Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Common Core - Simplified (yeah right)

I know that there are a lot of questions about the future of Common Core.  Who knows if it is here to stay (although we all know nothing stays in in regards to education standards) or will be thrown under the bus with every other trend in education.  The one thing that we do know is that if we live in a state that has required implementation of Common Core, then we need to hit the ground running.

My school system has been using Common Core for two years.  The first year felt like we were being thrown to the sharks.  You know how it goes, "Here are the Common Core standards.  We don't have money for the textbooks or reading materials required, nor do we have money to train you, but get out there and teach!"  I don't blame my school system.  It was just the nature of the beast at the time.

Some teachers decided to try to jump in using just the copy of the Common Core standards they were given.  Others figured if they ignored it and kept teaching the Georgia Performance Standards the Common Core would simply go away.  Then there were teachers like me.  If I'm going to teach it, then by golly I'm going to figure out as much as I can about it and teach it the best way I can.

This led me to several great resources, but two of the best are the FREE Annotated Common Core Standards that Secondary Solutions offers and the other is the Engage NY website.

The Annotated Common Core Standards is a great resource that simplifies what we are supposed to teach.  It simplifies and explains each standard in a way that just makes sense.  Secondary Solutions provides these for free for grades 3-12.  You can get them by going to their website HERE.

The EngageNY site is a massive, but useful,  amount of information on Common Core.  They have everything from videos to writing exemplars.  It really is a great site.  Plan to spend a lot of time on the site once you're there!  You can find the site HERE.

Do you have any great Common Core resources that you've found?  Feel free to share them here!


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