Lately I’ve devoted a lot of blog space to what I’ll refer to as “stupid Common Core tricks” that usually result from being overly attentive to the standards, and not giving enough attention to context. Burkins and Yaris, one of my favorite blogs on the actual nitty-gritty of implementing Common Core, has a really great […]

So after my last post, someone on Twitter sent this response: @Larryferlazzo @alicemercer By PARCC Blueprints this % unacceptable. Reporting inaccurate or field tested items not reflecting final product — Dea Conrad-Curry (@doctordea) July 16, 2013   Basically, the teacher who are reporting on the New York State test may have seen so many questions […]

One of the problems with having “newbies” involved in creating these new standards, especially folks who like to take a “de-contextualized” approach to novel and new situations, is that they don’t know where the land-mines are buried. Most of the discussions around Common Core ELA standards and the exemplars that are starting to show up […]

This week, my student teacher and I were discussing questioning techniques during reading of texts to guide student learning, and boy this was timely with some recent discussions about Common Core ELA. Thanks to Tom Hoffman, I’m learning more about Common Core standards than my district is sharing with me (even though a chunk of […]

In a prior post, I shared an overview of what my site was planning for our reform efforts. This garnered some comment, including a whole post in Tom Hoffman’s Tuttle SVC blog, about how plans to use writing as the platform for our reform of student work was mis-aligned. I’d guess that most folks response […]