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Common Core: Cranking out sausage
The creation of Common Core standards were not just “new” in the sense of having new standards as a final product, but new in how they were written, edited, etc. You can see from the critique from...
View ArticleHow to teach students to hate human rights (and other subjects)…
As a teacher “implementing” Common Core, I’ve enjoyed reading the Burkins and Yaris blog. They’re writing is pretty accessible, and they are great at separating the wheat from the chaff with the...
View ArticleThings I hear…
When everything new seems like something old, sometimes it isn’t… You should go in and observe teachers with seniority, not new teachers, because when I talk to them, they are very excited about being...
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The WOW! factor of CCSS
One of my students this year has a propensity to use the sarcastic “WOW,” when they get news they don’t like (like, “You need to re-do this work”). This is not meant as a complaint about a student,...
View ArticleReflecting on Common Core RL Standard 5
Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. - Common...
View ArticleYou can’t ask them to think about text that gives them nothing to think about…
Lately I’ve devoted a lot of blog space to what I’ll refer to as “stupid Common Core tricks” that usually result from being overly attentive to the standards, and not giving enough attention to...
View ArticleJust another hysterical female…
Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were...
View ArticleHuman Rights lesson done right…
So way back, in the dim mist of time (before winter break), I finished a unit on human rights loosely based on an idea from a really poorly executed unit that I first heard about here. The unit had...
View ArticleCommon Core Mathematics
This is in response to Mercedes Deutsch’s call for input from teachers on our experience with Common Core Mathematics The Standards: Is it really thinner? Going from California to the CCSS-M standards...
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Classroom Update #3 for 2015: Math, math, math
I could share an earful about the return of benchmark testing (which was on hiatus with the switch-over to the SBAC) and how it’s making a mockery of recent calls by the President to limit testing,...
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