- With Choice of New Leader, College Board Hopes to Extend Its Reach
- Reading In American Schools: Will Common Core State Standards Improve Literacy?
- City Instructs Schools to Expand Common Core Introduction
- ‘Common core standards’: education reform that makes sense
- Advocates Worry Implementation Could Derail Common Core
Mr. Coleman has already said that he hopes to align the SAT with the Common Core standards, which could further alter the identity of an exam that was long ago conceived of as a measure of students’ abilities—and not as an achievement test. Moreover, he believes the standards provide a blueprint for helping more students succeed in Advanced Placement courses. “What the Common Core does in combination with the College Board is make it more realistic for us as a society to make sure that a kid’s educational life is richer and more rigorous every year,” he said, “so there’s not this sudden rise in challenge when it comes time to take an examination.”
“As American students continue to fall behind foreign peers, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have adopted the Common Core State Standards, a new set of academic benchmarks aimed at raising the bar for teaching and learning across the country.
But as John Merrow reports for PBS News, meeting the new requirements won’t be easy for many schools, as a long-taught reading curriculum for young children still learning to sound out words doesn’t comply with the Common Core’s guidelines for emphasis on nonfiction in literacy education…”
“Science and social studies classes could look a little different next year as all New York City schools gradually adapt to a new set of curriculum standards.
The standards, called the Common Core, are expected to be in place at schools across 42 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands by 2014, but New York City is introducing them gradually, increasing each year the extent to which schools must adhere to them…”
“In June, a yearlong joint initiative by 48 states produced a set of uniform but voluntary educational standards in English and math. Urged on by the Obama administration, the initiative’s main purpose was to encourage states with low academic standards to bring their expectations into line with those of other states. Twenty states have already adopted the standards; 28 more, including California, are considering them. Texas and Alaska are the only states that declined to participate in the project…
California has among the highest academic standards in the country; the new “common core standards” would neither toughen nor weaken them appreciably. But the state still has something important to gain by adopting them: a more coherent blueprint for instruction that builds students’ skills in a clear and sensible way, and allows teachers to delve more deeply into each subject…”
“Now, the standards face what experts say is their biggest challenge yet: faithful translation from expectations on paper to instruction in classrooms.
The implementation stage brims with possibilities both promising and threatening, depending on one’s perspective…
…Whether opponents’ nightmares come true, or advocates’ hopes are borne out, will depend largely on how the standards are put into practice.”
“A quiet, sub-rosa fear is brewing among supporters of the Common Core State Standards Initiative: that the standards will die the slow death of poor implementation in K-12 classrooms…
…It’s a Herculean task, given the size of the public school teaching force and the difficulty educators face in creating the sustained, intensive training that research indicates is necessary to change teachers’ practices.”
So, it came down to one day, one test, at the Acropolis as the young men of Athens took out their #2 chisels to answer 30 questions on stone tablets. It is the annual timed test to prove the students’ knowledge and competence as they seek to become philosopher-kings. This valued test is the ultimate prize demonstrating not only the achievement of students, but also serves as the one key evaluation of the teacher.
Credit should be given to the test making company for developing multiple choice items with one correct answer given the challenging subject matter: philosophy and governance. Short answer constructed responses are a bit easier in those fields.
The results were been posted in the Agora for all to see the quality and performance of their teacher. Socrates failed. He simply spent too much time asking them to think. A walk- through evaluation by his supervisor (undisclosed), determined that “ sometimes Socrates’s students meander through endless dialogues examining challenging questions that do not have one right answer.” Hopefully, he will be replaced or perhaps go through an intensive summer professional development program in Sparta.
Heidi Hayes Jacobs
Collaborative blog post by Mike Fisher and Jeanne Tribuzzi, of the Curriculum 21 Faculty.
The companion LIVEBINDER OF INTERACTIVE TOOLS IS HERE.
Expecting students to read deeply and draw meaningful conclusions is at the heart of the Common Core ELA standards. Students are asked to read closely, cite evidence, and make evidence based inferences when they read. They are expected to deepen their learning by valuing textual evidence and reading critically. Annotating text is one way students can cite textual evidence, infer and deepen meaning as they read..
Annotations make thinking visible for teachers and students. We can use the words and features of a text to better comprehend it, ask questions, and note our thoughts while reading. One goal of comprehension is that students will be proficient annotators of texts to understand more deeply by interacting and making thinking transparent while they read.
There are many reasons to ask students to annotate text: for basic comprehension, to show evidence of conceptual understanding, to show what is implied, to identify the claims in an argument, to read like a writer and identify characteristics of genre, to notice the nuance of language…and many other reasons. Giving guidance as to what we want students to annotate for will be beneficial for the reader. Otherwise, they will annotate everything that comes to mind, and the work may not be helpful to the reader or the teacher.
