Cultural Literacy For The Common Core

Build your cultural literacy while inspiring deep, thoughtful, unbiased thinking in students. Discover a six-step framework for becoming culturally literate that complements the Common Core and encourages students to be at the center of learning. Explore how to develop teacher-student relationships, engage in collaborative conversations, and encourage feedback to give voice to the increasingly diverse student body found in today’s classrooms

A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.

In Why Knowledge Matters, influential scholar E. D. Hirsch, Jr., addresses critical issues in contemporary education reform and shows how cherished truisms about education and child development have led to unintended and negative consequences. Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, draws on recent findings in neuroscience and data from France to provide new evidence for the argument that a carefully planned, knowledge-based elementary curriculum is essential to providing the foundations for children’s life success and ensuring equal opportunity for students of all backgrounds. In the absence of a clear, common curriculum, Hirsch contends that tests are reduced to measuring skills rather than content, and that students from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot develop the knowledge base to support high achievement. Hirsch advocates for updated policies based on a set of ideas that are consistent with current cognitive science, developmental psychology, and social science. The book focuses on six persistent problems of recent US education: the over-testing of students; the scapegoating of teachers; the fadeout of preschool gains; the narrowing of the curriculum; the continued achievement gap between demographic groups; and the reliance on standards that are not linked to a rigorous curriculum. Hirsch examines evidence from the United States and other nations that a coherent, knowledge-based approach to schooling has improved both achievement and equity wherever it has been instituted, supporting the argument that the most significant education reform and force for equality of opportunity and greater social cohesion is the reform of fundamental educational ideas. Why Knowledge Matters introduces a new generation of American educators to Hirsch’s astute and passionate analysis.

An argument for establishing a core curriculum of the basic information everyone needs to know, based on the author's hypothesis that being culturally literate is the foundation of intellectual competence.

The Eighty-Seventh Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II

Common Core's English resources empower educators to meet the expectations of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA) and build essential content knowledge for students in grades 6-8. Each grade in The Wheatley Portfolio features a comprehensive, coherent sequence of thematic units that engage students in deep study of worthwhile texts and topics. Features of this book include: Six thematic units for each grade, each centered on a curated collection of literary and informational texts Focus standards for each unit that complement the topic and promote student mastery of essential literacy skills Suggested texts and activities to incorporate science, art, and history into English instruction This revised second edition includes a sample text study that guides students through a close read of an exemplary text, updated web resources, and refreshed suggested works. Educators who create their curriculum based on Common Core's Wheatley Portfolioguarantee that students are exposed to content-rich instruction and have ample opportunity to master the reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language skills articulated in the CCSS for ELA.

Common Core's English resources empower educators to meet the expectations of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA) and build essential content knowledge for students in grades K-5. Each grade in The Wheatley Portfolio features a comprehensive, coherent sequence of thematic units that engage students in deep study of worthwhile texts and topics. Features of this book include: Six thematic units for each grade, each centered on a curated collection of literary and informational texts Focus standards for each unit that complement the topic and promote student mastery of essential literacy skills Suggested texts and activities to incorporate science, art, and history into English instruction This revised second edition includes a sample text study that guides students through a close read of an exemplary text, updated web resources, and refreshed suggested works. Educators who create their curriculum based on Common Core's Wheatley Portfolioguarantee that students are exposed to content-rich instruction and have ample opportunity to master the reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language skills articulated in the CCSS for ELA.

Common Core's English resources empower educators to meet the expectations of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA) and build essential content knowledge for students in grades 9-12. Each grade in The Wheatley Portfolio features a comprehensive, coherent sequence of thematic units that engage students in deep study of worthwhile texts and topics. Features of this book include: Six thematic units for each grade, each centered on a curated collection of literary and informational texts Focus standards for each unit that complement the topic and promote student mastery of essential literacy skills Suggested texts and activities to incorporate science, art, and history into English instruction This revised second edition includes a sample text study that guides students through a close read of an exemplary text, updated web resources, and refreshed suggested works. Educators who create their curriculum based on Common Core's Wheatley Portfolioguarantee that students are exposed to content-rich instruction and have ample opportunity to master the reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language skills articulated in the CCSS for ELA.