I’m attending Common Core training/planning in my district. We’re being  told that the district will not be purchasing curriculum, but would like teacher to develop it. There are pluses and minuses to this. One of the things I’m hearing constantly at these meetings, is that  finally we’ll have standards that will prepare kids for college, […]

Hmm, where to start? How about with writing! I’ve been doing a bit with that getting ready for an all day training on Monday on Common Core (more on that later). Here are some things that I’ve been doing lately: Having students work with questions they themselves have generated; Having students work on single paragraph […]

I know, I know, I’m not being a good correspondent. The end of a busy election season, was followed by exhaustion, and preparation for report cards and parent conferences, which had a week for Thanksgiving plopped in the middle. But the wait is worth it readers (or at least I think so).

Last spring, a number of pieces appeared about David Coleman (Common Core’s co-author), telling us to stop teaching pre-reading strategies. When I asked folks attending Common Core trainings at my district, they had no idea what I was talking about. Clearly, the message has gotten out to the consultant/trainer class over the summer. Here were […]

My district has made a strong commitment to starting to switch over to Common Core standards before the 2014 deadline. How committed? Folks have been sent to trainings, in the face of a $28M budget shortfall. Hearing what was being brought back, second-hand, was not giving me a good idea of what the district has in […]