50 Important Links for Common Core Educators Educators across the nation are working hard this summer to begin developing updated curricula that will fit into the new Common Core State Standards, which will be fully applied in 45 U.S. states (Texas, Alaska, Nebraska, Virginia, and Minnesota have opted out of statewide participation) by 2015. Yet despite the hubbub about the new standards, which were created as a means of better equipping students with the knowledge they need to be competitive in the modern world, many teachers still have a lot of unanswered questions about what Common Core will mean for them, their students, and their schools. Luckily, the Internet abounds with helpful resources that can explain the intricacies of Common Core, offer resources for curriculum development, and even let teachers keep up with the latest news on the subject. We’ve collected just a few of those great resources here, which are essential reads for any K-12 educator in a Common Core-adopting state. Groups and Organizations Useful Resources
NETS Implementation - Lesson Plan Templates Lesson Plan Templates These templates are for the purpose of developing model lessons and are intended for use by fairly experienced educators who have some experience with integrating technology into the curriculum. These lesson templates also assume some thought has been given to big ideas and/or essential questions/learnings. If your school or district has engaged in a curriculum mapping process and looked at essential questions or essential learnings for particular subject areas and mapped those to grade levels, then you have great places to start with curriculum development. If you haven't engaged in such a process, think about concepts that your students have trouble with or a good lesson/unit that you would like to make a great lesson/unit. Lesson Plan Template 1 (More Directed Learning Activities) Lesson Plan Template 2 (Open-ended Exploration) Next Steps—To Submit Exemplary Lesson Plans Next Steps—If You Want to Solicit a Team to Work Together
Inclusive Education in Action - www.inclusive-education-in-action.org Create a Graph Classic - Bar Graph - NCES Kids' Zone There are all kinds of charts and graphs, some are easy to understand while others can be pretty tricky. There are many different types because each one has a fairly specific use. Bar graphs can be used to show how something changes over time or to compare items. They have an x-axis (horizontal) and a y-axis (vertical). An example using real education data would be if you wanted to show the most popular bachelor's degrees (business, education, etc.) that students received in college in a given year. You are now ready to create your own bar graph... Click Here To Create a Bar Graph
The Teacher’s Take, Part 2: The Instructional Role of the School Librarian School Library Monthly/Volume XXVI, Number 5/January 2010 The Teacher’s Take, Part 2: The Instructional Role of the School Librarian by Carl A. Harvey II Carl A. Part two of "The Teachers' Take" on the school library program in North Elementary School in Noblesville, Indiana, focuses on collaboration and the instructional role of the school librarian. One of the common threads between the questions asked in this interview and those asked in the previous issue is the focus on the role of the school librarian. Q: Why did you start working with the school librarian? Cathy: Having taught for many years when the librarians were part of the specials rotation, I had limited exposure to collaborating with the librarian. Janene: Because he asked me to. Sally: He came into our building wanting to be part of the family. Harvey: School librarians can’t wait for an invitation; you have to make your own. Q: How does planning work between the teachers and the school librarian? Conclusion
Implementation | Common Core State Standards | Topic Specific Sources | Web links | MC3 Register | Lost Password Skip to Content Follow us on Facebook ResourcesAbout MC3 Web links > Topic Specific Sources > Common Core State Standards > Implementation Common Core Implementation ExemplarsDate Added: July 24, 2013 Visits: 55 [ Report ] This Achieve document features state practices and models used with implementing the Common Core State Standards. Common Core Implementation WorkbookDate Added: February 6, 2013 Visits: 56 [ Report ] This link to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers' (PARCC's) website provides an implementation workbook developed by Achieve and U.S. Common Core State Standards: Progress and Challenges in School Districts' ImplementationDate Added: June 10, 2013 Visits: 15 [ Report ] This link is to a Center on Education Policy report exploring the issues associated with implementing the Common Core State Standards. Common Core VideoDate Added: January 8, 2014 Visits: 98 [ Report ] Back to Top
There’s No "I" in Teacher: 8 Rules of Thumb for Collaborative Planning Shula: Mission Lab is a design studio within Quest to Learn. It's comprised of game designers and curriculum designers and we work with teachers at Quest to Learn to help them develop their curriculum and to design games that are played in the classroom. Shula: Part of what we do is to identify pieces of content that students tend to have trouble learning or picking up and when those areas come up, we work as a team to brainstorm ways that we can design a game that will help kids to better understand and really learn and remember these content areas. Arana: Mission Lab is something as a structure within a school that does not exist in any other school that I know of. The support that it gives teachers, I think especially at a public school, makes it extremely unique. It's just a place where teachers can really be creative and are really encouraged to be creative with our curriculum and also a space of collaboration. Student: We're not just playing the games for no reason.
What Is Your Learning Style? What Is Your Learning Style? This quiz asks 24 questions and will take less than five minutes to complete. Try not to think too hard -- just go with your first thought when describing your daily activities and interests. By the end, you may have some new insights into your learning preferences. Editor's Note (2013): There is no scientific evidence, as of yet, that shows that people have specific, fixed learning styles or discrete intelligences, nor that students benefit when teachers target instruction to a specific learning style or intelligence. Uncovering "Complex Text" in the Common Core One of the critically mentioned components of the Common Core is the complex text. This need for complex text came out of studies that students were not arriving at college ready to read college-level texts independently. The Common Core documents also indicate other reasons and rationale. One of the most startling claims is: "Despite steady or growing reading demands from various sources, K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century." Credit: Common Core State Standards Initiative One of the challenges of the "complex text" is gaining a real understanding of exactly what it is. But what exactly is a complex text, and how can you ensure that you are using age appropriate texts in the classroom? Standards of Measurement The Common Core measures complex text with three aspects. Qualitative When examining a text qualitatively for text complexity, you consider a variety of factors. Quantitative Credit: Common Core State Standards Initiative
The Most Useful Resources For Implementing Common Core — I Hope You’ll Contribute More (NOTE: Readers have begun to contribute some excellent ideas in the comments. I’ll get around to adding them to the body of this post but, until then, be sure to review the comments, too!) I’m obviously not a real big fan of Common Core standards, and am a bit skeptical about its practical impact on what happens in the classroom. I’m starting off with a few today, and hope readers will contribute a whole lot more — for all subjects and grade levels. You might also be interested in these other lists: The Best Resources For Learning About Common Core Standards & English Language Learners The Best Articles Sharing Concerns About Common Core Standards The Best Resources For Learning About The “Next Generation” Of State Testing My Ed Week post, Best Ways to Prepare Our Students for CCSS in Language Arts . Here are just a few to begin and, as I mentioned earlier, I hope many additional resources will be shared in the comments: The folks at Engaging Educators have really been on top of it.
Assessment Design: A Matrix To Assess Your Assessments Assessment Design: A Matrix To Assess Your Assessments by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education On Rigor, Language, & Verbs Rigor is not established by the unthinking use of Webb or Bloom or other verbs. Here, for example, is a widely-findable chart I found on the NJ Dept of Education website, in which Webb’s rubrics have been turned into a leveled chart of supposedly-appropriate verbs: A moment’s thought after looking over these verbs should make you say: Huh? Take “predict” for example. In summary, just throwing some verbs around as starters for “rigorous” tasks is not enough to address the first bullet concerning the challenge of the task.
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