College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

Instead of quiet classrooms with teachers lecturing rows of students, at Wheaton High School (MD) the students ran the show and the teachers stood aside.

This is project-based learning (PBL), where educational instruction moves away from a traditional academic setting to an active classroom that encourages collaboration and communication among students.

Wheaton Principal Kevin Lowndes said students are still learning material they need to know to prepare them for college and meet state instructional standards. They’re just doing it in a different way.

“They’re talking through problems and really trying to figure things out to better their understanding of the material,” Lowndes said.

What do school-based SLPs need to know about the new curriculum benchmarks?

What are the Standards?

• Example 1: Speaking and Listening Standard K-5: Describe people, places, things and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly (1st grade).
• This standard ties in to the SLP's work on expressive language and improving the use of adjectives. The element of relevance also links to the common work of discussing what an important detail is versus a minor detail.
• Example 2: Reading Standards for Literature K-5: Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text (2nd grade). SLPs frequently work on WH question forms and helping students understand who, what, where, when, and why, but also to gain the skills to be able to respond appropriately to such question forms.
• Example 3: Reading Standards for Literature K-5: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from non-literal language (3rd grade).

The CCSS provide a direct link to using classroom text for vocabulary intervention and includes the element of literal and non-literal language concepts, which many students who have language impairments struggle with.

Do you teach non-fiction text structures? Are your students familiar with the five most common text structures for non-fiction? In welcoming the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS), schools acro...

Student performance continues to propel the conversation on what Americans think is wrong with our nation's public education system.

These mathematical practices describe the expertise and habits of mind that we should develop in students over the course of their K-12 study of mathematics.

ELA, Grade 7: A 4- or 5-day unit on Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken” (about an American prisoner of war in Japan during World War II) and Jeanne and James Houston’s “Farewell to Manzanar” (about an internment camp for Japanese Americans).

Objectives: Push students to think critically about two divergent WWII stories. 

http://www.lohud.com/article/20121028/NEWS03/121027004/Preview-two-samples-Common-Core-lessons?nclick_check=1

Author(s):Anne Hyslop
Published: October 11, 2012

More significant, ACT and College Board are positioning themselves to directly compete with the Common Core – and win.

Rather than collaborate with PARCC, ACT announced its own next-generation assessment system, which is aligned to Common Core and includes formative and summative assessments offered from elementary to postsecondary.

Similarly, the College Board’s incoming president and Common Core architect, David Coleman, has big plans for the SAT, “transforming it from an aptitude test intended to control for varying levels of school quality, to a knowledge test aligned with the Common Core.” And don’t forget about College Board’s increasingly-popular Advanced Placement exams, offering students an edge in the admissions process and accepted for credit at many institutions.