CA CCSS

In spite of the fact that these standards are "for grades 11-12 unless otherwise specified," and I am currently placed in a 7th grade classroom at a local middle school, there are some bits that I can likely scale back for use with students who haven't quite yet developed their critical thinking and analysis chops. It's nice that the CA CCSS is written in an accessible way, as it makes slight modification easier. Although the odds of needing to do this are slim to none, given that 7th grade already has its own CCSS to which I must adhere. That being said, however, some of the techniques and other tidbits may be useful in a preparatory sense. What I mean by "preparatory" is that my students will have to grapple with questions such as the ones listed under the "Reading for Understanding" heading, where they are thinking more metacognitively about what they are reading. If I can pose these questions a few years early and sort of plant that seed of inquisitive pedagogy, it stands to reason that I can soften the blow when similar questions make themselves apparent in later grade levels, easing the difficulty curve and potentially impressing their future teachers with their analytical skills. One of the parts of reading that I see older students struggle with is comprehension of what's read, and the aforesaid section helps with that skill, I think.

As a whole, though, I like how the standards are structured in such a way so as to complement each other. Reading and writing are so closely intertwined (reading a lot creates better writers, and writing a lot creates better readers) that using standards to leverage that relationship only makes perfect sense. Separating writing and reading (and speaking, if you ask me) is an exercise in futility, one that results in the inability of students to relate to a text, discuss it adequately, and form intelligent responses, be it in writing or otherwise.