Common-Core Classroom Strategies: Teacher Ideas

Yikes! Common-Core is upon us and I know I am feeling more and more stressed about how it will change the current curriculum and teaching strategies. This article gave a lot of great ideas on how teachers can help prepare themselves for teaching with the Common-Core.

One strategy I had never heard of was the interactive notebook. The idea of teaching new vocabulary to coincide with harder, complex texts is so neat! An interactive notebook has a learning section ("input") AND a reflection section ("output"). I could see using this type of notebook for many different subjects, especially math. The learning side could have an algorithm (i.e. steps of long division) whereas the reflection section would have story problems where students would apply the algorithm. Of course, this would work well with vocabulary words within texts, but what a great idea for other subjects too!

Additionally, I loved the idea of students creating a PowerPoint for students in the upcoming school year. Not only is the assignment authentic, but it would be motivating too. The discussion observer was also an interesting idea to monitor and track higher-order thinking. This might be difficult with younger students, however the idea would encourage students to deepen their talk to become more critical thinkers. With the Common-Core taking over, it is essential that teachers become aware of new strategies to prepare students for the skills they need to be successful as 21st century learners.