Common Core Outcomes Giveaway

Your time at the end of the school year is valuable. So this will be a short and, hopefully, sweet blog post. Roughly 97 ideas crossed paths in my brain at one point this morning (not unusual, really), and I was left with the following questions that I want to ask you:

  1. Did you incorporate the Common Core State Standards into your curriculum this year?
  2. What did your students have an easier time with, in general, this school year—math or language arts?

That’s it. But let’s make this more interesting. Everyone who comments on this blog post before 11:59 pm EDT on Tuesday, June 11, 2013, will be entered into a drawing for a new book from The Mailbox. We’ll call it our Common Core Outcomes Giveaway. Good luck!


32 thoughts on “Common Core Outcomes Giveaway

  1. 1. have not adopted Math standards–only Language Arts.
    2. Students reacted VERY positively to the writing aspects of CCS. They enjoy sharing their life and opinion in a more complete way, and I enjoyed getting to know each of them in a deeper way. They spent much more time thinking about the topic (across the curriculum–awesome!) as they prepared each writing piece. Evaluating their own writing (and their peers’) was a bit of a struggle–that will take more practice and guidance next year.

  2. I incorporated the math common core standards this year. I found that my students struggled in the beginning of the year, but became more proficient with thinking though the problems in order to solve them as the year went on. I continually challenged them to take their time and use their knowledge to help them. I also let the students make up their own problems to share with the class. They enjoyed solving these problems a lot. 25 of 26 of my students met their target goal on the MAP tests in the spring!

  3. Common Core for pre-kindergarten has yet to be created for our state. I’m not for sure what the hold-up is, but we are implementing suggestions from our state department.

  4. Only K-2 have 100% Common Core going this year. 3rd-8th grades were at 75% – mainly due to the state AIMS testing. A portion of those questions were still over the old standards. This upcoming school year everyone (K-8) will be at 100% Common Core. 🙂

  5. I work at a little private school and this year for accreditation we had to do our course outlines and incorporate the common core standards. I helped the elementary teachers come up with neat ideas to incorporate the standards in activities that spanned many subjects. I think both were hard but the students were up to the challenge!

  6. I tried to incorporate Common Core Standards in my seventh and eighth grade classes of language arts and social studies. Students struggled at first, but liked the breakdown of specific tasks – especially with our technology programs.
    Students probably had an easier time in language arts than math. I can’t say that it’s due to the new standards necessarily but different teachers.

  7. We have not yet begun to use these standards. Everything is still in the planning stages. I think students struggled more with math this year. Anything that will help them in this area will be a big improvement

  8. We incorporated both ELA and Math. I think the students had an easier time with ELA because we used the modules provided on engageny.com.

  9. We incorporated the C.C. with both Math and ELA. It was easier to do for ELA, but my team and I met the first week of summer and we think it will easier next year.

  10. We did incorporate CC this year. I would say our students had an easier time with math. Thanks for the giveaway!

  11. We also incorporated both Math and ELA. We already had units developed district-wide for ELA, which seemed to make that easier than Math for students.

  12. Because I teach in Virginia and share my lessons with teachers in other states, I have to incorporate both the Common Core and the Virginia Standards of Learning.

    If you look at test scores, students did better on ELA (Reading/Writing). The CC/SOL rigors have made collaborative efforts for student success all the more important.

  13. We use the Common Core Standards. I’m a math teacher so I have more experience with it. I believe there is less of a difference in math therefore the students did better with it.

  14. We did not officially implement CC this year but we did implement two new reading programs that were touted to fulfill CC standards. For that reason, I don’t know if I can really answer the next question. I can say that my class this year was far below grade level on the whole so they found both literacy and math difficult.

  15. We did incorporate the Common Core standards this year. I think math was easier for our students because it seemed that our math curriculum already matched up well with a lot of the standards.

  16. We are just now to the point of using Common Core in our school. I am going to be teaching a new grade this next year. We have never had 6th grade at our school so this will be a learnig curve for both students and the 3 teachers in the department. I know we will need all the help we can get in utilizing the standards for our students! I can’t wait for the challenges of the new year!!!

