Supplemental Curriculum We live in a complex, highly competitive global world and the Common Core State Standards lay out a path to prepare our children to be successful in it. Pearson offers digital instruction solutions to help every single child perform to Common Core Standards, be an active participant in his or her own intellectual development, and walk the staircase of increasing academic complexity to reach a level of academic readiness for college, career, and life in a global world. Support Common Core-driven Instructional Shifts The movement to Common Core State Standards has resulted in dramatic instructional shifts to better equip learners for college and career. Pearson can help you prepare your students for the future with curriculum solutions that support these instructional shifts at every grade level. » Learn about our digital instruction programs designed for the 21st century. Empower Every Student to Rise to the Challenge of Common Core Manage Data and Accountability Develop Common Core Leaders
Are "just right" books right for the Common Core? In the 1990s, much of the fireworks in the education policy debate centered around a “reading war” where supporters of whole language squared off against the forces of phonics. Now, in the Common Core era, I predict a similar firestorm is on the horizon. Only this time, the debate will not be about how to teach students to read in the first place, but rather how to help them build knowledge and improve comprehension over time. More specifically: It’s about how to choose the books you are asking students to read. And the outcome of this debate could go a long way towards deciding the long-term impact of CCSS ELA standards. There are two camps in debate over how to select and assign texts. The prevailing view among many educators in the United States today is that the best way to improve student reading comprehension is to assign lots books that are “just right” for individual students. Makes sense, right? Not necessarily. Enter the Common Core.
BOOKMATCH: Scaffolding Independent Book Selection ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you. More Find the latest in professional publications, learn new techniques and strategies, and find out how you can connect with other literacy professionals. More Teacher Resources by Grade Your students can save their work with Student Interactives. More Home › Classroom Resources › Lesson Plans Lesson Plan Overview From Theory to Practice This lesson prepares students to be independent and responsible for their own just-right book selections during independent reading time. back to top Wedwick, L., & Wutz, J.A (2008). Wedwick, L., & Wutz, J.A. (2006). Wutz, J.A., & Wedwick, L. (2005).
Finding Fabulous Financial Literacy Vocabulary With Fancy Nancy ReadWriteThink couldn't publish all of this great content without literacy experts to write and review for us. If you've got lessons plans, activities, or other ideas you'd like to contribute, we'd love to hear from you. More Find the latest in professional publications, learn new techniques and strategies, and find out how you can connect with other literacy professionals. More Teacher Resources by Grade Your students can save their work with Student Interactives. More Home › Classroom Resources › Lesson Plans Lesson Plan Overview Featured Resources From Theory to Practice In the Fancy Nancy series, the author introduces a variety of “fancy” words, which include descriptive vocabulary words. back to top Rodgers, Y.V., Hawthorne, S., & Wheeler, R.C. (2007). Recommend using children's literature to teach economics concepts in the primary grades. Ellery, V. (2005). Altieri, J.L. (2011).
Is Reading in Kindergarten the Means for Ensuring College and Career Readiness? » TextProject Posted by Freddy Hiebert on 3 August 2011 Elfrieda H. Hiebert TextProject & University of California, Santa Cruz “K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century” (Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Appendix, A, page 2). In the case of kindergarten texts, this statement is blatantly false. The inclusion of kindergarten in this blanket statement about text difficulty represents an implicit assumption about beginning reading that also requires consideration—that earlier is better. The dumbing-down of kindergarten texts The CCSS writers cite two sources for the dumbing down conclusion: Chall (1967/1983, 1977) and Hayes, Wolfe, and Wolfer (1996). Further, neither Chall’s nor Hayes et al.’s analyses included kindergarten texts. In 1990, two independent analyses verified the absence of kindergarten textbooks in core reading programs (Hiebert & Papierz, 1990; Morrow & Parse, 1990). The pushing down of formal reading instruction References Chall, J. Chall, J.
