Teaching in a Common Core Classroom

To help educators better understand the broad instructional practices involved with teaching the Common Core State Standards, we will deconstuct them into components such as communication, collaboration, rigor, tasks, project-based learning, assessment, lesson planning and real-life application opportunities.

Best practices for classroom design, creating a talking and investigative culture, strategies for respectful communication, planning time and transitions, purposeful positioning and utilization of materials and manipulatives, and creating a strategically built environment.

Understanding the steps to lesson planning using the Common Core State Standards. Strategic development of lesson plans that include both direct instruction and project-based learning as complimentary instructional approaches. Developing assessments and understanding how to analyze student work.

Explore various research driven methods of questioning in a Common Core classroom, such as the 6 levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, Webb's Depth of Knowledge, and the Rigor and Relevance Framework.  You will learn to understand how these methods are a critical part of the curriculum, instruction, and assessment of a highly effective Common Core State Standards classroom.  Also discussed will be Close Reading, a strategy that uncovers layers to understanding text, and promotes critical thinking.