A COMMON CORE
SNAPSHOT
Instructional Coach Kameelah Elarms, kelarms@eesd.org
“And I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to
develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether
students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st
Century skills like problem solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship
and creativity.” (President Obama, March 2009)
ACRONYM AVENUE
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CCR = College and Career Readiness
CCSS = Common Core State Standards
PARCC = Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for
College and Career
SBAC = Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium
SHIFTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS/LITERACY
SHIFTS IN MATHEMATICS
Students read a true balance of informational and literary
texts. (BALANCING INFORMATIONAL & LITERARY TEXT)
Teachers significantly narrow and deepen the scope of how
time and energy is spent in the math classroom. They do so in
order to focus deeply on only the concepts that are
prioritized in the standards. (FOCUS)
Principals and teachers carefully connect the learning within
and across grades so that students can build new
understanding onto foundations built in previous years.
(COHERENCE)
Students are expected to have speed and accuracy with
simple calculations; teachers structure class time and/or
homework time for students to memorize, through
repetition, core functions. (FLUENCY)
Students deeply understand and can operate easily within a
math concept before moving on. They learn more than the
trick to getting the answer right. They learn the math.
(DEEP UNDERSTANDING)
Students are expected to use math and choose the
appropriate concept for application even when they are not
prompted to do so. (APPLICATION)
Students are practicing and understanding. There is more
than a balance between these two things in the classroom –
both are occurring with intensity. (DUAL INTENSITY)
Students build knowledge about the world (domains/content
areas) through TEXT rather than the teacher or activities.
(KNOWLEDGE IN THE DISCIPLINES)
Students read the central, grade appropriate text around
which instruction is centered. Teachers are patient, create
more time and space and support in the curriculum for close
reading. (STAIRCASE OF COMPLEXITY)
Students engage in rich and rigorous evidence based
conversations about text. (TEXT-BASED ANSWERS)
Writing emphasizes use of evidence from sources to inform
or make an argument. (WRITING FROM SOURCES)
Students constantly build the transferable vocabulary they
need to access grade level complex texts. This can be done
effectively by spiraling like content in increasingly complex
texts. (ACADEMIC VOCABULARY)
HELPFUL ONLINE RESOURCES
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www.corestandards.org
To familiarize yourself with the standards themselves
commoncoretools.me
Blog kept up by Dr. Bill MacCallum, one of the writers of the
Common Core standards.
ccsstoolbox.agilemind.com
“Year-at-a-glance” and unit sequencing documents by grade level
engageny.org
Many helpful resources, especially videos, for Common Core
implementation
insidemathematics.org
“Tools for Educators” link will lead you to MARS (the new
NOYCE) tasks and problems of the month by standard and
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STARTING NOW!
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Familiarize yourself with the standards using the online
resources
Build your non-fiction classroom resources, including kidfriendly newspapers and magazines
Implement short, focused research projects
Require (or strongly encourage) students to check out
one non-fiction book during each library visit
Find ways to integrate technology more often with your
class, especially some computerized testing
Have students regularly practice giving verbal and/or
written evidence to support their answers
Build cross-curricular units in complementary subjects
A COMMON CORE
SNAPSHOT
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Instructional Coach Kameelah Elarms, kelarms@eesd.org
such as Math and Science or Language Arts and Social
Studies
grade level. “Classroom Visits” link shows them in action!
www.achievethecore..org
Everything from modules to lessons to parent resources
SOURCE: "Common Core Shifts." EngageNY. NYESD, 30 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 Aug. 2013