  17. I used the Teaching Channel for many ideas that fit C.C. I really found the approach much more meaningful to me as their teacher and for my students. I wish more teachers were on board with implementing. There are a few of us and we meet once a week, after school on our own time, to share ideas and strategies. It has been great.
    As far as my studnets go I think reading was easier than math. They can’t seem to understand the importance of sharing why…. or they can’t.

  18. I implemented the writing standards. The major roadblocks encountered were:
    1) Students primarily used technology for playing games, not looking up information
    2) Students were not used to writing, much less extensive pieces that went beyond a paragraph
    3) Plagiarism!!! Students wanted to copy what they see on the screen & claim it as their own…

    The first piece I addressed prior to beginning the writing piece was free writing. Students were given the task to write for 10 minutes (the time increased incrementally as the days progressed) on either a topic of their own choosing or I would provide a topic for those that could not think of one. I also modeled writing on the visualizer so students knew the we were in this together. They also were able to see what could be accomplished in the given time.

    Research was the second area to address. I gave students four specific areas in which we needed to find information, which gave students four specific search strings to keep them focused. We also used bulleted note-taking. Students LOVE not having to write complete sentences, plus now they were unable to simply copy the text word for word and claim the work as their own.

    We wrote an informational piece on President Barack Obama. Students had to write a minimum of one paragraph (8 – 10 sentences) on each of the following areas: Childhood, Road to Presidency, Post Election, & the final section varied based on reading level (Would you vote for President Obama?; Identify & evaluate a policy from the Obama administration. Do you agree with the policy?; What was the most significant policy implemented by the Obama administration?)

    Students were proud of their finished product. It did take MUCH longer than I would have liked, but for the first time of doing researched writing, it was a great start. Next year, I wish to incorporate more media services for research. This will be a challenge as literary resources are not available in a plentiful amount and students are not yet ready to research different topics.

  19. We used only common core this year. I think the students had an easier time with math since the ELA is much more rigorous, so is the math, but easier to figure out.. Thanks for the give away!!

  20. My students actually struggled a bit in both language arts and math, but I think over all they did better in language arts.

  21. My school has told us to do the Common Core. Lower grades have been doing it for several years. Now all will, but we still must incorporate the state standards, because that is on our yearly test. It has been hard to teach language arts and writing in common core. There is not much on Teacher Pay Teacher in language arts, so I have been looking at ideas in lower grades and “winging” it. Our school was a pilot for the writing Common Core, but students didn’t have much practice before the 3 tests. Makes life difficult! I would love to have additional help!!!!

  22. For me, the students had an easier time with math because in MN we are using standards that have been in place for a few years, so we have passed the math implementation bump. Thus the new standards and the ELA test was much more difficult than in years past. We are still working on having our classroom assessments match the standards,

  23. We are implementing common core next year. I get to go next Friday for a day of professional development on how the district plans on doing that.

  24. My school implemented the common core standards last year. We have curriculum and units very closely alligned to the common core. I think the ELA is still a little rocky and difficult to manipulate, but the math we adapted to a new program Envisions which is wonderful for the common core and my students have been performing great with it.

  25. I teach Special Needs students and we struggle with concepts Math as well as Language Arts. But of the two, Math is out hardest subject!

  26. We are implementing CC next year. I have been focusing on 5th grade, but was moved to 4th at the end of the year, so I am spending my summer learning new standards. Fun, Fun!

  27. We implemented Common Core last year and it was awful! I only taught math (will teach everything next year) and because of the differences in GPS and CCGPS, our district took away our math books that we had used in previous years leaving our parents and new teachers with no resources at all unless they personally found them! We are still waiting to hear whether we will have ‘resources’ for the coming year.

    Because our ELA teacher used her own collection of books (which I do not have to teach next year) and did not rely on the county, my homeroom scored 100% on the passing of our state test! I need all the help I can get for next year!

  28. Congratulations to Cheryl Brouwer, who was selected at random from all the responses. And thanks to everyone for submitting comments and giving us all valuable feedback regarding your experiences implementing (or preparing to implement) CCSS in your school.

  29. We are implementing CC this fall. I have just completed an online class covering the 6 modules of CC. I look forward to implementing CC in my math class. I have learned how the higher level thinking skills have deepened since I started teaching 25 years ago; society was so much different back then.

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