Related Common Core Resources

Participants in this two day workshop may find the following Common Core resources worthwhile.  Much of what session presenter Bill Ferriter knows about teaching the Common Core in History and Science classes comes from these sources.

The Common Core Website -  One of the first steps that history and science teachers interested in integrating the Common Core into their curriculum should take is to spend a few hours exploring the standards.  As simple as that step sounds, many teachers haven't carved out the time to take a first-hand look at just what the new curriculum requires students to master.  When teachers DO explore the standards, they are most often relieved to find out that the practices defined in the Common Core are practices that they already believe in. 

Achieve the Core Writing Exemplars - For social studies and science teachers trying to integrate CCSS writing expectations into their classrooms, one of the first challenges is understanding just what those expectations look like in action.  That's where the Achieve the Core writing exemplars collection come in.  With just a few clicks, users can find annotated samples of quality student writing at any grade level.  Teachers can also download copies of each exemplar to share in their classrooms.

How To Teach Thinking Skills in the Common Core - Written by James Bellanca, Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete, this title argues that by teaching students processes for mastering common thinking skills -- things like comparing and contrasting, evaluating, determining and analyzing -- we can better prepare students to tackle the new expectations defined by the Common Core.  

Teaching Students to Think Like Scientists - Written by Douglas Fisher, Maria Grant and Diane Lapp, this title is designed to introduce science teachers to the kinds of instructional practices that can be used to integrate both the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards into classroom practice.  

Teaching the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards - Written by Kristen Swanson, this title is designed to present teachers with a collection of strategies for integrating the Common Core's Speaking and Listening standards into classroom practice.  Because of the role that collaborative dialogue already plays in history and science classrooms, these strategies might make for an approachable starting point for teachers who are hesitant to embrace the Common Core. 

CC.BetterLesson Website - While it is primarily focused on supporting math and language arts teachers, the CC.BetterLesson website -- sponsored by the NEA -- is worth exploring.  Spotlighting the work of 130 Master Teachers who are working in classrooms every day to integrate the Common Core State Standards, the CC.BetterLesson website currently hosts 3,000 lessons AND commentary on how each lesson worked in the classroom.  

Newslea - One of the challenges that session presenter Bill Ferriter has when it comes to integrating nonfiction reading passages into his classroom instruction is finding leveled passages about the same topic that his students can study.  That's the exact challenge that the Newsela website is working to address.  Newsela staffers grab articles about high interest current event stories and rewrite them at different lexile levels, making it possible for classroom teachers to easily provide appropriately challenging text to every student in their classroom. 

The Lexile Framework for Reading - One of the most significant changes in the new Common Core State Standards is an increase in the level of difficulty of the text that students are supposed to be tackling at each grade level.  The expectation is that our students will wrestle with challenging nonfiction text on a daily basis in our classrooms.  To check the complexity of the text that students are reading in your classroom, consider using the Lexile Analyzer found on this site.  It allows users to upload a text file that is automatically evaluated against the Lexile ranges set forth in the new standards.  

World Cafe Facilitator's Manual - The World Cafe conversation strategy introduced in the opening activity of this workshop is an efficient and effective way to give students opportunities to practice building knowledge together through academic discussions.  This World Cafe Facilitator's Manual developed by the King Baudouin Foundation and the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment provides a clean, concise overview of the World Cafe process.

Resources on Helping Students Improve Questioning Skills - For many teachers of History and Science, helping students to develop their own questions is often a priority.  While we won't be covering questioning strategies during the course of this workshop, the following bits from Bill's blog will be useful to teachers who want to learn more about how to encourage questioning in the classroom:  Where Have all the Beautiful Questions Gone, More on Student Questioning in the Classroom, Helping Students be Comfortable with Not Knowing (ACTIVITY), A Questioning Success.

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