States will begin testing students under the Common Core State Standards in 2014. PARCC and SABC are the testing consortiums developing online or computerized tests. Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium or SBAC. At $31/student, SABC provides testing services to thirty-one member states (links are to state departments of education): California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, [...]
April 15, 2013
The One-Hour Narrative: CCSS Writing Lesson Plan
My friend, Rich Davis, is an extraordinary illustrator who has created the Pick and Draw (PAD) card game to encourage kids to draw with more creativity. It’s such a simple card game that it has been adapted to many activities. My favorite activity is using it to help kids create a character that they care [...]
April 9, 2013
Fact or Opinion: A CCSS ELA Lesson Plan
Facts. They are important. They are the basis of our educational system, the foundation of science and industry, and a clear emphasis in the Common Core State Standards. In both reading and writing, students will be expected to use fact based evidence of their comprehension and compositions. Yet our students are not always clear on [...]
April 4, 2013
Setting: When Where Matters–A CCSS Lesson Plan
When we ask students to analyze literature we often concentrate on the plot, character development, or sequence of events because they are critical to understanding the meaning of the story. But sometimes the setting of the book can be just as important as the characters. The setting can actually drive the plot of the story. [...]
March 25, 2013
CCSS: Why is a Public Policy Document Copyrighted?
When you think of a public policy document, you rarely think of a document that is copyrighted. Yet, that’s exactly the case for the Common Core State Standards. It’s a strange and unsettling thing. The Common Core State Standards are copyrighted: Any publication or public display shall include the following notice: “© Copyright 2010. National [...]
March 21, 2013
Practical Math: CCSS CTE Classroom Tasks
Here’s a typical complaint from an algebra student: “Why do I need to know this stuff? I’ll never use it!” Keeping the math standards practical is necessary, but often difficult. Toward that end, Achieve, Inc. has provided a series of practical tasks and shown how they relate to real-world math skills in areas such as [...]
March 20, 2013
Rhode Island Adults: 60% Fail Math Test
In an interesting twist on high-stakes testing, students in Rhode Island asked politicians, businessmen and scientists to take the math portion of a high-stakes test. Today, they released the results and here is their press release. March 19, 2013 STUDENTS RELEASE “TAKE THE TEST” RESULTS – SUPER MAJORITY OF ACCOMPLISHED PROFESSIONALS SCORE BELOW DIPLOMA THRESHOLD [...]
March 18, 2013
Fake Website: Teach Students to Assess Websites
by Stephanie Bearce Years ago if a child asked a teacher the meaning of a word, the teacher’s automatic answer was “Look it up in the dictionary.” Now the temptation is to say “Google it.” The internet is here to stay and with it comes a plethora of information sites, access to online magazines, eBooks, [...]
March 14, 2013
CCSS Mathematics Classroom Shift #2: Coherence
Recently, as my colleagues and I have been planning instruction and assessment in PLCs, we’ve noticed something that needs to change. We have been teaching Mathematics like cleaning out the attic: one box at a time. When we get to the probability box, we open it up, pull out all our tools and tricks, then [...]
March 8, 2013
Literary Non-fiction
The CCSS calls for students to engage in reading literary non-fiction text. At first glance that seems to be an oxymoron. Literary non-fiction? That’s not in the Dewey Decimal system. But it is in your library and your librarian knows which books fit this category. They are the non-fiction books that readers drool over. True [...]
