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 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 [...]
February 11, 2013
Ban Yellow Highlighters! 5 Poor CCSS Teaching Strategies
The CCSS bills itself as internationally benchmarked and based on current research. While it focuses on the content of the lesson, it says little about the actual teaching methods, wisely leaving the curriculum and lesson plans to teachers. However, a new monograph of psychological educational research reviews ten teaching practices and has some surprising conclusions [...]
November 28, 2012
Common Core Science Books
UPDATE: Next Gen Science Standards were released in April, 2013. NSTA Winning Titles by Reading Level (Lexile) This week, the National Science Teacher’s Association and the Children’s Book Council announced the Outstanding Science Trade Books 2013 list. These titles represent the best of the science and science-related books (informational texts) of the year, making it [...]
November 6, 2012
Common Core Resources
Here’s an explanation and example of GLAD – Guided Language Acquisition Design using maps and artwork to help in teaching with the Common Core. Hundreds of Library of Congress lesson plans, primary source sets, presentations and more—all based on authentic primary sources from the Library’s online collections—are now aligned to the CCSS, to state content [...]
October 10, 2012
The Nonfiction Family Tree
The discussion about the differences between nonfiction and informational text is continuing in the quest to understand the ramifications of the Common Core. I asked two children’s book authors to comment on the differences from their point of view. Here, Melissa Stewart, author of over 150 children’s nonfiction books, chimes in on the issue. Her [...]
September 24, 2012
Information Texts v. Nonfiction Texts: Common Core ELA
The newly established Correll Book Award for Excellence in Early Childhood Informational Text asserts that informational texts are a sub-genre of nonfiction texts. Informational Text is a subset of the larger category of non-fiction (Duke & Bennett-Armistead, 2003). Its primary purpose is to inform the reader about the natural or social world. Different from fiction, [...]
September 17, 2012
Common Core vs State Standards
Guest post by SD in Arkansas If you stay in the education business long enough, you start to see trends in the “education reforms.” One such trend is the movement from “specific” standards to broader standards and then back again. Every decade or so, we seem to see the pendulum swing back the other way. [...]
