Common Core State Standards for ELA Instruction

When you hear “Common Core State Standards (CCSS),” what goes through your mind?  I have heard mixed thoughts about CCSS from teachers, students, family and community members.  Some love the idea of CCSS, others very much dislike the idea, and a few are confused as to what they even are. Even up until now, reading this article, I could hear the multitude of opinions I have been given in my head.

Now let’s take a minute to think about the idea in which CCSS is formed around, help students be better prepared for college and everyday life outside of high school no matter where they are in the United States.  Before reading this article, I never thought about the fact that the federal government didn’t create the idea first, but the individual states had.  The federal government just decided there should be some “main guidelines” for all public schools to follow.  Among many states and educators, there was a bit of an uproar with this when President Bush created “No Child Left Behind.”

As a future educator, I do appreciate the article bringing up the fact that many teachers are upset about using CCSS in their classrooms.  I know many other educators that view CCSS as a giant joke and just a way to make them do more work than necessary or they feel it doesn’t really help prepare the students for what “they feel the students should be learning.”  While it is more work on our part as educators to make sure our students are succeeding in their education, we should be happy knowing that more students are going and graduating from colleges every year.  Some parents are finding their “trust” of public education to prepare their children for the future.

I, however, do agree that in the framework of CCSS we are slowly losing sight of some important content we should be teaching throughout the different courses just so we have our students “meet the standards.”  As we all work to reshape and mold the CCSS throughout the upcoming years, we will hopefully find that balance we seek of meeting standards and teaching key material for multiple areas of life/subjects.

Discussions for success

In Discussion as a Way of Teaching by Stephen Brookfield, I was thrilled to see someone had written on the topic of discussions and the reasons they succeed or fail.  As a student, I have always listened to my teachers mention we needed to come to class prepared; which meant we needed to do the reading for class.  The next day, we would be sitting in a circle for discussion and only 5 or 6 people out of the 25 would actively participate.  However, if we were asked to journal about what we read, almost everyone would have around a page filled with thoughts of the reading.  This article has helped me, as a future teacher see some of the reasons why those discussions failed and how to help students have successful discussions.

One thing I don’t remember most of my teachers in high school doing until I got to college was “setting ground rules” for the class discussions.  They always said we were to actively listen and be respectful to one another, but to us, it was just the “normal” discussion.  Not once did we get to choose how our discussions were going to go or how we wanted everyone to participate and act during the discussions.  I would have been more engaged as a high school student if I felt I had a say in shaping how the discussions would go.  The examples shown on how to set discussion ground rules are very helpful.  While I am currently working with 6^th graders, I feel these will be good to use in all classrooms for Secondary Education.  I plan to implement my own version of these tips in my classrooms.  My students will have the opportunities to reflection on previous class discussions or videos that show “good” and “bad” discussions to see what they would like to have in a class discussion and what they would like to avoid in a class discussion.  This will give them a chance to have a voice in the classroom as well.