The first standard under Reading for Literature and Reading for Informational Text is the same. This standard focuses on textual evidence. I like to refer to this standard as the How do you know?standard. The focus here is on proving that what you see in the text is true. Backing up your claims with facts is a powerful cognitive step for… Read more →
Reading for Literature Standard 6 is one of the most misunderstood Common Core Standards. many teachers are mistakenly teaching this as a unit on first, second, and third person. This is simply off base. What RL6 is really about is the character’s point of view. This means: how does that character see the world? What is the character’s perspective? I… Read more →
I love quick and easy strategies for my students. As an elementary teacher for over a decade, I really had fun teaching nonfiction (now informational) text with my third through fifth graders. With the pervasive nature of the new Common Core Standards, this is a requirement in classes now. Here is a great strategy to use with your students in… Read more →
The Common Core Reading standards are fast becoming a bit of genius to me. As I help teachers plan and devise approaches to unit organization, I notice a nature staircase or actual set of building blocks that exist naturally in the standards. The Reading for Literature Standards are progressive. While common core has not explicitly told teachers to introduce the concepts in order,… Read more →
Every so many years, there seems to be some shift in education. The pattern is inevitably uniform each time: Something is wrong in education that no one can fix. A new innovation promises to deliver the solution to wipe out this problem. As educators, we just need to get on board with the new, shiny, and nicely packaged new solution… Read more →
Over the past four months I have spent quite a bit of time scouring the Internet for what the major publishers are putting out for Common Core. I noticed that most products have”Common Core Aligned”printed on everything now. I even notice that well know authors like, Calkins, and Pinnell are now being promoted as aligned to Common Core. I went… Read more →
The skill set for Common Core is pretty static. There are NOT a lot of skills. For literature there are ten skills. TEN. For Georgia Educators who have been here for a while, mentioning the word QCC conjures up images of hundreds of skills that had to be taught just for reading. This shifts how we look at ELA instruction…. Read more →
As I think about Common Core and what I know about curriculum, I am very interested in looking at pieces that support the Common Core standards. One huge component is analyzing text for the messages they communicate (both explicit and implicit), and analyzing text from multiple cultural perspectives. For teachers who cling only to canonical pieces and the “right” answers this will be a challenge. Luckily… Read more →
