Monthly Archives: January 2014

Our New Site: www.63000resources.com

A popular request from teachers and admin is to organize all of the literacy resources that are included in Core Task Project, professional development trainings and blog postings. We’ve done this and they can be found at www.63000resources.com. Educators will find … Continue reading

Posted in Common Core State Standards, Core Task Project, Professional Development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Close Reading Exemplar: We are the Ship

Cathy Schmidt, Elementary Training Coordinator with Striving Readers, has written the following close reading exemplar for an excerpt from Kadir Nelson’s book, “We are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball.” We currently have the exemplar tagged to the … Continue reading

Posted in Close Reading | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Common Core Exemplar Videos and Free Lesson Plans

Washoe County School District teachers Loree Gerboth and Sara Holm were filmed for a project developed by America Achieves with videos being created to provide examples of what Common Core looks like in the classroom. The videos by Gerboth and … Continue reading

Posted in Instructional Shifts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Administrative and Supervisory Meeting, January 24th 2014

At the winter Administrative & Supervisory meeting, governance worked through content matched to the Instructional Practice Guides and the Common Core. This included a focus on writing, within the context of CCSS, and Core Action 2—employ questions and tasks that … Continue reading

Posted in Common Core State Standards, Professional Development, Read-aloud Alignment Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Access to CCSS Edmodo Groups

The document describing the Edmodo groups that support free materials and professional development aligned to the CCSS has been updated. You can access the document here or here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Gaining Access to the Read Aloud Project for K-2

Educators, from throughout the country, are gathered in Las Vegas to train on the Read Aloud Project (RAP). RAP is an effort to create Common Core-aligned lessons for K-2 picture, informational, and chapter books. Lessons include text-dependent questions, Language exploration, … Continue reading

Posted in Read-aloud Alignment Project, Student Achievement Partners | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Free Programs to Help Students Learn to Type

As many of you know, portions of the 2014-2015 PARCC and SBAC assessments will require students to type their responses to questions. (You can take the SBAC practice test here.) Consequently, there is a renewed push to help students become … Continue reading

Posted in CCSS, SBAC | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Vocabulary and Complex Texts

Dr. Freddy Hiebert, in a video webinar posted here, explains the importance of vocabulary in determining the complexity of text. Hiebert notes that ten percent of the words in text are considered complex with text, used to inform, having a … Continue reading

Posted in Academic Vocabulary, text complexity | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blue Friday, A Focus on Writing

Implementation Specialists, site coaches, and personnel from district departments gathered to review content that will be shared with elementary schools on February 5th. The focus for the 5th is on writing with professional learning around Dr. Louisa Moats, the writing … Continue reading

Posted in Professional Development | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Writing and the Common Core: Samples & Techniques

The 3rd through 6th grade teachers at Alyce Taylor Elementary got a preview of the content to be shared at the January 17th Blue Friday, the Administrative and Supervisory meeting on January 24th and the Pink Wednesday on February 5th. … Continue reading

Posted in Student Achievement Partners, Writing to Sources | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment