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From http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=47231

Cutting to the Common Core: The Benefits of Narrow Reading Units
by Kate Kinsella

I provide consultancy and professional development for districts across the nation that are striving to support English learners and under-resourced students in making viable academic language and literacy advances. I am observing with increasing concern as well-intended English language arts educators in grades 4-12 cobble together units of study in hopes of addressing the complex demands of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS, 2010) in time for the impending doom of the proverbial “cart before the horse” assessment debacle. Their legacy curriculum was not created to mentor English acolytes in systematic analysis of content-rich nonfiction, a range of rigorous text-reliant discussions using academic register, and argumentative writing drawing from multiple sources, all major emphases in the CCSS shifts.

With Next Generation assessments looming on the horizon, earnest English language arts educators are therefore teaching five days a week while also scrambling to locate appropriate reading selections, write depth-of-knowledge questions, and create text-dependent writing prompts and anchor papers — essentially building the airplane while they fly it — with scant time for reflection on pedagogy or revision of materials. I am routinely asked to review and bless ill-fated thematic units, compiled in lieu of an adopted and classroom-tested CCSS-aligned curriculum. Theme-based units have for decades been the curricular mainstay of elementary and secondary English language arts. While there are intuitive and evidence-based justifications for organizing upper-grades reading and writing coursework around unifying themes, the traditional approach to literary thematic unit development warrants reconsideration in light of the close informational reading and data-driven response demands posed by the CCSS shifts.

Read on to learn the merits of narrow reading at http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=47231