’ ability to synthesize concepts and communicate effectively in writing. The Performance Tasks require that students analyze one or more texts or follow conventions of a particular writing genre, such as a narrative or informative text.

Differentiation

With the GRR model, students receive scaffolded practice and review as they work toward mastery of skills and proficiency. This scaffolded practice as well as targeted differentiated instruction and practice play an integral role in building individual student confidence and competence. To succeed academically, students must have multiple opportunities to apply what they are learning in a safe, collaborative environment where they receive responsive feedback, redirection, and further clarification (Coyne, Kame’enui, & Carnine, 2011).

The Performance Coach lesson is designed to assist the teacher with students that are working at different levels to achieve competence in English Language Arts standards. The Teacher Edition provides tactical and efficient guidance for differentiation and offers tools that meet all students’ individual needs.

• Differentiation needs are addressed at the beginning of each lesson as the teacher begins to formulate specific student needs for the skill(s). Suggestions for struggling students (Lesson Support) and accelerating students (Lesson Extension) provide timely and relevant instructional differentiation.

• Journal Prompts within the lesson allow students to reflect thoughtfully about reviewed concepts.

• Discussion Questions help review academic vocabulary as well as critical skill concepts before students begin reviewing the skill.

• English language learners benefit from lesson-level strategies that help students access content with their peers. ELL Support notes provide strategies for teachers to use to support conceptual understanding, word- and sentence-level comprehension, and higher-order thinking.

• Common Errors provides a brief analysis that the teacher can use to bridge cognitive gaps when working with struggling students.

• Strand Reviews with Performance Tasks can be implemented as an actual review or as a way to diagnose gaps in understanding. Performance Tasks allow students to synthesize skills and concepts from a literacy strand. These tasks allow teachers to assess students’ abilities to use higher-order thinking and writing skills.

Using Coached Examples for DifferentiationThe differentiation plan in Performance Coach gives teachers options that ensure student success with each lesson and standard. In addition to the differentiation features above, students are introduced to different item types through Coached Examples as they work with the teacher. While most students are familiar with multiple-choice (or selected-response) items, many are learning about and using other item types (see earlier section about the demands of new item types).

With Performance Coach, the teacher may introduce new item types systematically and thoughtfully in the Coached Example section of each lesson and by doing this, step up the degree of rigor for all students, depending upon their level. As the teacher works with students in the Coached Example sections, information about students’ comfort with each item type is revealed so that the teacher can make adjustments to the Coached Examples. Students who require introduction to new item types will benefit from guided and systematic instruction.

Meeting the ELA Shifts in the Common Core State Standards

Many instructional materials claim to align with the CCSS, including those that were developed before the standards were finalized. Triumph Learning’s Performance Coach was specifically designed for


the CCSS. It fully reflects the content and spirit of the new standards because it was designed and developed after the release of the Revised Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades 3–12 document (Coleman & Pimental, 2012). Authentically developed for the CCSS, Performance Coach reflects three important shifts required of next-generation curricula.

Regular Practice With Complex Text and Its Academic LanguageThe reading passages in Performance Coach mirror the word count and text complexity that proficient on-level readers are expected to read. Triumph Learning used careful and informed analysis to determine the text complexity of every passage, examining the text through three lenses: qualitative, quantitative, and reader-text-task. Text complexity details for each passage appear at point of use in the Teacher Edition, helping the teacher provide the support students need to interact with and gain insights from challenging text.

Academic language is the formal oral and written language of school that serves as a pathway to opportunity. To succeed academically, students must be able to understand and actively use the specialized language of academic discourse (Francis, Kieffer, Lesaux, Rivera, & Rivera, 2006). Mastering academic language involves sophisticated vocabulary knowledge as well as an understanding of complex sentence structures and rules of grammar. In addition to domain- specific vocabulary, such as nutritious and hyperlink, students must learn words such as examine, sequence, and solution—the academic vocabulary used across subject areas and professional spheres.

In Performance Coach, students have opportunities to practice reading, writing, and listening to academic language in meaningful contexts. In the overview for each reading lesson, relevant academic vocabulary appears in the list of Key Terms. As the teacher reviews essential skills and concepts, terms such as article, fact, supporting detail, and caption are introduced in context. The Discussion Questions for each reading lesson prompt students to use academic vocabulary in conversations with their peers.

