Reading, Writing, and Communicating

The Reading, Writing, and Communicating standards invite students to use texts to better understand others’ experiences in the world and to command language in order to articulate their own perspective on the human experience.

The standards intentionally reflect the read-write connection and the relationship between critically consuming texts to build knowledge and producing texts to convey knowledge. 

Important Announcements

Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) Modules

LDC is a national community of educators providing a teacher-designed and research-proven framework, online tools, and resources for creating literacy-rich assignments and courses across content areas. Educators from districts across the state have authored LDC modules to augment the secondary sample instructional units (grades 6-12) in reading, writing, and communicating, science, comprehensive health, and social studies.  

Now Available in Spanish! Guides to the Colorado Academic Standards

To help families and communities better understand the goals and outcomes of the Colorado Academic Standards, kindergarten through high school guides are available for all content areas.

Updates from PARCC

Two important announcements were released by PARCC.  First, PARCC has updated its rubrics for the Prose Constructed Response items (the Performance Based Assessment at mid-year).  The revised rubrics may be found on the PARCC website for Test Specification Documents (scroll down once you land there).  Watch this space for an upcoming PLC Byte on some thoughts about using the rubrics in school and classrooms.  The second announcement is that “the PARCC states will reduce the number of passages and items in the English Language Arts/Literacy End-of- Year Test.”  Specific grade-band information may be found on the PARCC website.  The changes will result in fewer questions and, therefore, reduce the testing time.  

Instructional Unit Samples

Colorado teacher-authored instructional units are on our website. Hundreds of teachers from 116 school districts participated in workshops for the creation of Colorado Academic Standards-based curriculum overviews and instructional units.

Fast Facts: Reading, Writing, and Communicating

If you are new to Colorado or are just interested in learning about the overarching headlines regarding Reading, Writing, and Communicating education, this one page reference sheet is a good place to begin! Use the navigation links on the right side to read even more about the exciting world of Reading, Writing, and Communicating education in Colorado!

RWC e-Updates

The e-Updates are intended to be a monthly announcement sent directly to your inbox regarding Reading, Writing, and Communicating education initiatives and opportunities.

• May 2015
• April 2015
• March 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• October 2014
• September 2014
• To view archived e-updates click here.

PLC Bytes are 7-10 minute presentations or longer segmented presentations designed to be used in Professional Learning Communities (PLC) or faculty meetings. Find archived PLC Bytes here.

• The PARCC Performance Based Assessment Rubrics will ask students to respond to three different writing prompts: a Literary Analysis task, a Research Simulation task, and a Narrative task.  The writing assessment will be different from standardized writing assessments that we have seen previously in the state of Colorado; the writings will be based on multiple texts, will include a "reading comprehension" measure in the rubric, and will have a specific task for  narrative writing.   This PLC Byte offers a brief introduction to the rubrics that will be used to assess student writing on the PARCC assessment. 

• Close, Comparative, and Critical Reading - Three Ways to Meaningfully Engage Students in Complex Texts