'CCSS Professional Development 1' photo (c) 2012, Wesley Fryer - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

(NOTE: Readers have begun to contribute some excellent ideas in the comments. I’ll get around to adding them to the body of this post but, until then, be sure to review the comments, too!)

Q & A Collections: Implementing The Common Core is the headline of one of my Education Week Teacher columns. It contains links to all the columns on Implementing The Common Core from the past six years!

I’m obviously not a real big fan of Common Core standards, and am a bit skeptical about its practical impact on what happens in the classroom. Nevertheless, they’re here, and I thought it would be useful to readers and to me to begin to collect some practical and helpful tools.

I’m starting off with a few , and hope readers will contribute a whole lot more — for all subjects and grade levels.

You might also be interested in these other lists:

The Best Resources For Learning About Common Core Standards & English Language Learners

The Best Resources On “Close Reading” — Help Me Find More

The Best Resources On Close Reading Paintings, Photos & Videos

Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Mindmapping, Flow Chart Tools, & Graphic Organizers has a section devoted to Common Core-related graphic organizers.

The Best Resources For Teaching Common Core Math To English Language Learners

The Best Articles Sharing Concerns About Common Core Standards

The Best Resources For Learning About The “Next Generation” Of State Testing

My Ed Week post, Best Ways to Prepare Our Students for CCSS in Language Arts.

The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet

Here are just a few to begin and, as I mentioned earlier, I hope many additional resources will be in the comments:

Resources for Understanding the Common Core State Standards comes from Edutopia.

The folks at Engaging Educators have really been on top of it. You can read Ben Curran’s review of the book, “Pathways To The Common Core.” Several of my colleagues read it at a week-long California Writing Project workshop in June, and they, too, spoke highly of it. Ben helped organize a Twitter chat with one of the authors, and its archived here. They’re going to continue the chat later in July, and you can read the details in Ben’s book review.Ben also keeps a diigo list on the Common Core.

Spotlight On Implementing The Common Core Standards comes from Education Week.

Four Myths About the ELA Common-Core Standards is by Dina Strasser and Cheryl Dobbertin at Education Week Teacher.

(my colleague Kara Synhorst just suggested an iPhone app for Common Core)

ASCD has a free newsletter called The Core Connection.

Project-Based Learning and Common Core Standards is also from ASCD.

Nine Ways the Common Core Will Change Classroom Practice is from The Harvard Education Letter.

The Common Core and Bloom’s Taxonomy is from Reach Common Ground.

ASCD recently launched a new free digital tool for Common Core planning. It’s called EduCore, and you can learn more about it here.

CCSS: Take a Deep Breath is from MiddleWeb.

Education Week Launches Common-Core Newsletter is from…Education Week.

Common Core Instruction, Like All Good Instruction, Is Not About Fish Tossing is by Chris Lehman.

5 Things Every Teacher Should be Doing to Meet the Common Core State Standards is by Lauren Davis at Eye On Education.

Common Core Implementation Center is from ePals. Thanks to Renee Moore for the tip.

ASCD has created a Pinterest Board for Common Core State Standards.

The International Reading Association Secondary Reading Interest Groups has an interesting newsletter on Common Core and reading.

The Common Core Ate My Baby and Other Urban Legends is a very useful article from ASCD Educational Leadership.


Why Read-Alouds Matter More in the Age of the Common Core Standards
is from ASCD Educational Leadership.

7 Actions that Teachers Can Take Right Now: Text Complexity is from The Text Project.


Fiction or Nonfiction? Considering the Common Core’s Emphasis on Informational Text
is from The New York Times Learning Network.

Achieve The Core seems to have some helpful resources on Common Core implementation, and it seems like it will only get better now that the two major teachers unions are working with them.

What A Great Post About The Common Core Debate…

“Idealism vs. the Probable and Possible”

Preparing Students for Common Core ELA is by Tom Hoffman and may be the best short and sweet advice you’re going to find. Thanks to Alice Mercer for the tip.

Text Project has a lot of useful resources.

The Common Core State Standards: Misconceptions about Informational and Literary Texts is from The University of Arizona.

Making the Common Core Practical

Social and emotional learning gaining new focus under Common Core is a very useful and interesting article published by Ed Source.

Q & A Collections: Implementing The Common Core is one of my posts over at Education Week Teacher. It brings together all my posts there on…the Common Core.

Common Core & Ed Tech looks like a useful blog.

The Institute For Learning also has some useful resources.

The Core of the Common Core, Part 1: The Anchor Standards for Reading is from Burkins and Yaris. It provides metaphors and analogies in explaining Common Core.

The same site has a Periodic Table of Common Core Standards.

Thanks to Wendi Pillars for those two resources on Twitter.

Achieve The Core Common Core writing samples from classrooms around the country.

Two Great FREE Apps from Mastery Connect is from Bill Ferriter.

I really like the chart you’ll find at the Hechinger report titled Six ways Common Core changes English and math classrooms.

What Everyone Needs to Know About the Common Core State Standards

Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

 

Tackling Informational Text is the theme of an issue of ASCD Educational Leadership, and it’s now online.

Here are the articles there I’d particularly recommend:

One to Grow On / Invitations to Read is by Carol Ann Tomlinson. Here’s how she ends it:

its-essential-to-avoid

You Want Me to Read What?! is by Timothy Shanahan.

Points of Entry is a typically excellent piece by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher.

‘We Can Do Better’ : An Interview With Jim Burke is one of my posts over at Education Week Teacher.

What Does It Mean to “Align” PBL with Common Core? is from The Buck Institute For Education.

The Common Core FAQ is from NPR.

What Does A Good Common Core Lesson Look Like? is from NPR.

This Ed Week Teacher piece brings together all my posts from the past three years on implementing the Common Core.

Finding Overlap in the Common Math, Language Arts, and Science Standards contains a very helpful Venn Diagram (it’s also embedded below as a Pinterest Pin).

Online Library of Common-Core Resources Expands is from Education Week.

Common Core Redoes the Math is part of a special Ed Week report on math and Common Core.

Kappan’s Common Core Writing Project is “a forum for ideas about implementing the Common Core standards. We invite educators to share stories about what works (and what doesn’t) in realizing the best 21st-century education for all children.”

Q & A Collections: Implementing The Common Core is my latest Education Week Teacher column.

It contains Links to all posts related to implementing the Common Core from the past four years.

In Common: Effective Writing for All Students Collection of All Narrative Samples, K-12

Teaching Tolerance, the organization justifiably well-known for developing very good social-justice oriented teaching resources, has unveiled: “Perspectives for a Diverse America… a literacy-based curriculum that marries anti-bias social justice content with the rigor of the Common Core State Standards.” It’s a very ambitious site, and I think most teachers will find the highlight to be 300 great texts, often from larger works, all set-up to print out and copy for students. Those are a gold mine!

Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks

Common Core in Social Studies Looks Like ‘the Work of Historians’is the headline of the last post in my two-part Education Week Teacher series on Common Core in the Social Studies classroom.

Tech Helps us ‘be a Little Less Common & go far Beyond the Core’ is the headline of one of my Education Week Teacher columns. In it, Kristin Ziemke, Amber Teamann, Erik M. Francis, Shelly Lynn Counsell, Marsha Ratzel, and Richard Byrne share their ideas on the role of tech in meeting the Common Core Standards.

Understanding the Common Core State Standards in California: A quick guide is from Ed Source.

Understanding vocabulary standards: Building students’ skills is from Achieve The Core.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. What else would you recommend?

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You might also want to explore the 900 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

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