Understanding Common Core State Standards

This book focuses on the new national Common Core standards and what educators need to know in order to strengthen learning and teaching methods within the classroom. Chapters focus on the national standards, including understanding, the benefits for students, concerns, and preparation for the 2014-2015 school year when students will assessed on the standards for the first time.

This essential guide to the Common Core State Standards provides an overview of the new standards in English language arts and mathematics, explains how everyone in your school community can make the transition to this new paradigm, and invites you to think about the possibilities that the standards offer for strengthening teaching and learning across the United States.

The latest in the Understanding the Common Core series covers the structure, terminology, and emphases of the standards for both mathematics and English language arts and literacy at the upper elementary level. Here, teachers of grades 3-5 and elementary school leaders will find the insight they need to turn the standards' new and challenging content into coherent curriculum and effective classroom-level lessons.

Discover how to weave an in-depth understanding of the Common Core into successful classroom practice with this two-part resource. You’ll learn how to power the standards with guided assessment and measure student progress in a way that accurately reflects learning. Included are hundreds of ready-to-use, research-based proficiency scales for both English language arts and mathematics.

Smart implementation of the Common Core State Standards requires both an overall understanding of the standards and a grasp of their implications for planning, teaching, and learning. This Quick-Start Guide provides a succinct, all-in-one look at * The content, structure, terminology, and emphases of the Common Core standards for mathematics and English language arts and literacy in the lower elementary grades. * The meaning of the individual standards within each of the four ELA/literacy strands and five math domains, with an emphasis on areas that represent the most significant changes to business as usual. * How the standards connect across and within strands, domains, and grade levels to develop the foundational language arts, literacy, and mathematics understanding that will support a lifetime of successful learning. Here, teachers of grades K–2 and elementary school leaders will find information they need to begin adapting their practices to help all students master the new and challenging material contained in the standards. A practical lesson planning process to use with the Common Core, based on Classroom Instruction That Works, 2nd Ed., is included, along with six sample lessons. LEARN THE ESSENTIALS OF THE COMMON CORE The grade-level and subject-specific Quick-Start Guides in the Understanding the Common Core Standards series, edited by John Kendall, are designed to help school leaders and school staffs turn Common Core standards into coherent, content-rich curriculum and effective, classroom-level lessons.

Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at the Reading and Writing Project have helped thousands of educators design their own pathways to the Common Core. Now, with Pathways to the Common Core, they are ready to help you find your way. Designed for teachers, school leaders, and professional learning communities looking to navigate the gap between their current literacy practices and the ideals of the Common Core, Pathways to the Common Core will help you: understand what the standards say, suggest, and what they don't say; recognize the guiding principles that underpin the reading and writing standards; identify how the Common Core's infrastructure supports a spiraling K-12 literacy curriculum; and scrutinize the context in which the CCSS were written and are being unrolled. In addition to offering an analytical study of the standards, this guide will also help you and your colleagues implement the standards in ways that lift the level of teaching and learning throughout your school.--

"The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are the first academic standards to be independently adopted by almost every state in the country. The purpose and intent of the Common Core standards for English Language Arts (ELA), as well as Literacy in History/Social Studies and Science Education, are the focus of this book. Each of the chapters addresses one of the major English Language Arts domains: literature, informational texts, foundational skills, writing, speaking and listening, language, technology, and assessment. The objective of the chapters is twofold: to provide a theoretical background and detailed explanation of each of the CCSS/ELA standards, as well as practical suggestions, classroom vignettes, models, instructional resources, and unit ideas to implement the standards"--

Timely, thoughtful, and comprehensive, this text directly supports pre-service and in-service teachers in developing curriculum and instruction that both addresses and exceeds the requirements of the Common Core State Standards. Adopting a critical inquiry approach, it demonstrates how the Standards’ highest and best intentions for student success can be implemented from a critical, culturally relevant perspective firmly grounded in current literacy learning theory and research. It provides specific examples of teachers using the critical inquiry curriculum framework of identifying problems and issues, adopting alternative perspectives, and entertaining change in their classrooms to illustrate how the Standards can not only be addressed but also surpassed through engaging instruction. The Second Edition provides new material on adopting a critical inquiry approach to enhance student engagement and critical thinking planning instruction to effectively implement the CCSS in the classroom fostering critical response to literary and informational texts using YA literature and literature by authors of color integrating drama activities into literature and speaking/listening instruction teaching informational, explanatory, argumentative, and narrative writing working with ELL students to address the language Standards using digital tools and apps to respond to and create digital texts employing formative assessment to provide supportive feedback preparing students for the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments using the book’s wiki site http://englishccss.pbworks.com for further resources