Common Core State Standards » TextProject The Common Core State Standards is the first effort by American states (43 to date) to set the same goals for student learning. Within the standards, explicit text levels are given across the grades to ensure that high school graduates are college and career ready. Beginning with the grade 2-3 band, target text levels have increased from previous recommendations. The Standards provide little guidance, however, on how to support the many students who struggle with current grade-level texts. TextProject has responded rapidly to this need with research-based resources that will guide and inform educators, parents, and community leaders. Featured Resources Benchmark Texts: Stepping Up Complexity Adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represents the first time that explicit complexity levels have been set for grade-level texts. Reading Research Report #10.01 An Examination of Current Text Difficulty Indices with Early Reading Texts Hiebert, E.H. & Pearson, P.D. (2010). Text Matters
Perspectives and Resources This Module illustrates different research-based reading strategies that may be used with the response-to-intervention model to improve reading skills. This Module was developed in collaboration with the Tennessee State Improvement Grant and the Tennessee Department of Education. Work through the sections of this Module in the order presented in the STAR graphic above. View Module Outline If you want to learn more about how to navigate an IRIS Module, please view our Navigating an IRIS STAR Legacy Module video. Copyright 2015 Vanderbilt University.
A Close Look at Close Reading As teachers and schools continue to wrestle with implementing the Common Core Standards, I hear more and more talk—and more and more questions—about the term ‘close reading’. Interestingly enough, the term doesn’t appear in the actual Standards, though it crops up repeatedly in many Standards-related material, including the now famous—or infamous—videos of Standards author David Coleman dissecting Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” And Text Complexity co-author Douglas Fisher has said that close reading is “the only way we know how students can . . . really learn to provide evidence and justification,” as the Common Core requires. So what exactly do we mean by ‘close reading’? I think this because, by definition, analysis involves thinking about how the parts contribute to the whole, which presupposes an understanding or vision of the whole. My own vision of close reading is better captured in some of the guidelines colleges provide students. 1. Like this:
Teaching With Math Tasks "Math Tasks 101" with David Smith, mathematics specialist for the Utah Office of Education November 6, 2012 View the Recording on PD 360 Learn how to create a classroom culture of math engagement and real-world problem solving through math tasks. David A. Smith is a mathematics specialist for the Utah Office of Education. At the webinar on November 6, Mr. Additional resources discussed in the webinar: Teaching with Math Tasks: 4th Grade Classroom with Kalina Potts Tuesday, November 13, 2012 View the recording on PD 360 Teaching with Math Tasks: 8th Grade Classroom with Travis Lemon Tuesday, November 27, 2012 View the recording on PD 360 Additional resources shared by Travis Lemon: www.mathematicsvisionproject.org (for Math Tasks ideas) Lemonmath.weebly.com (Travis Lemon's website) Book: "Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions" by Margaret S.
Moving the Common Core State Standards from Adoption to Implementation to Sustainability This blog post is cross-posted on The Hunt Institute’s blog, The Intersection. If you’re an educator in one of the 46 states that has adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), you’ve not only been learning about the standards and what they mean for you and your students, but you’ve most likely begun implementing them as well. As you’ve been busy moving forward, you probably still have a great deal of questions. Does your district or school have the technological capacity to administer the new computer-based assessments? How can you better leverage technology for teaching to the standards? You’re not alone. So what are your colleagues saying about the standards? We’ve compiled the findings and our own recommendations in a free report, “Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards: Moving from Adoption to Implementation to Sustainability.” You’ll find the full report on our EduCore™ site.
The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary Use magic to teach and learn academic language in my new NY Times post that includes a student interactive and teaching ideas. Enriching Academic Vocabulary: Strategies for Teaching Tier Two Words to E.L.L. Students is the headline of another one of my posts for The New York Times. This is latest in my “The Best….” series of lists. One way this list is different from the others is that I don’t rank them in terms of which ones I like the best. You might also be interested in The Best Sites Where ELL’s Can Learn Vocabulary. Here are, in my opinion, The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary: An Academic Writing Module: Paragraphs is designed for student self-access, and has many interactive exercises. Using English For Academic Purposes has a lot of good online activities. Carolyn Zierenberg, a talented teacher at our school, put together a simple multilingual (English/Spanish/Hmong) glossary of academic vocabulary. When To Teach Vocabulary Related