College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

Summary

This work is good as far as it goes. Yet with the clock ticking, one hopes that illustrative history-focused prototypes appear soon.

In this release, PARCC does not yet attempt to address here the many logistical challenges that high stakes online testing raises. Those questions like many others, will have to wait.

Incorporating the Common Core Standards into your language arts curriculum is not that hard to do. Learn how to incorporate the five writing standards into your lesson plans with an example or assigning and completing an essay in your classroom.

Implementing the new, more rigorous Common Core State Standards will require a belief that given sufficient time and proper support, students can demonstrate learning at higher levels--college- and career-readiness.

In this video clip, Heather Wolpert-Gawron discusses creating new kinds of formative assessments that assess skills and thought process, not just content.

Is cursive a waste of time? California schools don't think so.

Handwriting Research shows that forming letters by hand, as opposed to typing them into a computer, not only helps young children develop their fine motor skills but also improves their ability to recognize letters — a capacity that, in turn, predicts reading ability at age 5. But many schools are now emphasizing typing over writing. Last year, for example, the Indiana Department of Education announced that the state’s public schools no longer had to teach cursive writing and they should ensure that students were “proficient in keyboard use” instead. http://ideas.time.com/2012/11/08/why-kids-should-learn-cu-cursive/

Tom Vander Ark 

Their Answers Will Help Separate the Genuine from the Disingenuous

The implementation of Common Core State Standards is intended to create change in our nation's public education system ... not put change in the pockets of the American publishing industry.

Aaron Churchill

A decades-old Rand Corporation report suggests high school implementation of the Common Core may be difficult.

Common Core State Standards TOOLBOX

In this webinar, Tim Shanahan discusses CCSS Instructional Shifts in English Language Arts.

Three writing prompts based on recent Times content, devised and tested by a ninth-grade class in New Jersey. 

Each Friday we collaborate with a classroom in New Jersey to test and publish three short writing ideas that address Common Core Standards and that are grounded in New York Times content.

This week, the teachers, Jonathan Olsen and Sarah Gross, and their ninth graders were just as taken with the following:

1. Narrative Writing - Dining: “As Not Seen On TV” Common Core Standards: RI2, RI4, RI5, RI6, RI10, W3, W4, W5, W10, RH4, RH5, RH8
2. Argumentative Writing - Editorial: “The Elite Eight, on the Federal Radar” Common Core Standards: RI2, RI6, RI8, RI10, W1, W4, W5, W9, W10, RH2
3. Argumentative Writing - Business: “Facebook’s False Faces” Common Core Standards: RI1, RI6, R18, RI10, W1, W4, W5, W10, RH2

The research show us two things:

1. The amount of explicit instruction is very important in student learning and that

2. Instruction requires lots of interaction between teachers and students.