Studying the Gettysburg Address under Common Core

[TAHAWK]

Instructions to teachers:

 

The idea here is to plunge students into an independent encounter with this short text. Refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset. It may make sense to notify students that the short text is thought to be difficult and they are not expected to understand it fully on a first reading  that they can expect to struggle. Some students may be frustrated, but all students need practice in doing their best to stay with something they do not initially understand. This close reading approach forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all students as they seek to comprehend Lincoln’s address

 

So context is to be prohibited so the words can be "understood" in a vacuum, thus avoiding " privileging background knowledge,"

 

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[Stosh]

I'm glad the instructions on my new lawn mower aren't written in King James' English. Someone could get seriously hurt.

 

I sure am glad at least one of my grandchildren will be home schooled.

 

Stosh

[Eagle94-A1]

Good grief, I am so glad I homeschool.

 

As a one time historian, I can tell you that is not how I was taught to read and understand historical documents. Nor did I teach my college students that either. You needed to know the time, events, etc to understand the document.

[T2Eagle]

Speaking of context, what grade and what subject is this a directive for? What were the previous topics covered, what is the follow up lesson?

 

The directive seems to be: have students read the text itself alone first, it's a tough read to parse out to get it right, but students need to do things that are hard in order to get better. "Some students may be frustrated, but all students need practice in doing their best to stay with something they do not initially understand."

 

As far as being understood and avoiding privileging background knowledge, that means having to read it carefully in order to understand it, not just guessing at its meaning after being spoon fed all the background information.

 

This would actually be a fairly tough assignment for most of my scouts --- exactly the type of thing we should be striving for in schools.

 

I see no implication in this instruction that the lesson isn't fleshed out later to be sure that the Address is fully understood.

[T2Eagle]

Nor did I teach my college students that either.

 

E94A1, this seems to me to be at least in part an exercise in close reading of a text. I'm genuinely curious, how well and how quickly do you think your college students could, given just the text, answer the question "What is meant by the phrase 'any nation so conceived and so dedicated'... My own experience is that knowing to refer back to the previous paragraph for the precise definition of those terms would challenge many college freshmen.

 

[packsaddle]

Try reading through this COMPLETE description of that particular Common Core lesson and see if anyone still has concerns.

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/american-civil-war/resources/gettysburg-address-common-core-unit

[TAHAWK]

The lesson is for 9th - 10th graders to be taught over "three-to-six day" ( I should think it would make quite a difference whether three or six days were used.)

 

The detailed instructuions for the teacher may be downloaded from here: http://achievethecore.org/page/35/the-gettysburg-address-by-abraham-lincoln

 

The topic is for History/Social Studies

 

The general objective is for the students to understand the message but to somehow achieve this end absent any context and without using anything they already know. That is not how I learned or taught history.

 

Here is a reasoned critique from Tim Shanahan. Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Education at the University of Illinois and former member of the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Literacy (a Presidential appointment). http://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/common-core-watch/how-bad-are-the-common-core-lessons-on-the

 

(A publication of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for Educational Excellence.)

 

Even the Huffington Post has problems with the Common Core approach: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/reading-without-understan_b_4323239.html

 

The National Endowment for the Humanities urges a much different approach: http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/gettysburg-address-1863mdashdefining-american-union#sect-objectives

 

I have not paid much attention to the Common Core. I believe that I should.

 

[Eagle94-A1]

TAHAWK,

 

There are so many problem with Common Core, that many school districts, and some states, are doing away with it. The math examples I've read are so out there, that folks with math and engineering degrees have issues with it. Read on about my history comments.

 

Pack,

 

I couldn't read the entire link as it was to painful and aggrevating. First and foremost, I hate group work in a school setting. Some folks in the group do all the work, while others sit in the background. Other times, directions and goals are given out, only to find out that folks go off on tangents that have no relation to the assignement. Yet everyone in the group gets the same grade for good or bad.

 

As for the approach used, it is pure malarky. Nothing is ever done in a vacuum. In order to fully undserstand something, you have to know the events and context that led to the document.

 

I also don't like the fact that from there appears to be little to no individual critical thinking, despite appearances to the contrary. A lot of group think.

 

T2Eagle,

 

Depending upon the students I had, I agree that it would be a challenge for them to realize that the answer is in the previous paragraph. I worked in one of the night school for working adults programs. Most of my students were older, and would have no problem as they had some critical thinkming skills via pre-1980s educational theories. I did have a few younger students, going to school in the late1990s, early 2000s.

 

An aside. I was an education minor in the early to mid 1990s. One of my profs was a fiesty, retired HS principle. She was a mix of the mandatory educational theory, but more importantly real world practicality. She wasn't a fan of alot of the educational theories that have eventually evolved into Common Core. A lot of the predictions she made about the failure of these theories is coming to pass.

[T2Eagle]

So now I've read both lesson plans. First, it is not the case that the Common Core lessons prohibit using anything they already know --- that's a misreading of the lesson; what it says is to not give pre-reading context within the lesson. This is one unit in a US History course --- the students will have context. Even the NEH lesson plan makes pre-reading context optional and emphasizes a first cold reading of the text. In fact the NEH plan says that the actual text is first used as context for the criticisms that follow.

 

As to Professor Shanahan’s criticism, he asserts that there is a difference between a close reading for literary purposes and a close reading for historical purposes. I’m not fully convinced that those are actually different things, but his conclusion is not that the CC method is inappropriate. From the article: “ That means that while it’s acceptable to jump into a cold literary read of the Gettysburg Address, it is also perfectly appropriate to talk to students about the Declaration of Independence, what happened at Gettysburg, or about Pericles’s Orationâ€â€that is, as long as such discussions do not do the interpretive work for the students. And it is okay to bring those documents in at different points in the reading, such as between a first and second read.†And it’s important to note that like all suggested lessons this one will be supplemented by the teacher in the classroom.

