Do you feel like you need to have more information on the Common Core State Standards, but don’t know where to start? Do you feel like you don’t have enough Common Core State Standards background knowledge to support your school staff in the transition?
Well don’t worry the internet can be your ally in building your own background knowledge and subsequently help you assist teachers to instruct students with these rigorous standards.
Websites to Checkout
One of my favorite websites is www.EngageNY.org. The state of New York’s Department of Education has put forth an outstanding site to support teachers, principals, network teams, and administrators.
This site has a plethora of valuable information to help schools and school leaders start to make sense of the Common Core Standards. It contains archived webinars, slide shows, toolkits, exemplars, and much more.
All school leaders need to check out this site.
States’ Departments of Education
With 46 states participating (Minnesota adopted only the ELA portion) in the Common Core State Standards, school leaders have an abundance of DOE sites to find resources and useful information.
I must admit, I have not been to each state’s Common Core pages, so I don’t want to mislead anyone here. I’m sure each state has many valuable links, posts, and other pertinent information.
When it comes to unpacking or deconstructing the standards, I head to Kentucky’s and North Carolina’s websites. Personally, there are things each has that I like. Your preferences may be different.
Kentucky’s Mathematics Deconstructed Standards
Kentucky’s deconstructed standards provide a simple, straight-forward layout that is easy to read and understand. Their format makes translation to instruction easier for teachers.
Kentucky’s ELA Deconstructed Standards
North Carolina has very helpful deconstructed standards as well. I really like the exemplars in their deconstructed math standards. This is helpful to teachers in making connections between the standards and what assessments may look like.
North Carolina’s Unpacked Mathematics Standards
Google Search
What would we do without Google these days? Google is a valuable tool in finding resources for the Common Core Standards.
At Google’s Keyword Analytics, I was able to see that google searches for “what is common core” and “the common core” returns 673,000 hits. This search would be too high, thus pulling in nearly everything out there and possible including “7 Common Exercises to Strengthen Your Core”. (Maybe that’s an article I should be reading!)
Keep your searches narrower. Monthly google numbers show that the terms “common core math lesson plans” and “sample lesson plans for common core standards” had 320 and 91 hits respectively.
So narrowing your search may provide you with blogs, webinars, documents, etc. that get you to your specific learning objective faster.
Social Media
There are a number of options with social media these days. Three obvious choices are LinkedIn, Pinterest, and twitter.
LinkedIn connects you to other professionals within the field of education. You can join groups that will get you to the content and support you need. You can post your own questions and get responses from those within and outside your network.
Pinterest is another site that is gaining popularity. To be honest, I have not signed up for pinterest at this point.
From what I can understand, teachers post common core lessons and activities to their pinterest boards for others to see and use. I’ve been told that some of the cookie recipes are outstanding! One would think that if the Common Core wasn’t a big enough draw for me to sign up with pinterest, the cookies would be.
Twitter is a great tool for searching for things related to the common core. Just be careful because it is addictive. In twitters search tool type in #commoncore and you will have a list of tweets that pertain to the common core state standards.
Scratching the Surface
These handful of useful tools are only scratching the service of what’s available. The most intriguing feature for me with these tools and resources is that they are all “ON DEMAND” and work around my schedule.
I hope these are some useful tools for you moving forward and leading your school through this change.
Question:
What tools do you find pulling you in to learn more about the common core state standards?
