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 [...]
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. [...]
January 2, 2012
Solid Critique of CCSS
The CCSS suffer from a lack of solid critiques that look deeply at the standards and how the various parts of it interact. That’s why Sandra Stotsky’s recent article is welcome. Indiana needs to drop Common Core, develop its own standards, By Sandra Stotsky for The News-Sentinel, Monday, December 31, 2012 – 8:47 am Sandra [...]
May 17, 2011
Writing Narratives: Common Core Standards
Common Core Narratives The new Common Core standards requires narrative writing at all levels. Here are some of the distinctions of narratives (real or imagined) by students at each grade. As always, the frameworks build on the previous grade’s skills, so I’m just highlighting what changes in each grade. K Time order, give character reactions. [...]
