Environment, Literacy, and the Common Core

by Nancy Skerritt and Margaret Tudor, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT: This article describes how Common Core ELA standards provide an important opportunity to build background knowledge on environmental topics in preparation for a deeper study of those topics through science performance tasks guided by the Next Generation Science Standards Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI’s).
GRADE LEVEL: K-8

The Common Core ELA standards demand a level of rigor that will challenge many students. Unlike previous curriculum reforms that were content specific, the Common Core expectations involve the integration of skills across content areas including social studies, science and language arts. Students must apply reading, writing, research, and speaking and listening to content provided through articles, speeches and videos. The new performance tasks that are a key component of Smarter Balanced assessment system require research skills, note-taking abilities, and the difficult challenge of synthesizing ideas into well-written essays or speeches that explain or advocate.

In order to engage students in these rigorous expectations, teachers must find rich content for the students to explore. Environmental issues provide relevant topics and complex problems that invite analysis and research. Students can practice and apply the ELA expectations using topics related to our environment. Resources supporting environmental issues are readily available on line in the form of articles, videos, and speeches. In addition, students can gather relevant data through outdoor learning experiences, a unique benefit to this content area. Teachers can structure rich and relevant investigations that mirror performance tasks on the new assessments, using the environment as a context for learning.

Designing a Performance Task

Let’s visit a grade three elementary classroom where the children have been studying the life cycle of the salmon including how to preserve and protect water quality and quantity so that salmon can continue to survive. After visiting a local fish hatchery, the students illustrate the life stages of salmon, monitor their own water consumption, and create a rule that they can enact at school to preserve and protect water. In addition, they visit a local creek to view the salmon first hand, appreciating their beauty and endurance. How might the Common Core ELA standards support the learning in this unit? What might students research, what issue might they weigh in on, and what product might they create—an essay or a speech?

The new performance assessments are designed to measure proficiency in reading, writing, research and speaking and listening. The students are given a scenario that is grounded in a real world context. Then they acquire knowledge of the topic or issue by reading pre- selected articles and watching chosen videos. The students are expected to take notes on the information provided, keeping in mind the task that they are given in the scenario.

Here’s how this might play out in our elementary classroom. The students are provided with this scenario:

You have been asked to explain why salmon need clean water to survive. You will read an article and watch a video that provides you with information about the needs of salmon for their survival. You will take notes on the articles and the video, writing an informational essay explaining why salmon need clean water to survive.

Students read the article provided, preferably on the computer since all of the new assessments will be delivered using technology. Students will work in an entirely online environment so must learn how to navigate websites, read material on a computer screen, and compose their essays using a keyboard. For our hypothetical Salmon task, reading and viewing material might include the following:

Article #1: Short piece explaining the salmon’s need for clean water. Video #1: Showing pollution in our waters and its effects on salmon.

Scoring Performance Tasks: Research Skills and Writing Rubrics

All performance tasks include research questions that require the students to draw information from the multiple sources in preparation for writing an essay or speech. These questions are measuring specific research skills.

The research skills include the following:

• The ability to locate information
• The ability to select the best information including distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information and facts from opinions.
• The ability to provide sufficient evidence to support opinions expressed

Rubrics are provided for each of the three skills and are used for scoring student responses.

Here are some example research questions that link to our salmon task:

According to the video, what are two important steps we can take to preserve and protect our salmon? Use details from the video to support your answer. (Locating Information)

Which source, the video or the article, best helps you understand the needs of salmon? Use details from both sources to support your answer. (Selecting the best information)

Based on the reading and the video, what do you think is the one most important thing we could do to protect our salmon? Use details from both sources to support your answer. (Using sufficient evidence)

Students write their responses to the research questions using the notes that they have taken while reading the article or viewing the video. They submit their answers for scoring and on a second day, proceed to part two of the assessment.
Part two involves writing an essay or outlining and delivering a speech. The Common Core ELA requires that students be skilled in their ability to write in three different modes: informative/explanatory, opinion/argumentative, and narrative.

Students must also be able to outline and deliver a speech on a given topic. In our elementary grades salmon task example, students might be given the following prompt:

You have been asked to write an informational essay where you share what salmon need to survive. Use information from both the article and the video to support your ideas.

To demonstrate the CC ELA writing standards, students must use information from the various sources, clearly summarizing their information with text-based evidence.

Background knowledge is not a factor when scoring these essays. Students must cite text-based evidence to support their ideas, not prior knowledge from other sources. Essays are scored using a five trait rubric. Close reading of text is paramount in the ELA CC standards.

Scenario-Based Problems

Performance tasks require students to engage with a scenario-based problem, research information presented in various media, extract key ideas from the information, answer research questions, and compose an essay or speech that presents their original opinions and ideas supported by text based evidence. Task developers follow a specific template when creating performance assessments. The template includes identifying a plausible scenario, locating appropriate source material, designing research questions and structuring an essay or speech that synthesizes information from the research.

Selecting the content for these tasks is critical for the content must be relevant and problem based. Students practice and apply career and college ready skills including critical thinking and analysis. Topics connected to the environment provide real-world scenarios that can capture the interests of our students.

Here are some examples of Environment focused Performance Tasks that the Pacific Education Institute has developed for K-12 teachers to assign to their students:

Healthy Waters: How do water treatment plants work and why are they important?
SOS: Saving Our Sound: What can we do to improve the health of the Puget Sound?
Stormwater Engineering: How do engineers solve problems linked to storm water runoff?
Earth Day: What is the history behind the environmental movement and how has this movement influenced legislation today?
Ocean Acidification: What can we do to ensure the survival of our shellfish?

Field Experiences and Performance Tasks

Field experiences, an important component of environmental education, can be part of a performance assessments, either embedded in the assessment itself or as a follow up activity. Students can enhance their knowledge acquired through text-­based research with knowledge gained in a systematic way through direct experience. Scenarios may be developed that incorporate outdoor learning experiences where students reinforce their understanding of the topic provided through direct observation and data gathering. In our salmon example, students could be prompted to take pictures on their field experiences to the fish hatchery and to the local stream, providing visual images of the salmon to support their text-­based evidence. These photos can serve as primary source material when students compose their essays or outline their speeches.

Much has been written and created regarding sustainability issues. Teachers can select a topic appropriate to their grade level curriculum and locality, compose a scenario that is directly relevant to the student, and identify source material for student engagement. They can also incorporate outdoor learning experiences that enhance understanding, promote enthusiasm for the environment, and add to their knowledge base. By designing performance tasks using the environment as the context for learning, students work with relevant information, learn about the challenges we face, and form opinions at a young age that will guide their future thinking and civic involvement.

Democracies, for their survival, demand an informed electorate. Environmental issues may be the most critical issues our children will face. We can accomplish two important goals by linking performance assessments to sustainability education. One goal is to teach and practice the ELA skills that the students will need to be career and college ready. The second and equally important goal is the ability to form reasoned judgments about environmental issues. By connecting the Common Core ELA standards to the environment, students benefit on two fronts: Acquiring both environmental literacy and literacy in English Language Arts.

Our children face crucial decisions regarding a sustainable future. Their knowledge base, critical thinking skills, and ability to effectively communicate are keys to informed decision-­making. We must educate our children to effectively read, write, research, speak and listen. They need to think critically and creatively in order to solve the complex problems we face.
Let’s make content choices for our curriculum that are meaningful today and into the future. Nothing is more relevant, engaging, and crucial than issues related to preserving and protecting our environment.

Nancy Skerritt is an educational consultant after 22 years as a classroom teacher in the Tahoma School District in Washington.

Margaret Tudor is the founder and director of Pacific Education Institute.