The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 3-5. Leslie Blauman

for quick reference or planning with colleagues in your school or on your grade-level team.

      • Use your Companion to aid in the transition from what you were doing to what you will be doing, treating the planning pages that accompany each standard as a place to note what you do or which Common Core State Standard corresponds with one of your district or state standards you are trying to adapt to the Common Core.

      • Use your Companion as a resource for revisiting your curriculum plans in year two (or beyond!) of implementing the standards to help you develop, refine, and deepen instruction.

      • Begin or end meetings with a brief but carefully planned sample lesson based on a teaching idea in this book. Ask one or more colleagues in the school to present at the next meeting on how it might apply to other grade levels.

      • Use the Companion in conjunction with your professional learning community to add further cohesion and consistency between all your ideas and plans.

      • And of course, access all the accompanying materials and resources from the book’s companion website, www.corwin.com/thecommoncorecompanion.

      12 Recommended Common Core Resources

      1. The Common Core State Standards Home Page http://www.corestandards.org

      2. Council of Chief State School Officers http://www.ccsso.org

      3. Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers http://www.parcconline.org

      4. Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium http://www.smarterbalanced.org/k-12-education/common-core-state-standards-tools-resources

      5. National Association of Secondary School Principals http://www.nassp.org/knowledge-center/topics-of-interest/common-core-state-standards

      6. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development http://www.ascd.org/common-core-state-standards/common-core.aspx

      7. engageny (New York State Department of Education) http://engageny.org

      8. California Department of Education Resources for Teachers and Administrators http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/cc

      9. National Dissemination Center for Children With Disabilities http://nichcy.org/schools-administrators/commoncore

      10. Edutopia Resources for Understanding the Common Core http://www.edutopia.org/common-core-state-standards-resources

      11. Common Core Curriculum Maps http://commoncore.org/maps

      12. Teach Thought: 50 Common Core Resources for Administrators and Teachers http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/50-common-core-resources-for-teachers

      Teachers Are the Designers of “the How”

      P. David Pearson, in his chapter for Quality Reading Instruction in the Age of Common Core State Standards, asks us to be vigilant about how the powers behind the Common Core behave in the months and years to come:

      The question for the CCSS is whether they will deliver on their promise to cede to teachers the authority (or at least some of the authority) to determine how they will help their students meet the CCSS within their school settings. The standards say “yes, they will.” But a recent document coming out of the CCSS movement says, “maybe not.”

      The publication of a recent document on the CCSS website, Revised Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy, Grades 3–12 (Coleman & Pimentel, 2012) leads me to wonder whether the letter and spirit of the Standards document has been sacrificed in the service of influencing published programs and materials.

      … If publishers are persuaded to follow these criteria, they will turn out scripts, not broad options. Unless teachers reject materials from the marketplace, teacher and school choice about how to ‘deliver the curriculum’ will be markedly reduced, perhaps to the point that there is no real choice among the commercial alternatives. (pp. 247–248)

      I think of Pearson’s warning, and I’m struck by what Jim Burke started. These books — and the one you hold in your hand — make the standards understandable and accessible, but also stay true to the original promise of the standards — that you determine how they are taught to your students. We know where we have to go, but we have ownership and choice of how we get there. I hope this book provides you with that power. Remember, it’s a silhouette — you fill it in. And use those hands to raise questions and push back if you need to.

      References

      National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards English language arts & literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Washington, DC: Authors.

      Palacio, R. J. (2012). Wonder. New York, NY: Random House.

      Pearson, P. D. (2013). Research foundations of the Common Core State Standards in English language arts. In S. Neuman & L. Gambrell (Eds.), Quality reading instruction in the age of Common Core Standards (pp. 237–262). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Key Principles and Additional Teaching Strategies for English Language Learners 3—5

      You may have students who are English language learners in your classroom. Some of these students may be new to English, having just emigrated from another country where English is not the primary language, and others may have started learning English in kindergarten and first grade. Whether the English language learners have just started learning English or have developed some proficiency in English, they have unique needs from native English speakers.

      To help you meet their needs, you’ll find suggestions for each standard at the end of the “What the Teacher Does” pages. Here, I supplement these instructional ideas with additional background, the stages of language acquisition, and the implications for differentiated scaffolding that will be most effective.

      Focus on Acquisition

      The students in our grades 3–5 classrooms, both native-English-speaking students and English language learners (ELLs), are learning language. In many respects they are remarkably the same in their quest and language acquisition. Both groups of children are rapidly developing their vocabularies, using language to communicate, and learning about academic language and formal English.

      However, there is a difference between native-English-speaking students and ELLs. ELLs are acquiring a second language when they learn English at school; they already have their primary language, with which they communicate at home and in the community. Thus, many of these children are fluent in their first language, an important point to remember so that our mindset as teachers isn’t that all these kids are struggling learners overall.

      We learn language