Common Core State Standards: Implications for Gifted Education
Dr. Elissa F. Brown, Ph.D = elissa.brown@dpi.nc.gov
Notes taken by Lesia Patterson
Common Core Secondary Level Refers to grades 6-12
Good thing about the Common Core is that they are fewer standards.
Thinking about the Common Core . . . Think, Pair, Share
Patterson Brainstorm – Define academic vocabulary (Bloom’s Taxonomy) for students in GT.
Use a standard checklist to monitor your progress. Use Thinking MAPs to teach the academic vocabulary to frontload the information.
Smarter Balance - Assessment Consortium; Developing assessments for 2014 for North and South
Carolinas in English and math.
Three Shifts in Language Arts and Three Shifts in Math
Why Common Core?
College and Career Readiness, Equity, Student and Educator Mobility, Comparability, Leveraging
Resources, Economies of Scale
College Readiness: Students need to be more than proficient
Student and Educator Mobility: Students transferring across states
Comparability: State results comparable through common assessments
Leveraging Resources: A more robust marketplace for content, training, and support
Economies of Scale: Potential savings due to leveraging resources
Virginia, Texas, Nebraska have all developed their own and are not adopting Common Core.
Florida piloted common assessment (Park) and had 50 percent failure rate – comment from audience
In the current economic climate, gifted programs must integrate, collaborate and be held accountable for student growth in order to demonstrate viability.
Rigorous Standards throughout the day – A rising tide raises all ships.
Misconceptions:

Gifted students will struggle with CC.
Gifted education instruction should avoid the CC content and focus on isolated problem solving and critical thinking skills.
Common Core State Standards: Implications for Gifted Education
Three shifts in math: focus-where the standards focus, coherence-across grades and link to major topics within the grades, rigor-requires conceptual understanding, procedural skills, fluency, and application with intensity.
Three shifts in literacy – informational and nonfiction-building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction and informational texts, evidence-reading and writing grounded in evidence from text, complex-texts practice with complex texts and its academic vocabulary
Is there a fraction between ¼ and 1/5? Students will have to know in grade 6, so they will have to know the relationships fractions and percentages.
With CCSS, as early as grade 2 there is focus on algebraic formula.
Coherence – thinking about major themes (William and Mary)
Focus, coherence, and rigor are a big focus in math.
70% - informational text by high school; manuals, recipes, directions,
30% - literature by high school
Right now at high school level, 50% for each is the practice
Evidence from the story (Shared-inquiry: Junior Great Books), complex text and shared vocabulary
Building Knowledge through Content-Rich Informational Text
Informational Text
Makes up vast majority of required reading in college/workplace (80%)
50% – fiction and 50% - nonfiction in elementary school
Providing evidence will be key. Writing standards ask students to respond to evidencebased writing prompts.

Regular practice with complex texts and its shared vocabulary
Too many students reading levels are low. Fifty percent of graduate can read sufficiently complex texts,
Anchor Standards for Language Arts
From passage, An Athlete of God
1.
Delineate the extended metaphor in this passage.
2.
Analyze the twofold-training exemplified in the passage.
3.
What is the purpose of the biblical allusion to Abraham’s faith?
4.
What is Graham’s definition of practice?
5.
What is the difference between the practice of the dance and the performance of the dance?
6.
What does Martha Graham say about excellence?
Can you trace or understand what Martha means by practice?
Note: Develop text dependent questions (Junior Great Books - excellent)
Text Complexity Analysis Includes 3 Dimensions
Quantitative evaluation of the text: readability measures and other scores of text complexity – levels of meaning, what readers bring to the task, annotations and rubric
(What this is about. . .)
Newspapers have 8 th grade lexile.
State Standards: Numbers and measurements, geometry, algebra and functions statistics and probability
Operations and Algebraic thinking begins in grade 1
Numbers and Operation
CC: Numbers and operations and fractions – grade 3, Expressions and equations, the
Number system – middle and high school – algebra is the gate keeper.
Priorities in Mathematics
K-2 - Addition and subtraction, measurement using whole number quantities
Grades 3-5 - Multiplication and division of whole numbers and fractions

Grade 6 - Ratios and proportional reasoning; early
CC math standards are not grade specific but course specific: Geometry
Needed: Strategies for Adapting CC for Gifted Learners
Common Core may limit learning for gifted learners.
Differentiation is the deliberate adaptation and modification of the curricula, instructional processes, and assessment to respond to the needs of gifted learners. This definition contains the three major aspects of curricula.
What Differentiation for the Gifted Is Not . . .
Writing own problems
Independent study void of a real questioning
Creating a new . . .
Product creations without guidance
Making up a new ending . . .
Different activity – void of depth, acceleration or complexity
Features of Differentiated Curriculum for the Gifted
Depth
Complexity
Acceleration
Depth:
Reasoning must be justified
Look at middle school standards and cluster them for gifted. Compress many into one.