ELA+Review+Group


 * //Standards and Assessment Review Group: //**

We are looking for a small cross-sector group (2- and 4-year faculty and K-12 educators) with a keen interest in college readiness issues and preferably some familiarity with the Washington College Readiness Math Standards or the College Readiness Definitions in English; for K-12 educators, a basic understanding of the Common Core State Standards would be very helpful. This group will convene in May, 2012 for an initial one-day discussion with disciplinary peers (math or English); the focus of the meeting will be to build faculty ownership and understanding of the CCSS as meaningful and useful college-readiness standards by exploring the feasibility of and format for a crosswalk between the existing Washington college readiness standards in math and English Language Arts and the CCSS. This group will re-convene in 2013 and 2014 to examine the Smarter Balanced assessment in detail as it becomes available in order to review its relevance as a college-readiness assessment for Washington higher education. __All meeting and travel costs for members of this group will be covered by the project.__ To indicate your interest in this Review Group, complete the appropriate form included with this invitation and send it to Bill Moore at bmoore@sbctc.edu **by March 23, 2012**.

The ELA group (see attachment below for list of original members) began their portion of the May "kick-off" meeting by reviewing together the CCSS description of “capacities for a literate individual” as the section most comparable to the Washington description of “attributes.” The group then divided into cross sector subgroups, each of which looked in depth at one major strand of the standards (reading, writing, speaking/listening, language), looking at the big ideas of the category as well as the particular learning targets in that area. The teams then re-arranged to share their respective discussions and provide additional perspectives on each of the areas from a different set of participants. The group wrapped up with a general discussion of the major “shifts in focus” reflected in the CCSS and their implications for higher education practice.