English Language Arts (ELA)

Where is ELA Headed?

Hawaiʻi’s Common Core Standards for ELA include three major shifts that help explain how these new standards are different from previous ELA Standards.  

Regular practice with complex texts and their academic language.

Traditionally the focus of ELA has been largely on the skills associated with reading.  Hawaiʻi’s Core Standards are clear that it is at least equally important to ensure students can read increasingly complex texts. As students engage in a productive and supported struggle with complex texts, they should be helped to adopt a growth mindset, understanding that continued practice yields growth in ability. Hand in hand with a progression of text complexity is the focus on building student’s academic language. Academic language refers to the words that appear in a variety of contexts across subject areas and learning these words supports students’ success. For English learners and any striving student providing support with academic vocabulary development is critical. It is important to scaffold vocabulary development by having a language-rich environment with multimodal representations for key terms and concepts (anchor charts, word walls, labels etc).  Scaffolding and practice which includes directly teaching target vocabulary connected to the literature and the standards, connecting to culture, background, experiences; using visuals, gestures, realia, graphics support, providing context and real-life examples will greatly support all students especially English learners. 

Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from texts, both literary and informational.

In a traditional ELA classroom before the Common Core, many of the text discussion questions were not text-specific, meaning a student did not have to read and comprehend a text to respond to the majority of the writing prompts and discussion questions. The Common Core has put a premium on writing about and discussing questions that require a close and careful reading of the text. This shift is a vital equity issue since questions that are not text dependent often rely on students’ out of classroom background information which can be limiting for some students. In a Common Core-aligned classroom students read, discuss and write about texts. 

Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction.

The “Baseball Study” done by Recht and Leslie showed the tremendous influence a student’s prior knowledge about a subject has on his/her ability to read and comprehend texts on that same subject. (Recht & Leslie, 1988) Given the findings of this research, a central way for students to read increasingly complex texts is by building their knowledge. Knowledge of a topic is built as students read and discuss a set of texts related to a particular subject. (Cervetti et al., 2016) Many resources supporting the Common Core State Standards have focused on building these text sets. These text sets often include visual text, videos and written texts.  

The emphasis on building knowledge highlights the opportunity to integrate reading, writing, speaking and listening with other content areas.  Elementary schools may, for example be thematically organized around important ideas or concept from science or social studies. They may spend time investigating essential questions related to the concept and the reading, writing, speaking and listening they do should connect to that idea or concept. Students will also greatly benefit from having place-based experiences where they strengthen their knowledge about topics in a place-based context.  Because building knowledge is so critically important to reading complex texts it does students a direct disservice to replace knowledge-building opportunities in areas such as science and social studies with more time for English language arts. This is a misconception because building knowledge in content areas is important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it is likely to have a direct correlation to increased ability to read complex texts. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are an integral part of learning in every subject area and should happen throughout the student’s school day.  Secondary students in ELA read literature and literary nonfiction as well as informational texts. Students in other content areas participate in the types of reading and writing that are fundamental and often unique to those content areas, also known as Disciplinary literacy. 

ELA: Beginning Reading

Why beginning reading?

The overall goal of beginning reading is to ensure all children learn to read well by the end of grade 3. Efforts begin in preschool where a student’s readiness for Kindergarten is defined by the Hawaiʻi Early Learning and Development Standards (HELDS) which are research-based standards that identify the knowledge and behavior expectations. 

Learning to read is an educational goal as well as an equity issue. Children who do not learn to read well by grade 3 are at a disadvantage as the demands upon their reading skills become exponentially greater after that grade. Their beginning reading skills must be developed even before they come to school so they can engage in complex tasks in the later grades and to strengthen every child’s sense of excellence and total well-being.  

Reading is a complex system of deriving meaning from print. To learn to read well, children – especially those in the early grades and struggling readers – must:

• develop and maintain motivation to read; 

• have sufficient background information and vocabulary to foster comprehension; 

• understand how phonemes, or speech sounds, are connected to print; 

• have the ability to decode unfamiliar words; 

• be able to read fluently; and

• develop appropriate active strategies to construct meaning from print.  

Core Principles of Beginning Reading: Learning to Read

The goals of teaching all children to read and preventing reading difficulties appear closer to reality than at any point in educational history. 

The rich and robust consensual evidentiary knowledge base provides “a compass and a sense of direction” (Walker et al.,1998) for schools to use to address the monumental task they have in designing the optimal learning environment where all children read by the end of third grade.

The National Reading Panel (2000) identified the five big ideas in reading that provide a solid scientific footing regarding the elements and features of an effective reading curriculum. The dimensions of phonological awareness, alphabetic understanding, automaticity/fluency with the code, vocabulary development, and text comprehension all serve as the framework for scientifically based beginning reading instruction. 

Motivation is also crucial in reading. These big ideas in reading are reflected in the Hawaiʻi Board of Education policy 102-2: K-12 Literacy.  

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness refers to the conscious understanding and knowledge that language is made up of sounds. Most important is phonemic awareness, the insight that words consist of separate sounds or phonemes, and the subsequent ability to manipulate these individual units (Adams, 1990). 

In phonological awareness instruction, students do not see any written words or letters, but instead listen and respond to what they hear. Statistical analysis of students’ performance on phonemic awareness tasks identified two critical clusters of skills (Torgesen, Wagner, and Rashnotte. 1994): synthesis and analysis. Synthesis involves orally blending individual phonemes to make a word (blending). An analysis is the inverse task, orally segmenting a word into individual phonemes (Segmentation).  

Alphabetic Understanding

The Alphabetic principle, often referred to as alphabetic understanding, establishes a clear link between a letter and a sound and involves mapping of print to speech. It requires a reader to understand that the letters of our alphabet (i.e., graphemes) correspond to discrete sounds (i.e., phonemes). 

To read words, a reader must see a word and access its meaning in memory. To get from the word to its meaning, beginning readers must apply the alphabetic principle by (a) sequentially translate the letters in a word to its sound, (b) remember the correct sequence of sounds, (c) blend the sounds together, and (d) search their memory for a real word that matches the string of sounds. Advanced readers must also recognize complex letter combinations and patterns. 

Automaticity/Fluency with the Code

The definition of fluency is reading accurately, at a rate appropriate to the text, and with proper expression (Rasinski, 2004). Fluent reading is critical as it facilitates reading comprehension by allowing readers to focus their attention on the author’s message rather than on how to say the words (Rasinski, Reutzel, Chard, & Linon-Thompson, 2011). 

There are many instructional strategies for increasing automaticity and fluency. Students can practice identifying letter and words from lists and engage in repeated readings of familiar texts. Guided reading oral reading strategies are well researched and practical approaches for increasing reading fluency. 

Vocabulary Development

One of the foundations in comprehending text  is the knowledge of word meaning. The scientific research on vocabulary instruction reveals that:

• most vocabulary is learned indirectly through everyday experiences, and 

• some vocabulary must be taught directly, especially for difficult words that are not part of the reader’s everyday experiences.    

Text Comprehension

Comprehending text improves with instruction that helps readers use specific comprehension strategies. Strategies are conscious plans that readers use to make sense of the text. The goal of strategy instruction is to help students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their reading comprehension.

Motivation to Read

As in every domain of learning, motivation is fundamental. A primary strategy to improve the likelihood that children will remain motivated is early reading success (Juel, 1988). 

A primary mechanism to increase motivation is an early identification and intervention system to prevent the entrenchment of early literacy difficulties (Foorman et al., 1998). Explicit instruction in reading is a significant prevention strategy. 

Students’ interests in reading can be addressed through literate environments, and by providing diverse literacy activities and engaging instruction. Wide range and types of books and writing materials should fill every classroom.

Where is Beginning Reading Headed?

The focus on the big ideas in reading and motivation can bring about a lasting difference in the lives of all- not some, or most- children (Kame’enui, 1998). This focus involves teachers collaborating on the design of a curriculum, including a structured phonics program and high-quality instructional practices that ensure all students are successful.