Common Core State Standards…Ready or not, here they come!

Fortunately for students and parents of North Country Elementary, we are ready.   An important part of our success in implementing these new standards is making sure our families understand the changes that come along with new academic standards.

The Common Core State Standards initiative is a state-led effort coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. The goal of the CCSS is to provide a single set of clear and consistent educational standards in math and English language arts that states can share and voluntarily adopt. A total of 45 states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core State Standards.

Until now, every state had its own standards and different expectations of student performance. Common standards will help ensure that all students are receiving a high quality education consistently, from school to school and state to state. Common Core standards can provide parents with clear expectations for what children should know and be able to do when they graduate high school or advance to a particular grade level. Common Core standards provide consistency for parents and students during transitions and allow parents to continue to support student learning regardless of changes in ZIP code. In addition, evidence-based standards will more effectively prepare American students to keep up with their peers around the world.

Common Core standards are a clear set of shared goals and expectations for what students need to learn, but they will not dictate how teachers should teach. Common Core standards are not curriculum. Teachers and schools will continue to devise curriculum, including lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms. Local teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards will continue to make curriculum decisions.

Non-fiction makes up the majority of required reading in high school, college and the workplace. Since informational text is harder for students to understand than narrative text, more instructional time is needed to practice. The recommended time spent on literary texts to informational texts at the elementary level is 50/50; at the middle level is 45/55 and at the high school level is 30/70. An emphasis on reading, writing and speaking based on evidence is another shift. This became part of the Common Core Learning Standards because most college and workplace writing requires evidence, being able to take a position or inform others through citing evidence. The shift to regular practice with complex texts and academic language occurred because research showed that there is a gap in the difficulty of what students read by the end of high school and what they are required to read in both college and careers. For all of these shifts, the emphasis is on reading more complex texts. The features of complex text include density of information, multiple and/or subtle themes and purposes, unfamiliar settings or events, complex sentences, uncommon vocabulary, longer paragraphs and a text structure that is less narrative.

In math, instructional shifts focus on fewer, more central standards, building core understandings and linking mathematical concepts to real-world skills. In developing the shifts in mathematics, the designers of the standards moved away from what has been termed the “mile wide and an inch deep” approach to mathematics instruction in the United States. The Common Core Learning Standards for mathematics stress conceptual understanding of key ideas and organizing principles of mathematics such as place value or the laws of arithmetic. The standards are designed to allow students to progress through mathematics in a coherent way, building skills within and across grades. The Common Core defines what students should be able to do in mathematics through grade-specific standards, emphasizing speed, accuracy and real-life problem-solving skills.

Parent Roadmaps, created by the Council of the Great City Schools, provide grade level specific information about Math and ELA Common Core Standards along with some great examples and ways that you can help your child master these standards. Take a look at them on the North Coutnry Website-Testing and Accountabilty Page.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the files.  Follow the links to download the Spanish versions for Math and the Spanish versions for ELA