Spanish Springs HS Students Explain SBAC and Field Testing

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Students at Spanish Springs High School created a terrific video to explain the new Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia (SBAC) test. The video is clear and on point in helping all stakeholders understand the implications of SBAC and the field testing that is taking place. You can watch the video here.

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‘Deliberate ELA/Literacy Redundancies and Repetition’

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

The Department of Education’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education has shared the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education report to help practitioners with CCR outcomes. Included in the report is a description of how the Common Core standards work within and across grade levels to promote literacy outcomes. From the report:

In some cases, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) repeat the very same skill level to level with little or no variation in wording or demand. Literacy skills by their nature are recursive; therefore, certain skills need to be covered at both lower and higher levels of learning, but applied to increasingly sophisticated contexts. So, for example, students are asked by the CCSS to determine the theme or central idea of a text, summarize a text, determine the meaning of words in context, and produce clear and coherent writing in several levels of learning as applied to more challenging texts.

Beginning on page 96 is a table with all the links. For example, Reading Anchor Standards 1 is closely associated to Writing Anchor Standard 9 and Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1. Or Reading Anchor 8 is matched with Writing Anchor 1 and Speaking and Listening Anchor 3. There are many other examples that can viewed by downloading the full report here.

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Additions to www.63000resources.com

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

A number of resources and materials have been added to www.63000resources.com. Like everything else at the site, the items are free and well aligned to the shifts and the Instructional Practice Guides.

The “Year at a Glance” planning tool for grades K through 6th are now available for download in the Resource page.

Michelle Gianola has created a Flipchart for the read aloud Tops and Bottoms. The lesson and the Flipchart can be found here.

The Read Aloud Project materials have been added to the site. They are divided into the following sections

In Lesson Demonstrations, Debrief Circles has been linked and helps with addressing Core Action 3 within the Instructional Practice Guides.

And don’t forget, discussion lessons at www.projecttahoe.org can be found here. Each lesson posted on this page implements an effective research based discussion strategy and uses rich primary and secondary sources to promote effective classroom discussion.

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Complex Text and Annotating with Technology

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Tracy Watanabe has created a post describing strategies to help students navigate complex text. The post begins with an overview of text complexity followed by resources to scaffold students to successfully working with this outcome–with suggestions for integrating technology. She has also created several sets of open materials that can be downloaded from the links below.

Read with a Pen Primary

Read with a Pen Secondary

S’More about Text Complexity

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Performance Tasks, an Overview (samples linked)

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium has produced a video tutorial describing Performance Tasks. A Performance Task “measures capabilities such as depth of understanding, research skills, and/or complex analysis with relevant evidence.”

There will be one Performance Task per content area on the 2014-2015 assessment and in ELA students will be required to integrate research and writing.

The video provides a general overview of Performance Tasks before describing an ELA and math example. Note, students are afforded time to discuss the big ideas with each other before moving to independent work—reading and writing. You can watch the twelve-minute video here and download sample Performance Tasks here.

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Writing Instruction and the Common Core

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

If you have questions about writing and the Common Core, the following LearnZillion webinar will help. Joey Hawkins, the founder of the Vermont Writing Collaborative and author of Writing For Understanding: Using Backward Design To Help All Students Write Effectively, provides her answers to a number of questions and shares advice for practitioners. You can watch the entire webinar or go straight to a topic/question from the annotated minutes below.

1:57 What is different about writing instruction in the age of Common Core?

5:29: What is the relationship between writing and content knowledge?

7:38 Ensuring that students have enough content knowledge to write on a subject.

8:54 How do writing expectations change as students move through the grades?

13:45 What is the best way to integrate the language standards and the writing standards? (15:30, the research on stand alone grammar lessons.)

18:29 Shifting from opinion writing in 5th to argumentative writing in 6th.

21:12 Notes on the resource In Common. (Washoe contributed to this effort.)

26:17 How does narrative writing fit within the CCSS?

30:01 Recommendations and supports for English Learners.

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Common Core ELA Shift Song

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Shawn Leer, an Implementation Specialist in Area 5, has written and recorded the following song about the Common Core. Titled, “You Gotta”, Shawn has cleverly managed to describe the instructional shifts and the Instructional Practice Guides (IPG) in lyrical form. You can download the lyrics here and hear the song on Youtube here.

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Nevada’s 5th Family Engagement in Education Summit

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

At Nevada’s 5th Family Engagement in Education Summit, teachers, school administrators, parents, elected officials and community members learned more about the Nevada Academic Content Standards (including the Common Core). Participants worked through a study from MetaMetrics, the instructional shifts, and how the Core Task Project has framed elementary ELA efforts in Washoe County. You can find the PowerPoint here and the notetaker here.

New Colossus Close Read Exemplar (here)

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Showcase Nevada Presentation Materials

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

At the 5th Annual Showcase Nevada—the Afterschool Experience, educators worked with the Instructional Practice Guides (IPG) to bridge their efforts with the Common Core State Standards. Personnel, from throughout the state, reviewed the instructional shifts and the IPGs and then applied the guides to classroom videos.

You can review the PowerPoint here that includes links to video and additional professional resources.

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Common Core Site Updated

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

If it has been some time since you visited www.corestandards.org, it is worth returning. The website has been revamped and now includes more targeted areas including a specific section for parents. Further, the site is more comprehensive with answers to questions about the development of the standards and new resources to support their implementation.

core standards landing page

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