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Mapping Comprehensive Units to the ELA Common Core Standards, 6–12

By: Kathy Tuchman Glass

This all-in-one resource includes step-by-step instructions, templates, and tips for building high quality curriculum units across content areas using CCCS-aligned literacy standards for grades 6–12.

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Product Details

Grade Level: 6-12
ISBN: 9781452268620
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2013
Page Count: 288
Publication date: May 09, 2013

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Description

Your blueprint for skilled Common Core literacy alignment!

Learn to artfully navigate Common Core - or any state/province - standards with concrete, step-by-step instruction from master teacher and curriculum specialist, Kathy Tuchman Glass. Confidently map a unit of study aligned to Common Core’s rigorous, evidence-based writing and reading requirements. Dive into in-depth analyses of informational text with supporting essential questions. Glass walks you through the entire process with manageable chunks that eliminate overwhelm.

Chapters include thorough explanations, step-by-step exercises, and detailed templates, assessments, charts, tips, and prompts centered around key CCCS concepts for grades 6–12.

Teachers, curriculum committees, grade level teams, and professional development leaders will learn to:

Challenge and engage students in all content areas using the CCCS ELA framework
Use existing curriculum and materials to design new, CCCS-aligned units of study
Identify mandatory CCCS ELA essential understandings for informational text, evidence-based writing and other critical competencies
Conduct resource-rich workshops and professional development

This all-in-one instructional guide, with a companion website for extra help, improves your professional capacity to create, revise, or critique quality-driven units and lessons aligned to the ELA Common Core. Get this essential blueprint to building high quality 6–12 grade-level curriculum for skilled CCCS literacy-aligned success!

“Like them or hate them, the Common Core Standards represent one of the most significant opportunities for improvement schools have faced in decades. This book will be a great help to anyone engaged in the act of translating the Common Core into actual teaching practices.”
--Jim Knight, Author of High-Impact Instruction

Key features

Provides an overview of the layout, key benefits, and rationale for each of the ELA common core standards.
Presents a comprehensive plan for designing effective curriculum around the standards that can serve as a model for educators tasked with either revising existing curriculum to align to the CCSS or creating an entirely new ELA curriculum.
Includes templates and examples of unit curriculum maps for readers to reproduce

Author(s)

Kathy Tuchman Glass

Consulting Description

Kathy Glass is a former teacher who consults and presents nationally with K-12 teachers and administrators at schools, districts, conferences, and county offices of education. She offers a blend of professional development (PD) topics to target audiences in areas affecting curriculum and instruction. To deliver customized PD, she assists educators with strategic planning to determine objectives. Then she tailors PD based on requested topics such as, but not limited to:

· highlights of the ELA Common Core Standards

· implementation of the ELA Common Core or other standards-based curriculum using a backward design approach

· essential understandings and guiding questions to frame curriculum and instruction

· differentiated tools and instructional strategies

· pre-, formative, summative, and self-assessments

· alignment of six-traits writing instruction and assessment to curriculum goals

· unit and yearlong curriculum maps

· text-dependent questions to facilitate close reading, and more.

To help educators directly translate what she presents into effective classroom practice that impacts students, Kathy can provide a variety of PD opportunities (e.g., presentations, lesson demonstrations and modeling, coaching, collaborative unit design, etc.).

She is the author of six books: Mapping Comprehensive Units to the English Language (ELA) Arts Common Core Standards, 6-12 (May, 2013); Mapping Comprehensive Units to the ELA Common Core Standards, K-5 (© 2012); Lesson Design for Differentiated Instruction, Grades 4-9 (©2009); Staff Development Guide for the Parallel Curriculum (©2009); Curriculum Mapping: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Curriculum Year Overviews (©2007); and Curriculum Design for Writing Instruction: Creating Standards-Based Lesson Plans and Rubrics (©2005). In addition, Glass has served as a reader and reviewer for Reader’s Handbook: A Student Guide for Reading and Learning (2002, Great Source Education Group) and as a contributing writer and consultant for the Heath Middle Level Literature series (1995, DC Heath and Co). Website: www.kathyglassconsulting.com; email: kathy@kathyglassconsulting.com

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Foreword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

Chapter 1: Standards and Knowledge

The Purpose of Standards

Key Areas of Emphasis in the ELA Common Core Standards

Understanding Fiction and Nonfiction Characteristics

Definitions of the Common Core Text Types and Sample Prompts

What Do Argument Texts Entail?

