I have taken advantage of the extra days for winter break and purchased a few (4) common core books. I feel the need to explore the subject and learn on my own what this is all about. I have learned most of what I know through our curriculum director and his associate who shall remain unnamed but she works for the ROE - or that is what I was led to believe. What have I learned in the 110 pages I have read...
1) CCSS are not as bad as I believed. They do have a purpose and make sense if you read about them from experts.
2) CCSS is not a curriculum and should be used to help the district create a curriculum not just an assessment.
3) There are many teachers that have no idea how to read the standards and are teaching what they believe the standards are, but not what the students actually need.
4) What our district needs to do is to create a curriculum that focuses on common core in all content areas, not just reading and language classes.
5) We are teaching to an assessment that has no merit (the district assessment).
3) PLC time should be used to create a curriculum that meets the needs of the CCSS so that we are all teaching the same ideas and concepts. I find that each 7th grade teacher just goes off and teaches what they want and we are not all teaching the same ideas. I am sure it is the same for all grade levels. We need to have common formative (classroom observations and daily assessments) and summative assessments (end of unit, end of learning) so that we can compare all students in a grade level and not just by teams. Not just on test at the end of midterm.
4) We need NEW resources to help us implement the CCSS such as is indicated in the Appendices of the CCSS
5) Take PLC and team time to explore resources to help us become more uniformed in our teaching.
6) Although the CCSS does not talk about teaching the comprehension strategies after 5th grade, it is necessary to teach these in order for a student to be able to "read closely".
7) When students graduate high school the chances of them having to understand fiction at a job or in college is less likely than having to understand how to read non-fiction text, evaluate the text, determine if it is credible or not credible, and how to use the text to guide their understanding of their job or their research.
8) Many more new things!
How has this affected me and my teaching? I really wish there were a time machine to take me back to the beginning of the year and re-teach everything. I will be spending the remainder of this day planning a new unit that I will start next week. I learned that although I can't go back in time, I certainly can fix it for the remainder of the year. I am excited about learning more about the CCSS and how to implement them correctly in my classroom. I wish the district would have had us read and learn more about the CCSS before we started creating the new district assessments.
How does this relate to my weight loss? Learning is the key to any successful journey. My dendrites and synopses are on overload and exercise is the only way to calm them down:) I will be taking my tablet to the gym and while I am on the treadmill or exercise bike I will re-read the 110 pages and start annotating on how to implement these ideas into my classroom...can't wait for the new me mentally and physically:)
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