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"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."

"Social studies supervisors and teachers across the country are revising their unit plans to meet their state's content standards, as well as, the Common Core State Standards for Literacy in History and Social Studies. Simultaneously, many states are implementing new evaluation and observation frameworks. The performance ratings employed by the most popular evaluation models encourage a shift away from teacher-led direct instruction to more student-centered activities incorporating inquiry and synthesis. In social studies, primary source document analysis goes hand in hand with the 9-12 Common Core reading and writing standards. Here are five top resources to align your curricula to the Common Core with student driven lessons. "

"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. "

"How in the world are we supposed to apply the Common Core writing standards to teaching English language learners? We've been asking that question of ourselves and others over the past two years, and we suspect we're not the only educators doing so. After reviewing the many resources available that attempt to provide guidance to teachers of English language learners (see "Resources of Note") and combining what we've learned through our daily classroom experience, we've developed a tentative answer to that question. Educators need to keep in mind three crucial elements when teaching writing to English language learners (ELLs) in the context of the Common Core State Standards:"

"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."

"Karl Nelson is the director of the Digital Learning Department for the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). In this Q&A, he talks about how his state is using open educational resources (OER) to help support Common Core State Standards. The OSPI's OER Project was launched in 2012, when the Washington Legislature passed HB 2337. According to Nelson, the legislature saw OER as a chance to both save districts money and improve instructional material quality, so it directed OSPI to identify a library of openly licensed courseware aligned with the state standards. The legislature also asked OSPI to provide guidance to school districts using OERs."

"Welcome to Inside Mathematics, a professional resource for educators passionate about improving students' mathematics learning and performance. This site features classroom examples of innovative teaching methods and insights into student learning, tools for mathematics instruction that teachers can use immediately, and video tours of the ideas and materials on the site. We are glad you're here and look forward to learning with you!"

"When students write a paper, it goes without saying that they must cite the sources that they use in creating it. For generations, students have created note cards to document and organize these resources and/or submitted a bibliography page with their finished work. In the modern classroom, student research and creation has taken on a new look. Before, when students created a poster, and then separately handed in a bibliography page to the teacher, justice was done and fair credit was given for the ideas used."

" In 2012, the department began the development of a statewide STEM education plan. The tools and resources below have been developed to ensure schools can successfully implement a STEM education plan at the local level."

"Alan November elevated the "Official Scribe" as one of the roles that empower student learners.I see the role of the scribe as follows: The official scribe plays an important role in the classroom community. Their work is essential for students who were absent from class or need a review on a specific topic previously discussed. The official scribe also takes pressure off other students from having to take notes, but invites them in to contribute with corrections, additional information or resources."

PD 360 thorough report on CCSS misconceptions - Excellent resource!

Great Find!

"A professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Education has launched a new free math curriculum designed to help engage students more deeply in math. Dubbed the "Week of Inspirational Math," the program is aimed at students in grades 5-9 and includes five lessons, one for each day in a week, featuring math problems designed to be fun and engaging along with videos with positive messages about math. Teachers using the curriculum will also be able to join a network offering additional support and resources throughout the school year. "We want to give kids inspirational math tasks that help them see math as a lovely subject of beautiful patterns and deep inquiry," said Jo Boaler, the program's designer, in a prepared statement. "And we want teachers to see what happens when kids are really engaged in math." Boaler said she hopes teachers will use the program at the beginning of the school year to give students a positive experience right off the bat and set the tone for the rest of the year, but the program can be used at any point. "The lessons address five key areas of math: geometry, algebra, numbers, patterns and connections," according to a news release. "The problems are so-called 'low floor, high ceiling' tasks that are accessible to all students but can be solved in different ways to challenge those just being introduced to the topics as well as high achievers. They also emphasize different messages: Mistakes help you grow, for example, and it's not how fast you complete a task that's important but how deeply you understand it." The Common Core-aligned program is the latest offering from YouCubed at Stanford, a program Boaler helped launch that aims to make new research into math learning accessible to teachers and parents. "We're researching and using new brain science to find out how best people learn," said Boaler, in a prepared statement. "Then, we're giving teachers things they can actually do in their classroom based on this research." The program

"In this thoughtful article in Kappa Delta Pi Record, consultant/authors Mike Schmoker and Carol Jago say, "Done right, the ELA Common Core has the potential to right the ship of literacy, to facilitate, at long last, the creation of coherent curriculum in every course, and to rescue us from the fads and pseudo-literacies of recent decades." They believe the CCSS appendices and ancillary documents are the "true strength" of the document, providing resources for students "to engage in close reading of large amounts of high-quality, complex text, combined with opportunities to engage in discussion and writing grounded in text." "

"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. "

"Curriculum 21: Common Core Crosswalks" Great resources for the ongoing conversations, collaborations, and curriculum mapping decision making educators are involved in during the transitioning from state standards to the common core state standards.

"Five states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards are beginning work on an initiative to create an open-source "platform" that would help teachers access, download, and create resources tied to the common standards, officials from the Council of Chief State School Officers told us today."

"Summary of Strategies for Creating a Deeper Understanding of the Mathematics CCSS"

:One of the things students struggle with the most - and it's relevant to every grade and subject - is distinguishing between argument and evidence. This problem manifests itself in both reading and writing. In this article, I want to briefly highlight these two key Common Core ELA-Literacy elements and point you to more in-depth discussion and resources at my Literacy Cookbook blog.

"he implementation of Common Core State Standards is intended to create change in our nation's public education system ... not put change in the pockets of the American publishing industry. "

"From our beginning in 2000, TextProject has supported teachers with research and practical advice about how to provide readers the right kinds of texts, with special focus on text complexity. Now, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represents the first time that a standards document has paid special attention to text complexity, as Standard 10 is devoted specifically to increasing students' capacity with complex text from grades 2 through 12. To support reading skills needed for college and career success as of high school graduation, the CCSS proposes a staircase of text complexity."