I’m gearing up for a winter and spring filled with different instructional coaching experiences. I’m looking forward to this more than any other work I’ve been involved with so far this year because kids will finally be involved. In most of the schools that I am working in, we have spent more than a year [...]
David Coleman’s mock lesson relevant to King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail offers initial perspective about what instruction with the Common Core might look like. It also raises some important questions, which many of the teachers that I am working with raised throughout our unit design sessions this fall. The teachers that I am working with [...]
Recently, I created a landing page for all of the posts that I’ve been sharing relevant to my work with the Common Core. I plan to update it at the end of each week, as my work inside of local school districts continues and my reflections on that work unfold. You can find the archives [...]
As we’re preparing to engage classrooms full of kids in the shared reading of sufficiently complex text, the teachers that I am working with have made some predictions about the challenges they might face. They want to handle them as pro-actively as possible, so their instructional planning is attending to these hunches. For instance: We predict [...]
In addition to learning what we can about the art of close reading, teachers that I am working with are also finding their study of the following very helpful as they plan to implement the third instructional shift underpinning the Common Core: Jim Burke’s text, The English Teacher’s Companion (which my former grad students will [...]
As we’ve begun examining each of the six instructional shifts called for by the Common Core, teachers have shared their own stories, often times lingering over many details that support the call for such changes. For instance, we know that many readers are struggling to access grade-level text. We know that when this text is [...]
I’ve had the pleasure of working with some incredibly honest teachers over the years. So, reactions like these (in response to this video) didn’t surprise me one bit: “Wow. I don’t read like he does,” a few people admitted. “I don’t read much at all, these days” others have said. “Who has time to read [...]
When we write anything, it’s important to seek a bit of understanding before we begin drafting. For instance, it makes sense to read some quality fiction before we try our hand at composing it. If we’re eager to craft a powerful poem, we might learn a lot by studying the work of the poets who [...]
This post is the second in a series on unit design and the CCLS. You may find the first one here. I have always had a passion for curriculum design. Like writing, it inspires us to think of our audience first: who they are, what they love, what they need, and how we can tuck [...]
This post is the next in a lengthy series intended to make the work that I am facilitating relevant to Race to the the Top and specifically, the alignment of curricula to the Common Core Learning Standards, transparent for others. Doing so has enabled me to gain clarity and new perspectives from others who are [...]
