"Content Area Literacy and the Common Core Standards: Using Performance Assessments and Studies of Student Work to Reach Ambitious New Standards"

The February Mini-Institute helps K-8 educators develop the curriculum and methods necessary to ensure that students reach the rigorous new standards for content area literacy embedded in the Common Core. Participants will learn about small group work and collaborative inquiry as well as exciting new work around creating multi-media centers where students can engage in exploring topics and research in the company of others.

In addition, participants learn a repertoire of skills for teaching readers to think and read analytically about nonfiction texts, including the skills of reading for central ideas, synthesizing, and comparing and contrasting. Participants leave with concrete methods to support students in note taking and a repertoire of practical strategies for revving up students' abilities to do this critical work, helping them observe, sketch, sort and categorize notes. Then too, participants leave with ideas and methods for involving whole classes in closely reading grade-level complex texts.

The institute focuses not only on nonfiction reading, but also on nonfiction writing, with an emphasis on writing quick content area essays. Participants learn ways to help students write fluently across the curriculum, using writing as a tool for analytical thinking. This institute equips participants with the knowledge of content area instruction that can push students to the highest levels of achievement. Participants will draft action plans aimed at revising curriculum in social studies (grades 3-8), science (grades K-2) and language arts, and develop and use performance assessments to track students’ progress in some of the higher-level comprehension skills inherent in the CCSS. These performance assessments can help ramp up the level of comprehension.

Participants spend half of each day in a large group section and the other half of the day in small, interactive groups.

OTHER CRITERIA AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION
This institute is designed for people who have not attended a TCRWP content area institute. Attendance of the February Institute does not grant participants New York City P-Credit or graduate credit, nor guarantee advanced participant status at the summer institutes. (That is because this institute tackles content which is different from TCRWP’s usual!)

REGISTRATION AND PAYMENT
The cost of this institute in 2012-13 was $600.00. This cost does not include meals or housing.

Feedback from past February Mini-Institute participants...

"I always remember more from your institutes because of the practical small group sessions. I learned many strategies to model in classrooms" - Mary B.

"I will be able to live on what I learned this week for a very long time. The pacing and organization of the content was excellent!" - Meghan B.

"It was obvious how the larger and small group plans were connected. I have some very concrete things to bring back to Chicago!" - Ellen M.