Common Core — Creating Experts in Our Field

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

By Deia Sanders
Master Teacher and Instructional Coach

Yes, we are seeing great teaching and new methods in the classroom thanks to the challenge of meeting the rigor of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and students are able to not only answer questions, but also discuss and communicate deeply on the process. But as an instructional coach, one of the most exciting changes I’m seeing is the improvement in our teachers.

I am in a district where we are currently teaching and writing units of study for ELA and mathematics. For anyone who has tackled this task, you know it’s a long road of pouring your heart, mind, and energy into creating something that almost immediately needs to be changed again. While it may be a daunting and frustrating task to some, it truly is inspiring to others. The growth we’ve seen in our teacher teams tasked with writing these units is unbelievable. They’ve become experts at teaching, merging, researching, and developing ideas, practices, and lessons. We’ve gone from a culture that simply taught the curriculum handed to them on a pacing guide they were forced to keep, to one in which we not only let kids explore and guide the pace of learning, but the methods we use to teach are ones that we’ve had conversations with grade levels below and above to know the level to begin and end the content on.

We no longer make a lesson plan from a guide in a book. We are sitting down with the standards, the Model Content Frameworks, viewing videos, looking at practices, pulling resources, looking at prototypes, writing tasks based on prototypes, talking to other grade levels, creating our own materials, etc.—each lesson is a research project that although may be exhausting, the process creates a true expert that stands in front of kids to teach and facilitate the learning.

When I entered a class last year and the teacher said “we’re just reading today,” it was always just that. This year when I enter a class and they are “just reading,” it’s amazing. The kids are reading alright, but they are charting characters and their traits, making inferences and notes as they read, and coming together on deep discussions on anything from the plot of the book or chapter to if “grandpa” is a character or not because they haven’t had interaction with him yet. Yes, 11-year-olds using the word “interact” to describe a personal experience with a text—and this is “just reading.” In math, the kids are exploring, teaching, developing methods, sharing, and discovering unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The lessons differentiate themselves because almost everything they do is a visual or conversational formative assessment that drives their next step.

I’m thankful for the CCSS and excited about what it’s doing for our students. But the process of digging into the CCSS and expectations of the assessment has created unmatched job-embedded professional development. This experience has taken my colleagues and me from teachers to experts in our field, and that is going to have an unmatched impact on our students!

Math Anxiety Linked to Physical Pain?

From November 2 to November 8, three stories in Time Magazine, The Atlantic, and even Wired Magazine have discussed recent findings that math anxiety can activate pain areas in our brain.

But that is changing for students in several schools I’d like to highlight. First up is the new Education Achievement Authority (EAA) district in Detroit, Michigan.

The EAA has turned the tables on teaching, with the letters “SCL” (standing for “student-centered learning”) ringing out of the mouths of principals and students across each of the fifteen schools. I just flew back from a visit to the EAA where School Improvement Network caught on camera the trials, difficulties and successes of this new education model.

Where math is concerned, I saw a class of 12-year-old kids listen carefully to their teacher when she turned down the radio for a few moments of brief instruction about changing centers. The kids quickly and quietly changed their activities and got straight to work. They weren’t mindless automatons; they were engaged. They wanted to switch and learn math skills in several different ways. When the kids switched, the radio went back on, and the children kept learning.

This teacher (soon to be highlighted in an upcoming PD 360 video) had excellent classroom management, to be sure. But that’s not her secret to a great classroom atmosphere in an area that has had chronically terrible behavior for decades. Her secret is that she and the EAA are providing students with methods to teach themselves, with significant support from a teacher, and thereby eliminate the anxiety over math or school in general.

The second example is from South Jordan, Utah.

Kalina Potts is a teacher who is teaching multistep word problems in her math class (you can watch the video for free here). Potts is teaching her lesson by using Common Core Math Standards 4.OA.3 and MP.1, 3, & 4.

“I think the hardest part is just figuring out what you’re supposed to do,” says Stephen, a student in Potts’s class. “The math problems itself like division, multiplication, and everything like that isn’t so hard. It’s just figuring out which one you’re supposed to do with which numbers and everything like that.”

In other words, Stephen and his classmates aren’t just following steps—they are learning how to learn. So rather than becoming anxious about whether or not they done the problem “right,” the students are learning for themselves how to solve a problem and why they choose to solve it that way.

It is my estimation that the fear we experience when confront with math problems is that we are faced with real-world issues and no homework instructions for how to accomplish them. But in both the EAA and in Ms. Potts’s class, students aren’t just learning how to follow directions; they are learning how to own their own experience with math.

What are some of your favorite methods for teaching math? How are math tasks going on your classrooms? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

Math, Science, and History Standards in the Common Core

Join us on Tuesday, September 11, at 2:00 p.m. EDT for a special webinar Q&A session with Yvonne Copprue-McLeod, a 5th grade teacher at Harriet Tubman Elementary School in Newark, NJ. During this session, Copprue-McLeod will answer your questions about the Common Core Standards as she details her experience with the Common Core ELA Standards Writing and Speaking & Listening.

Unbelievably poor reporting abounds vis-à-vis the Common Core Standards. But you’re a highly intelligent individual, and you can spot the differences, I’m sure.

Something that has not been reported about the Common Core is the standards clearly spelled out for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Have you heard about these yet? It’s nothing new at all—this image is from the eighth page of the PDF I downloaded will all of the Common Core Standards inside:

Probably never heard of those, have you? It makes you start to wonder what else is in these standards that you haven't heard of--like how they could help you and your students.

Of course these are standards that relate to English language arts, but we’re kidding ourselves if we think that clear communication is not essential in absolutely everything that we do. Take it from someone who gets paid for his knowledge of the English language—everyone, from teachers to executives, has to have a better understanding of the most basic principles of grammar. There is no field, no career, and (if I may wax poetic) no life that does not stand to be enriched by stronger skills in the English language arts.

When I was in high school (or really at any grade), I had a very difficult time understanding directions in my math class. I’m not unintelligent—I just don’t mix the numbers the right way. Reading a math problem is much different than reading East of Eden, but we still call it “reading.” Though highly skilled at discerning plot, character development, and literary themes and criticism, I was woefully behind in working through those accursed word problems.

The Common Core Standards help us—I repeat, they help us—to guide students toward building their skills and defining their lives by what they can achieve rather than what they can’t seem to hack. Common Core 360 is full of teacher and classroom videos that show how educators have been able to build capacity and confidence in their students through these standards. Education is no longer about being weeded out, sorted, and graded—it’s about learning.

Have you been able to read through the Common Core Standards? Have you put any to the test here at the beginning of the school year? What was your experience? Let’s sound off in the comments.