Language Spotlight features further develop students’ oral vocabulary. Through guided discussions of mentor texts, students learn how to incorporate authors’ text structures and academic language conventions in their own writing. The scoring rubrics used to evaluate student work help teachers and students monitor their progress in using academic vocabulary for effective communication.

Reading, Writing, and Listening Tasks Grounded in Text Evidence Proficient readers read complex literary and informational text independently, uncovering layers of meaning and assimilating new insights and information with their prior knowledge and experiences. This powerful way of reading is known as close reading. Instructional routines develop close-reading strategies when they guide students to methodically examine and analyze the structures of a complex text—the way it is organized, the precision of the author’s language, key details, arguments, and inferential meanings (Fisher & Frey, 2012). Recognizing this important shift in the CCSS, all activities in Performance Coach are driven by and firmly grounded in the reading passages.

With Performance Coach, students practice reading complex text across a wide range of genres, including short stories, poetry, drama, news articles, persuasive texts, biographies, speeches, historical accounts, scientific articles, procedural texts, websites, and selections from primary sources. Text-dependent questions (TDQs) are an integral part of the program’s instructional design. The questions require students to extract evidence from the text and make inferences that logically follow from what they have read. As students answer questions about words, sentences, paragraphs, and the overall development of events and ideas, they move toward a deeper understanding and appreciation of the text. In Performance Coach, guided, text-dependent conversations engage students in peer interactions that prompt deep thinking and the development of text-based claims and evidence-based counterarguments. In post reading tasks, students build on the close-reading experience by applying their deepened understanding of the author’s


language, craft, and message to their original writing. Two examples of a grade 5 TDQ are in Figure 4.

Building Knowledge Through Content-Rich Nonfiction Informational text and the role of content-rich nonfiction have gained increasing importance in reading instruction. For students in the elementary grades, reading informational text serves many functions. It builds essential knowledge about the world, which in turn becomes part of their existing

schema and the foundation for assimilating new information.

Reading informational text accelerates young readers’ vocabulary development, taps into their natural curiosity, provides opportunities for them to develop areas of expertise, prepares them for the types of texts they will read most frequently as adults, and serves as a tool for solving and posing problems (Duke, 2004). As students progress through middle and high school, understanding informational text becomes more essential and more challenging.

Figure 4

Examples of Text-Dependent Questions


Through the scaffolded approach to reading instruction, students of all performance levels have access to essential content knowledge and a variety of cross-curricular topics. As they analyze and write about content-rich nonfiction selections, students deepen their understanding of content, domain-specific vocabulary, and genre text structures. With Performance Coach, students have in-depth practice with different types of informational text, and they analyze multiple texts, responding to the types of questions and writing prompts they will encounter on high-stakes assessments.

ConclusionsRecognizing the enormous challenge of the new CCSS high-stakes assessments, Triumph Learning developed Performance Coach to provide all students scaffolded opportunities to read closely and think deeply about complex grade-level texts. In-depth practice with challenging and relevant test item formats and performance tasks helps students approach the next-generation assessments with confidence and strategies for success.

This paper: (a) explained how the implementation of the CCSS and next-generation assessments are changing the educational landscape; (b) described challenges new CCSS high-stakes assessments pose: increased text complexity, item formats that require students to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills through writing, and multipart performance tasks; (c) explained how Performance Coach prepares students for the rigors of next-generation assessments; (d) described the GRR model, its basis in cognitive research, and how it serves as the framework for Performance Coach; and (e) demonstrated how Performance Coach addresses important shifts in ELA curricula the CCSS require: regular practice with complex text and its academic language; reading, writing, and listening grounded in text evidence; and building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction.

Performance Coach is an instructional tool that supports educators who are committed to helping all students master the CCSS English language arts/literacy standards and demonstrate their academic achievement.


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References

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Common Core Performance CoachTM English Language Arts

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Documents

Using a Standards-Based Program to Prepare Students for ...€¦ · Program to Prepare Students for Next-Generation ... Executive Summary ... It embodies the principles of several