Key Shift #1 Focus strongly where the standards focus

Focus on going deep for mastery and transferring those skills.

Key Shift #2 Coherence: Think across grades, and link to major topics within grades

Lesson Objective Plan a lesson about identifying main ideas and developing arguments Length 6 min Questions to Consider How does Mr. Hanify integrate the different Common Core standards into this lesson? Notice the varied opportunities for student discussion throughout the lesson. How does Mr. Hanify design activities that scaffold student learning? Common Core Standards ELA.RI.9-10.2, ELA.W.9-10.6, ELA.SL.9-10.1a

The rigor and approach of the Common Core standards schools are adapting to is requiring teachers to reexamine not just the content they teach but the way they teach.

What I like about Common Core is it’s focused just as much on how we teach as what we teach

“I think your teacher will be more of a facilitator,” Pam Best, USD 416 assistant superintendent, said. “I would even hope that they would encourage the students to learn from each other. That’s the movement. That’s where we’re going.”

In this article, I make a case for student blogs as a tool that can support and extend students’ mathematics proficiency through the Standards for Mathematical Practice.

Teachers who use math journals can easily convert that process to a digital one through blogging.

The act of blogging allows for: students to make their thinking visible students and teachers to give one another feedback students and teachers to keep a record of student progress with mathematics What follows is a definition of the eight Standards for Mathematical Practice and a description of how blogging can enhance and strengthen students’ use of these practices:   Teachers who use math journals can easily convert that process to a digital one through blogging.

Creating Text-Dependent Questions for Close Reading Step One: Identify the core understandings and key ideas of the text Step Two: Start small to build confidence Step Three: Target vocabulary and text structure Step Four: Tackle tough sections head‐on Step Five: Create coherent sequences of text-dependent questions Step Six: Identify the standards that are being addressed Question Stems for Close Reading of Informational Texts (Adapted from Race to the Top/Strategies for Close Reading) What clues show you … Point to the evidence … How does the author describe X in paragraph X? What are the exact words? What reasons does the book give for X? Where are they? Share a sentence that (tells you what the text is about, or describes X, or gives a different point of view) What is the purpose of paragraph X? What are the clues that tell you this? What does the author think about X? Why do you think so — what is your evidence? What do you predict will happen next? What are the clues that make you think so?

Examples of Text-Dependent Questions Could people live on Earth if there were no Sun? Why or why not? Use evidence from the text to support your answer. Explain why conditions on a distant planet like Neptune are so different than those on Earth. In the end, our task is unwavering: create questions that provide opportunities to teach strategies to our kids so they feel successful when they search for evidence and key words to answer text-dependent questions. Don't allow our students to answer a question without evidence and proof. Hold our students to high expectations, and constantly use those magic words, "Tell me more.""