If you’re not a teacher… I suggest skipping this one.

This past week I attended an in-service that our school corporation offered on the Common Core State Standards. It was “Transitioning to the Common Core State Standards” and was presented by Michael Rush, the Executive Director of The Center for College and Career Readiness. This coming week we will be doing a second session focusing more on assessment with Common Core. This first session was just an introduction.

I’m going to start off by saying it was a very overwhelming day. The first half of the day was the most overwhelming as we compared the Common Core to the Indiana State Standards. It also helped me to see how the Common Core Standards work within Language Arts.

Throughout a few presentations and an activity I was able to understand that each standard in Language Arts correlates with the same numbered standard in the grades above and below me. This is going to make it much easier for me to provide remediation for my lower students and challenge my higher students. I will know what standards they should have already learned or what they will be learning in the upcoming years. This is particularly important for me since I am teaching 6th grade, which is their final year of elementary school.

In the afternoon we began diving more into what will be expected. I was very surprised by the vocabulary that is expected at each grade level. This will have to be a major focus in my classroom and is something I’m going to have to work on improving. We currently use  Greek and Latin Roots and Prefix and Suffix books with our students and they will not provide everything these students really will need. There will be three tiers of vocabulary: Tier 1 – everyday words; Tier 2 – academic; and Tier 3 – domain specific. I would definitely like more information on this and would love to know what other teachers are using that have already begun teaching from the Common Core.

We were shown a chart (which I would really like to find – I’ve been searching) that shows what types of reading/writing we should be using each quarter. It suggested 1 extended reading (novel/play), 5-9 short texts (literature and informational texts), 1 research project, and 1-2 narrative writings each quarter. They also suggest that we work toward a balance of 50% informational text and 50% literature. Since I am teaching history this year, I expect this to be easy to achieve. The chart that we saw gave more details on all of this and I will share it as soon as I find it. I will be sure to ask Mr. Rush about this when we have our training this coming week.

What does all of this mean for me? Well, I’m teaching language arts and history this year. I’m planning to relate nearly everything I teach in reading to history (short stories, charts, poems, short videos – listening/speaking standards, and even novels). I also plan to focus the research the students do on history. I plan to introduce the students to as much vocabulary as possible and to tie in the Greek/Latin roots when we come across them in our reading. I think it is going to be a challenging year, but I hope to make the history come alive with the resources I pull into the lessons. I also found out that I will be having several aides and a Title I teacher in my classroom for a portion of my lower group’s class. This will be time for literacy groups and I know I will be able to pull in Reading A-Z and short articles to focus on during this time to enhance the lessons even more and help students improve on skills they are struggling with.

I will be posting again on Common Core Standards after our next session. I also will be attending an Achieve 3000 training right before school starts. I have been very impressed with the program so far and look forward to seeing a few more ways it can be used in the classroom. I think this will be a major component for assessing and providing practice for my students.