Common Core State Standards: Resources for School Leaders

This site, currently in beta, will offer practitioners a set of tasks for one standard at each grade level K-8.

In the future, "the sets of tasks will include elaborated teaching tasks with detailed information about using them for instructional purposes, rubrics, and student work. Such a fully developed set of tasks will be what we call a Complete Illustration of the standard."

Right now we are trying to build up our collection of Initial Illustrations of standards, which will have the following characteristics:

- A minimum of 4 tasks (although typically 5-6 or more depending on the standard).

- Most will be more like assessment tasks or brief teaching tasks. At least one will be the kernel of an instructional task that can eventually be more fully developed and elaborated with the help of teachers using it in classrooms.

- The tasks in the set will vary in difficulty. Some but not all will be scaffolded.

- A balance in computational/algorithmic and conceptual tasks.

- An appropriate number of contextual problems for the standard.

- Most of the tasks will illuminate the “center of mass” of the standard, and a few will light up the periphery.

- At least one task will bridge in some way to another standard, ideally across domains or grade levels.

See an introduction to the new Common Core state standards for ELA and Literacy including background on the design process, key features, and major differences.

Video: Visit English and math classrooms who have already begun to adapt to the new Common Core standards. See what changes teachers are making in their practice to adapt to the new standards.

...addressing the teaching of writing, which received little emphasis in testing and accountability mandates under No Child Left Behind. Writing is, however, a central emphasis in the Common Core State Standards.

Because of the attention to writing in the Common Core State Standards, the National Writing Project provides a number of ways to help districts and teachers get the necessary professional development to successfully implement the standards in the classroom.

View the Common Core State Standards in one convenient FREE app!

A great reference for students, parents, and teachers to easily read and understand the core standards.

Quickly find standards by subject, grade, and subject category (domain/cluster).

This app includes Math standards K-12 and Language Arts standards K-12. Math standards include both traditional and integrated pathways (as outlined in Appendix A of the common core) and synthesizes Language Arts standards with the Corresponding College and Career Readiness Standards (CCR's).

A collection of Common Core Resources geared towards Utah teachers.

With California schools preparing to move to the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that will redefine what students learn, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today the publication of a new book to help teachers and administrators make the transition.

The new hard-copy publication, A Look at Kindergarten Through Grade Six in California Public Schools: Transitioning to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics, provides information for educators on curriculum planning and professional development in the new standards, which were formally adopted last year.

“The new Common Core standards will truly move what California students learn into the 21st century, with an emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving,” Torlakson said. “That makes it an exciting time in education, but a challenging time as well. We’ve created this book—and its online counterpart—to give teachers a helping hand.”

Launched on Jan. 18, Wolfram Alpha’s Wolfram Education Portal is a free website, currently in beta testing, that offers teaching tools and materials such as an interactive textbook, lesson plans aligned with the Common Core State Standards, and supplemental materials that include demonstrations, widgets, and videos.

"The Common Core State Standards have brought text complexity measurement to the forefront of many educational reform agendas," said MetaMetrics President and co-founder Malbert Smith III, Ph.D. (pictured above)

"As schools and districts begin to implement the new standards, the education community as a whole must utilize proven text measurement tools -- like Lexile measures -- that will allow all stakeholders to realize the promise of college and career ready standards."

MetaMetrics(R), developer of the widely adopted Lexile(R) Framework for Reading, is pleased to announce that more than 100,000 educators and other individuals have registered to use its free Lexile Analyzer(R) to determine the Lexile measure of various classroom and personal texts.

Quantitative Measure of Text Complexity

Lexile measures evaluate how complex a text will likely be for a reader to comprehend so that the reader can be matched with texts that best complement his or her unique ability level and reading goals. In the past two years alone, users have analyzed nearly one million text files.

The Lexile Analyzer measures text complexity by evaluating various characteristics of the complete text, including word frequency and sentence length. Generally, texts with longer sentences and words of lower frequency have higher Lexile measures, while texts with shorter sentences and words of higher frequency have lower Lexile measures.

Common Core State Standards

The importance of measuring text complexity has gained national attention now that nearly all states have adopted and are implementing the new Common Core State Standards.

The Common Core stresses the need for students to engage with texts of appropriate complexity as they advance through school.

The English Language Arts Standards utilize Lexile measures to evaluate text complexity and provide Lexile bands for reading comprehension development to help inform curriculum and assessment decisions that will ultimately prepare students for college and career text demands and to guide publishers in creating grade-level content.

To date, the number of words examined by the Lexile Analyzer exceeds 1.5 billion.

http://www.lexile.com/analyzer/