What Will the Change to Common Core Curriculum Look Like?
In part 1 of this short series of articles, I wrote about the College and Career Readiness and the Common Core standards initiatives that are taking place across the United States. I hope people took the time to access the website that was listed for further information on the two initiatives. These changes are significant and will have a certain impact on your child. So what can you expect to see as you review your child’s schoolwork and help with your child’s homework? While I cannot cover all of these changes in this short article, I can give a general overview of what you should already be seeing when it comes to English Language Arts.
There are two things that you should notice almost immediately. The first is that many skills and expectations have been moved into a lower grade level and there are fewer skills being covered for any given year. This is referred to as focusing on more depth of coverage rather than breadth of coverage. Second, the types of questions being asked are tougher and ask students to think in multiple steps. While inductive and deductive reasoning skills are still important, students will need to be able to find exact answers from text.
Students are expected to learn their letters and to begin reading at an earlier age. This is why the modeling and reading to very young children is so important for parents. There will be more emphasis on non-fiction reading. The business world calls for employees to be able to read and implement directions from technical manuals. There will still be opportunities for the development of character through the reading of literature but not as much of these reading will occur.
Writing will be emphasized more and will happen in all subjects. Writing is a companion to reading and as such needs to be emphasized for both the development of reading and thinking skills. There should be more research projects for older students though shorter in nature. Rather than one long term paper, the emphasis will be on short 3-5 page papers. Also, much to my agreement, there will be more emphasis on grammar.
Next year when the new math standards are implemented, parents can expect to see changes as well. Students will be required to know more math facts earlier and faster. There will be more work with fractions at all grade levels. This is really a critical change as fractional work is one of the hardest skills for our students to understand. Conceptual math will play a very prominent role. Students will need to learn the whys and the relations of math rather than just formulas.
Problem solving and critical thinking will play a very prominent role at all grade levels. We want to be able to teach children to think in mathematical terms. Everyday adults are faced with problems that require mathematical problem solving. Moving real life problems from the abstract to a logical, perhaps sequential process is a critical skill for students to learn. The biggest change may well be at the middle school level as students have to be able to grasp math at the Algebra 1 sequence level so they can take advanced math in high school. Math textbooks will look significantly different if we are implementing these changes correctly.
Just from these short descriptions you can see how different the work your child will be engaged in doing. You can also see why it is important that we support our teaching staff with on-going, job-embedded professional development.
For more on why these changes are needed and grade by grade examples of the changes, visit the following on-line sites:
Parent video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yll0fJrUAWE
Parent guides http://www.pta.org/parents/content.cfm?ItemNumber=2910
(This is the second in a series of articles regarding the Common Core standards, the changing nature of student work, and USD 417 programming)
By: Mr. Doug Conwell, Superintendent