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Lifelong Practices in the Content Areas

These practices accompany NYS learning standards as skills and habits of mind that should be developed and fostered in the content areas.

Lifelong Practices of Readers

  • Think, write, speak, and listen to understand

  • Read often and widely from a range of global and diverse texts

  • Read for multiple purposes, including for learning and for pleasure

  • Self-select texts based on interest

  • Persevere through challenging, complex texts

  • Enrich personal language, background knowledge, and vocabulary through reading and communicating with others

  • Monitor comprehension and apply reading strategies flexibly

  • Make connections (to self, other texts, ideas, cultures, eras, etc.) 


Lifelong Practices of Writers

  • Think, read, speak, and listen to support writing

  • Write often and widely in a variety of formats, using print and digital resources and tools

  • Write for multiple purposes, including for learning and for pleasure

  • Persevere through challenging writing tasks

  • Enrich personal language, background knowledge, and vocabulary through writing and communicating with others

  • Experiment and play with language

  • Analyze mentor texts to enhance writing

  • Strengthen writing by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach


Mathematical Practices

  • Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them

  • Reason abstractly and quantitatively

  • Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others

  • Model with mathematics

  • Use appropriate tools strategically

  • Attend to precision

  • Look for and make use of structure

  • Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning


 Science and Engineering Practices

  • Asking questions and defining problems

  • Developing and using models

  • Planning and carrying out investigations

  • Analyzing and interpreting data 

  • Using mathematics and computational thinking 

  • Constructing explanations and designing solutions

  • Engaging in argument from evidence 

  • Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information


Social Studies Practices

  • Gathering, Interpreting and Using Evidence

  • Chronological Reasoning and Causation

  • Comparison and Contextualization

  • Geographic Reasoning

  • Economics and Economic Systems

  • Civic Participation


Artistic Processes

  • Create

  • Perform, Present, Produce

  • Respond

  • Connect


Physical Education Practices

  • Demonstrates perseverance and resilience

  • Advocates for self, others, and community

  • Respects and embraces individual and cultural differences

  • Adapts to multiple environments

  • Acquires skills necessary to live a healthy life

  • Demonstrates a commitment to safety

  • Uses motivational strategies to encourage self and others’ participation in a physical activity

  • Exhibits civility when confronted with adversity

  • Connects the physical well-being to social emotional wellness