Monday, August 6, 2012

Common Core Classroom Changes

The 4 C's - Common Core Classroom Changes are shown in a Harvard Education letter entitle Nine Ways the Common Core will Change Classroom Practice by Robert Rothman.  It is essentially a repeat of the BIG SHIFTs from Common Core outlined in many areas

But heck - change can only come with repetition.

In mathematics:

  1. Great Focus - it is what is left out that allows for greater focus and movement to more advanced topics. 
  2. Coherence - coherent standards are not built one grade a time like it is currently done so the standards are "designed to build on students' understanding by introducing new topics from grade to grade"
  3. Skills, Understanding and Application - no drill and kill here folks but students do have to know their content and how to actually apply it
  4. Emphasis on Practices - The 8 practices include "making sense of problems and persevering to solve them, reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, using appropriate tools strategically, and constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others."
In English Language Arts
  1. More Non-Fiction - at list 50% from informational texts! 
  2. Focus on Evidence - close reading so that students can produce evidence based claims from their reading
  3. Staircase of Text Complexity - an end to dumbing down texts!
  4. Speaking and Listening - what a world we would live in if everyone actually listened
  5. Literacy in Content Areas - Science, social science, mathematics all must work on literacy
If course, these things don't happen without preparation such as LTF Training and the Educator Leader Cadres