4 Common Core Resources

With all the talk and the press about Common Core State Standards, we’ve been exposed to many resources. Here are 4 that I go back to often.

Periodic Table of Common Core Standards: The authors describe this as a “tool that could help you pull the big ideas of the standards into one place.” What I love about this infographic are the visual cues.

Five-Minute Film Festival: Digging into the Common Core: This is a new favorite blog for me. Amy Erin Borovoy’s Five-Minute Film Festivals are well-organized and easy to use. On the topic of the Common Core, she provides 10 videos ranging in length from under 2 minutes to over 12 minutes, all designed to help explain CC. Be sure to listen/watch the Common Core Blues – you might smile.

Achieve the Core: A personal favorite, this site has free resources for educators. The professional development section has solid and easy-to-implement resources.

engageNY: This site provides a wealth of information – implementation resources, curriculum resources (I know, NY focus), professional development kits and more. The video, Teaching is the Core, allows us to hear lots of teachers’ voices and hear about student engagement.

Common Core Toolkit for Principals

Gerald Aungst, Supervisor of Gifted and Elementary Mathematics at the School District of Cheltenham Township, is creating some great resources for principals to assist in the transition to Common Core. “Each month, I will prepare a four-part package of resources and activities they can use both for their own professional development and as part of faculty meetings with their staff members. The four parts each month will be:
1. Think: a warm up article, blog post, or video to set the stage for a faculty discussion
2. Share: two activities principals can use with staff members during the month in faculty or team meetings
3. Test Drive: A key instructional practice that teachers can try out in their classrooms without expectations
4. Explore: Links to other resources with more information for those who want to dig deeper”

While geared to his district, I believe others will find these useful and adaptable.

In Education News…

In California, a bill was introduced that would allow massive open online courses (MOOCs) to offer courses for credit to public college and university students in the state.

Plagiarism isn’t new. Some say technology has made it easier (i.e. copy/paste). Technology may also offer some ways to check the rise of plagiarism. One of my favorites is plagscan.com – easy to use and color-coded. In a Campus Technology article, Dian Schaffhaouser cites John Moravec as saying, “We need to give credit where credit is due.” One thing I notice in professional learning opportunities is that it is not always students in the classroom not giving credit but sometimes those teaching. Blackboard now has an “Originality” button.

Danae Quirk Door talks about flipping her chemistry classroom at Minnesota State University and the data she collected from both her flipped class and her traditional class. It seems that digital tools empowered all four learning styles – practical, logical, imaginative, and enthusiastic. Danae also provides a nice outline of the format she used.

With the introduction in the Senate of the new bill to reauthorize NCLB, there is a move away from the 2012 bipartisan effort. There are 7 key pieces to this new proposal, three of which include:

• States could use a series of formative assessments rather than a single summative test
• States could develop goals that include both student achievement and growth
• A move from four to five improvement models

Check out the blog by Alyson Klein. And here is another take on the topic from Fox News.

If you are interested in staying current with news about the Common Core, you may want to check out ASCD’s Core Connection e-newsletter.

In a recent blog, Salome Thomas-EL (Principal EL) poses this question – So how do we develop the kind of culture in our schools that supports the change needed to develop high expectations for all kids who become resilient and successful? He offers strong ideas about transforming the school culture, which include the addition of chess and problem solving for grades 3-5. What are some ideas you have to respond to Thomas’ question?

 

Entrepreneurial Learning…Coaching…Common Core

A colleague, Anne Fox, shared this video about entrepreneurial learning, which I found inspirational. Where are you with your thinking about this topic?

 

Just found a nice poster about coaching from the PLP network you may want to check out. It highlights these 5 tips about coaching.

1. Coach from a strength based, appreciative inquiry perspective
2. Nurture personal relationships
3. Listen
4. Leverage the affordances of technology
5. Maximize coaching and learning with activities and protocols

Achieve the Core is constantly adding high-quality, useable resources to support work with Common Core – this week 10 new sample lessons based on popular texts, instructional practice guides (I love this tool), professional development modules, resources for parents, etc.

For The Teachers – Common Core Instructional Ladders

Just had a chance to review Tami Bowlden’s new web site – ForTheTeachers.org. If you are a MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) user and looking for connections to Common Core Standards you will want to check this out. Tami has taken the DesCartes tool from NWEA which is aligned to Common Core and created a wealth of instructional ladders in three content areas – reading, math and language. Take a look and let us know what you think (post a comment here, please).