 

Both lesson plans will result in the students understanding the Gettysburg Address, but it strikes me that the CC lesson would enable a student to take on and understand other texts, like Eisenhower’s combined D-Day Message to the Troops along with his Message in Case of Failure, in a way that the NEH model might not. In any case, I cannot see the CC method as somehow bad or inappropriate.

 

My undergraduate minor was History/Poli Sci and I have advanced degrees in two different disciplines. When I see the Common Core standard it looks rigorous, and it looks like the type of cross disciplinary learning that is going to well prepare students to not just regurgitate facts but to apply their learning throughout life.

 

[perdidochas]

Instructions to teachers:

 

 

 

So context is to be prohibited so the words can be "understood" in a vacuum, thus avoiding " privileging background knowledge,"

 

0____0

 

While I don't doubt that the above is claimed to be Common Core, it is not a common core requirement. From my observation, a lot of crap is being foisted on school kids with the label "Common Core." The standards are reasonable.

 

http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/

 

Here are the 9-10 grade standards for reading in Social Studies.

 

[h=1]English Language Arts Standards » History/Social Studies » Grade 9-10[/h] [h=4]Key Ideas and Details:[/h] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.1

Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.2

Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.3

Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier events caused later ones or simply preceded them.

[h=4]Craft and Structure:[/h] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.4

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social science.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.5

Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.6

Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.

[h=4]Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:[/h] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.7

Integrate quantitative or technical analysis (e.g., charts, research data) with qualitative analysis in print or digital text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.8

Assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author's claims.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.9

Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.

[h=4]Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity:[/h] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.10

By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the grades 9-10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

 

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RH/9-10/

[perdidochas]

Good grief, I am so glad I homeschool.

 

As a one time historian, I can tell you that is not how I was taught to read and understand historical documents. Nor did I teach my college students that either. You needed to know the time, events, etc to understand the document.

 

The above, IMHO, doesn't fit with what I've read in the actual Common Core Standards.

 

http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/

[Stosh]

What time period are we talking about with 4 score and 7 years if this document is taken out of context? And even with context, how many Americans understand what is being said in the Address anyway? Maybe Lincoln was right, as time as attested, maybe what was conceived in 1776 can't really survive.

 

Stosh

[CalicoPenn]

There is a major misunderstanding here of just what these lessons are for - they are NOT, as is being bandied about, part of a History or Social Studies curriculum. Common Core does not have any standards for History and Social Studies. Common Core does not have any standards for Sciences like Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geology, etc. Common Core has standards for Literacy (reading, writing, etc.) and Mathematics only.

 

 

What you are all looking at is for the Literacy standards - it uses texts from history and other social studies fields and texts from scientific fields to increase literacy, not to increase understanding in history, social studies or the sciences. The idea is to be able to read a historical or scientific document and to be able to understand what it is saying on its face. From a historical standpoint, context is important - from a literary standpoint, context is not key - its the words themselves that are important. From a literary standpoint, one should be able to read the Gettysburg Address and, without having been told anything about it before hand, know that the US in in a war, Lincoln is speaking at a battlefield of that war, Lincoln is honoring the brave soldiers that fought and died there for their country, and that Lincoln is declaring how important it is to keep moving forward, to keep fighting for the country as conceived by our forefathers. The address also happens to have a great example of how a single word, like Dedicate, can have multiple meanings in one text. That's part of literacy too.

 

One of the hardest things to get students to read is non-fiction - and it's hard to get them to read it because they don't think they can understand it without someone telling them what it means. In most English programs in US high schools, readings tend to be limited to fiction, poetry and plays. Occasionally one might run into a biography or two - Diary of Anne Frank, Night, something along those lines, but one never sees something like The Medusa and the Snail, or A Brief History of Time or Team of Rivals taught in English classes. The Common Core standards in Literacy aims to change that - help people become more comfortable reading non-fiction by helping them realize they can understand what is being written.

 

Context is important - and in this case the context to be concerned about isn't putting the Gettysburg Address into historical context, but to put the reading of the Gettysburg Address into the context of what the Common Core really is about - and that's literacy, not history.

 

Oh - and don't claim HuffPo has problems with the Common Core when the article is an opinion piece by one specific writer in the HuffPo "blog" section which is analogous to the Letters to the Editor/Editorial Pages of a newspaper who also specifically states the opinions expressed are his alone. It isn't HuffPo that has problems with Common Core, it is Alan Singer of Hoefstra University. Context!

[CalicoPenn]

I'm going to say this regardless of how politically incorrect it might be - Common Core is being dropped by some states because it has been politicized by ignorant GOP clowns who apparently aren't capable of reading the actual standards and apparently aren't capable of reading and understanding anything more challenging that The Cat in the Hat and the people that vote for them, who apparently aren't capable of reading and understanding anything more challenging than Dick and Jane.

[walk in the woods]

Nothing wrong with reading a text without background information. Keeps liberal teachers from biasing their students, allowing the students to think for themselves. Of course the students will have to regurgitate the politically correct line when it comes time for grading because that's what the teacher learned to be correct in his or her indoctrination. The problem isn't conservatives reading Dick and Jane, the problem is commie pinko socialists who can't read and understand the basic text of the U.S. Constitution that specifically limits federal powers.

 

There, can we be done calling names and quit with the divisive hyperbolic rhetoric now.