Hilah Barbot is helping KIPP teachers across the network increase the rigor of their literacy instruction.

Being able to read and write well are core skills that students need regardless of the subject they are studying. Four years ago, Hilah introduced the practice of having her 6th grade science class write research papers – just like they will do once they are in college. It wasn’t long before that practice revealed her students needed extra support. They had so many great ideas, but describing those ideas was a challenge for many. Additionally, some students were missing key concepts in what they were reading, or were reading too slowly to finish the assignment. She realized she needed to adjust instruction in her classroom to focus more on reading and writing mastery.

At first, Hilah and her school leader worried that the students’ science achievement would suffer as a result of this change. But KIPPsters gave a very pleasant surprise—their science achievement actually rose once more focus was put on reading and writing. Confirming KIPP's belief that if students can read and write well, they have the foundation they need to succeed.

At KIPP, one of the teacher competencies in the KIPP Framework for Excellent Teaching (KFET) is Literacy for Everyone. This means that all teachers are reading teachers, no matter what subject they teach. With states across the country adopting the Common Core State Standards, they’re seeing that KIPP’s emphasis on literacy is in line with this new focus on college readiness.

To help educators prepare for the transition to Common Core, KIPP has designated Featured Teachers to share their best practices. As a KIPP Featured Teacher, Hilah is designing and sharing her curriculum with the KIPP network and incorporating many of the English-Language Arts Common Core State Standards into my plans. By focusing on ELA in her science classes, she hopes to increase students’ facility with nonfiction texts and deepen their reading comprehension. And by sharing her work with KIPP teachers across the KIPP network, she hopes that their students will benefit as well.

In doing this work over the past six months, she has three pieces of advice for others shifting to the Common Core:

· Work Closely With Your ELA Teachers
KIPP’s science team has worked closely with our ELA team in order to bring best reading and writing strategies from ELA class into science class. It has made a huge impact on students. Students are writing papers to respond to nonfiction texts at a higher level this year than they ever have before.

· Differentiation is Key
Hilah uses Achieve 3000 for articles, which allows her to sort reading material by difficulty using the Lexile Framework for Reading. She prints out the same article on multiple Lexile levels to give to different groups of students reading at different levels. In this way, she can differentiate the level of complexity of research paper projects for different students according to their Lexile levels. Also, she often has students pre-read an Achieve article they will be using in class on their computer during blended learning time. The article is on their Lexile reading level and easy to understand. The next day, students will come to class and reread the article on an upper 6th grade Lexile reading level. The pre-reading helps increase their confidence and understanding as she works to tackle tough texts!

· Make Reading and Writing a Priority
She knows that reading and writing is an area where her students need to grow. Therefore, her instruction has changed to make literacy her top priority. She finds herself often cutting lessons that has been done in the past in order to add more writing and reading assignments. Last year, her students completed two week-long research assignments. This year she plans for them to complete at least five multi-paragraph research papers. Likewise, it is rare that she will have a lesson that does not include at least ten minutes of nonfiction reading and writing.