Annotations are often a singular, individual experience. Annotexting ups the ante all around.
Annotexting is a process that involves the collection of thoughts, observations and reactions to reading that show evidence of critical thought. These annotations, rather than being on paper, can be collected with different web tools so that students can collaborate, both locally and globally, around the conclusions that they will ultimately draw from their reading.
Students submit their annotations via their smart phones or other digital devices, and then analyze each other’s notations collectively. They could be looking for main ideas, thematic and literary elements, or big ideas from the work. They could be looking for evidence of connections to other texts, their own experiences, or world issues. They could simply be searching for meaning to support them when reading complex texts.
In addition, students could reflect on the collective evidence as a metacognitive activity to assess their own learning. Perhaps the collaborative exercise raised new questions for them or offered them new ways of thinking about the text. Perhaps there is something else the student wants or needs to know?
Metacognition can be strengthened when citing evidence in text. Textual evidence that supports the thinking behind what they are thinking is a gigantic first step into the depth and complexity that the Common Core is asking of students. Annotexting kicks that up a notch by engaging task specific tools that offer opportunities for strategic thinking and globally connected opportunities.
Consider THIS ANNOTATED TEXT.
The student wrote all over this poem. The student underlined specific words and wrote annotations about them in line with the text. This student is engaging in a thoughtful, albeit singular, analysis of this poem.
What changes with multiple perspectives?
We have our own ideas about squat pens and writing utensils as weapons (based on the student’s annotations) but they are different than this student’s collection of evidence. What would have changed in the interpretation of this poem if our perspectives were woven together? Does the collaborative process of conversation yield a greater product? Does the thinking extend when multiple perspectives are mixed? Does the evidence yield to strategic thinking when multiple viewpoints are involved?
Besides the strategic and capable use of digital tools, annotexting offers students the opportunity to value evidence, think critically and engage with different perspectives. Rather than working independently to read, comprehend and analyze text, annotexting will allow students to engage with other audiences in tasks with an expanded purpose, supporting college and career readiness.
We’ve created an example of what this could look like in Corkboard using William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger.” (Click on the Corkboard tab in the Livebinder. The example is in a subtab.) You can see other examples in several of the tabs in the binder. We would also like to share this DISCUSSION RUBRIC (2007) that you can use as students submit annotations and begin to draw conclusions about what their evidence is pointing to.
In order to get students to own this process, we have to relinquish some control. Let them think, let them make mistakes and respond. Let them draw conclusions even they are not the conclusions we would have drawn. We can be there to coach them through misconceptions.
The college and career ready student (on page seven of the ELA Common Core document) is expected to attend to audience, task, purpose and discipline in both reading and writing. The standards also expect students to think critically and value evidence. The document goes on to explain that the college and career ready student should use digital media strategically and purposefully. Annotexting is at the intersection of all of these capacities.
In addition to collecting evidence with web tools, there are also digital APPS that we’ve come across that would work for Annotexting too. (These are represented in the LiveBinder as well.) Some are notetaking apps that let you collect evidence and annotations with a digital device and some let you edit and annotate PDF files and documents. There are resources in the binder for both iTunes and Android Market Apps.
Some Youtube tutorials:
PaperPort (this one’s free) it let’s me import my pdf files…and annotate them!
Note Shelf- for notetaking
If you would like to explore this and other Modern Learning moments more in depth, check out Curriculum21’s Webinar Series and our all new LEAD21 Academy at this year’s Curriculum Mapping Institute. We will also be exploring the Common Core as it relates to Curriculum Design at the upcoming Ohio Regional Conference in May. (Space is limited!)
Fisher, Michael L., Jr. and Nancy Cook. “Notice, Think, and Wonder: New Pathways to Engage Critical Thinking.” IN TRANSITION: Journal of the New York State Middle School Association. 25.1 (2007): 15-18. Web. 25 Feb. 2012. <http://www.nysmsa.org/associations/611/files/ITv25n1_Fall 2007.pdf>.
ASCD’s conference in Philadelphia on March 24-26, 2012 will also have a virtual participation component.
Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Curriculum21, Brandon Wiley from the Asia Society and Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, Langwitches Blog, will be co-presenting a Real-Time Global Forum: How to Connect Your Classroom and Schools.
Connect your school with schools around the world in purposeful teaching and learning experiences! Through interactive technology, participants will meet virtually with a global team of teachers and students from places like China, Argentina, India, and the United States to examine a thoughtful and stimulating set of award-winning projects, global learning partnerships, and media presentations. Leave with a wealth of resources to globalize your classroom and school while aligning to common core, provincial, or national standards.
Virtual Conference registration is just $129 for ASCD members and $159 for nonmembers. That’s less than $8 per session!
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