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"The Common Core has embedded within it some Big Ideas that shift the role of teachers to curriculum designers and managers of an inquiry process. How can project-based learning (PBL) help with this shift? "

"Adults forget all that they do while reading. We are predicting, making connections, contextualizing, critiquing, and already plotting how we might use any new insights or information. Yep, we do all that when we read. As teachers, we need to train students in each of these skills, and begin to do so early on. I was recently in a second-grade classroom where 70 percent instruction was in English and 30 percent in Spanish. Most of the children spoke Spanish as their first or home language. "

"When the word creativity is used, the left side of my head begins to hurt. Now why would that happen? Let's see, could be the years of exposure to right and left brain mumbo jumbo?"

"The Common Core Learning Standards describe the importance of teaching students how to comprehend informational text. They are asked to read closely, make inferences, cite evidence, analyze arguments and interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text. Primary source documents are artifacts created by individuals during a particular period in history. This could be a letter, speech, photograph or journal entry. If you're looking to integrate social studies into your literacy block, try out one of these resources for primary source documents. "

"Take a moment to think about how you learned to write. What steps did you go through? What was your process?"

"Millions of teachers and thousands of districts in 45 states are currently undergoing a sea change in the way that they teach and assess students. The new Common Core Standards for learning have been phased into states and districts since 2010, and the digitized Common Core Assessments are scheduled to deploy in states that have adopted them as early as the 2014-2015 school year. "

"For example, ask questions to clarify if the student is asserting a fact, a feeling or an argument. How do we know it is a fact? A fact is a specific detail based on an objective truth. A feeling or an opinion is a value judgement that can neither be proven nor disproven. An argument is a way to utilize facts to validate your opinions, it can be considered a fact-filled opinion. Again, using these concepts as scaffolds and requiring the identification of the building blocks of successful argumentation will keep the peace when the blood is boiling."

"This collection of blog posts highlights lesson plans, ideas, and other useful resources to help you bring Common Core-aligned lessons into your classroom. We're actively building this repository of ideas every week, so make sure to bookmark this page. You can also follow #CCSS or #CCSSChat on Twitter for the latest updates."

"So it's been a few years since the Common Core, and wow, has it been a wild ride! Some states have dropped the CCSS altogether and replaced them with similar standards. Some still have the CCSS, but have opted out of the tests related to them. Parents are also choosing to have their students opt out from these high-stakes tests. Some teachers are reporting the rigorous learning happening in their classrooms, while others are concerned about the appropriate level of the rigor. Textbook companies have been called out on their true lack of aligned materials, and great teachers have been creating their own lessons and units to meet their students' needs."

"Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of dense, conflicting information out there about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)? You're not alone. Connecting with other educators is often a great way to uncover useful CCSS information, tools, and resources. Consider sharing your voice in online communities: on Twitter (#CCSS or #CommonCore), on Pinterest (Edutopia's Common Core pinboard is one place to start), or in Edutopia's community discussions about the Common Core. If you'd like even more help making sense of the initiative, here's Edutopia's guide to other organizations that offer valuable resources."

"3. Know and Align the Standards or Outcomes There may come a time when learning will be so open that students will be able to learn whatever they want. However, in this day and age, we are accountable to learning standards and outcomes. This doesn't mean that we can't be flexible in how we help students reach these learning objectives. And personalized PBL can help us find that flexibility. As students generate their questions, project ideas, and products for learning, teachers must align their work to standards and outcomes, which means that teachers need to know their standards deeply in order to serve as translators of students' personalized projects to the standards. Teachers can create checklists of the standards, sub-standards, and outcomes to work through the "weeds" of hitting the standards through personalized projects, and they can use these checklists with students to co-create project ideas and assessments. See Edutopia's Building Rigorous Projects That Are Core to Learning for ideas."

"How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care? We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct. 6, and try to answer them with resources from The Times as well as from Edutopia, the Center for News Literacy, TEDEd and the Newseum. "