What Do Informative/Explanatory Texts Entail?

What Do Narrative Texts Entail?

A Closer Look at Appendix C: Samples of Student Writing

Identifying and Articulating the Language Standards Across Grades

Exercise 1: What Is the Best Way to Group Standards?

Unit Focus and Template

Considerations for Grouping Standards

Grouping Standards: Two Approaches

Definition and Examples for Knowledge

Exercise 2: How Are Standards Used to Determine What Students Should Know?

Looking Ahead

Chapter 2: Essential Understandings

The Nature and Critical Importance of Essential (or Enduring) Understandings

Essential Understandings as Statements of Conceptual Intent

Examples of Essential Understandings Aligned to the Anchor Standards for Reading

Special Considerations: Time, Intellectual Growth, Clustering

Constructing Your Own Essential Understandings

Exercise 3: How Do Educators Create (or Revise) Essential Understandings?

Sharing Essential Understandings With Your Students

Looking Ahead

Chapter 3: Guiding Questions

The Importance of Guiding Questions

Sharing Guiding Questions With Your Students

The Differences Between Essential Unit and Lesson Guiding Questions

Designing Text-Dependent Questions for Complex Text

How Do Teachers Facilitate Close Reading of Complex Texts?

Examples of Essential Unit and Lesson Guiding Questions for Grammar and Conventions

Constructing Your Own Essential Unit and Lesson Guiding Questions

Exercise 4: How Do Educators Create (or Revise) Essential Unit and Lesson Guiding Questions?

Looking Ahead

Chapter 4: Unit Map Template and Example

Customizing and Adapting the Unit Map to Fit Your Needs

Organizing Unit Maps and Student Work

Looking Ahead

Chapter 5: Summative Assessments and Preassessments

Types of Assessments

Summative (Culminating) Assessments

Rubrics

Checklists

Preassessments

Constructing Your Own Summative Assessment

Exercise 5: How Do Educators Determine an Appropriate Summative Assessment?

Looking Ahead

Chapter 6: Skills, Activities, Formative Assessments, and Resources

Skills

Teaching Strategies and Learning Activities

Formative Assessments

Resources

Identifying Skills and Constructing Activities, Evidence of Assessment, and Resources for Your Targeted Unit

Exercise 6: What Targeted Skills With Associated Activities, Evidence of Assessment, and Resources Can Educators Design (and Find) for a Targeted Unit?

Looking Ahead

Chapter 7: Differentiated Instruction

Content, Process, and Product

Readiness, Learning Profile, and Interest

Instructional Strategy: Rolling Dice or Cubes

Instructional Strategy: Using Manipulatives

Constructing Your Own Differentiated Instructional Strategies

Exercise 7: How Can You Indicate Differentiation on Your Unit Map?

Looking Ahead

Chapter 8: Lesson Design

Lesson Components

Sample Lessons

Next Steps After Designing Lessons

A Final Note

Lesson 1: What Are Inferences? How Do I Make Inferences About This Text?

Lesson 2: What Is Characterization? How Do Authors Use Characterization to Create and Develop Characters?

Lesson 3: What Factors Help Me to Evaluate the Credibility of Sources?

Lesson 4: What Are Elements of an Argument Paper? What Are the Expectations for My Finished Argument?

Resource: A Brief Primer on the ELA Common Core Standards

Creation and Purpose of the Common Core Standards

Who Led the Standards Initiative, and What Is the Goal?

Who Are the CCSSO and NGA?

Content and Structure of the Common Core Standards

Research Highlights for the Reading Strand

Logistics

Can States Add to the Standards?

How Can Standards Be Identified?

Collaboration, Limitations, and Assessment

Who Uses These Standards Besides the ELA Teacher?

What Aspects Are Not Covered in the Common Core Standards Document?

What to Look for When Aligning Existing Standards With the Common Core

Assessments

Closing

References

Index

Other Titles in: Teaching Methods & Learning Styles | Literacy, K-12 | English/Language Arts Common Core

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Related Resources

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