What do you think?
Rate this book
Supporting Students in a Time of Core Standards: English Language Arts, Grades 9-12
This book reinforces a focus on student learning by demonstrating ways of addressing the Common Core State Standards in grades 9-12 while also adhering to NCTE principles of effective teaching.
Sarah Brown Wessling―the 2010 National Teacher of the Year―and fellow high school teachers demonstrate how to address the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in grades 9–12 while staying true to what they―and you―know about effective, student-centered teaching. The book begins with an overview of key features of the CCSS, addressing some of the most common questions they raise. Section II moves into individual classrooms, offering snapshots of instruction, showing teachers collaborating and making careful decisions about what will work best for their students, and focusing on formative assessment. Drawing on such diverse texts as Macbeth, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, speeches by Barack Obama, graphic novels, and Star Wars, this section also includes charts showing how the CCSS align with established NCTE principles of effective teaching. Section III offers suggestions for professional development, both for individuals and for communities of practice. This section recognizes that effective change requires long-term planning as well as collaboration among colleagues, and it offers strategies and materials for planning units of study, articulating grade-level expectations, and mapping yearlong instruction. And throughout the book, icons point you to additional resources and opportunities for interacting with other teachers on a companion website.
Sarah Brown Wessling―the 2010 National Teacher of the Year―and fellow high school teachers demonstrate how to address the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in grades 9–12 while staying true to what they―and you―know about effective, student-centered teaching. The book begins with an overview of key features of the CCSS, addressing some of the most common questions they raise. Section II moves into individual classrooms, offering snapshots of instruction, showing teachers collaborating and making careful decisions about what will work best for their students, and focusing on formative assessment. Drawing on such diverse texts as Macbeth, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, speeches by Barack Obama, graphic novels, and Star Wars, this section also includes charts showing how the CCSS align with established NCTE principles of effective teaching. Section III offers suggestions for professional development, both for individuals and for communities of practice. This section recognizes that effective change requires long-term planning as well as collaboration among colleagues, and it offers strategies and materials for planning units of study, articulating grade-level expectations, and mapping yearlong instruction. And throughout the book, icons point you to additional resources and opportunities for interacting with other teachers on a companion website.
135 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
2 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 9, 2012
A great resource to explain how teachers, through collaboration, can effectively implement the standards. I would have liked, however, to see some specific sample units played out as a model to emulate.
March 22, 2012
I am deeply suspicious of Common Core and need to find peace within my own practice and my own teaching philosophy about it...So this book, written by an English teacher, an NBCT, and a former US Teacher of the Year has helped me look at the Standards and what they DO and DON'T to -- what they expect and don't expect.
Two of my biggest concerns is the assumption (heard from several sources) that CCSS will essentially end the reading of longer works in ELA classes...that ELA teachers will have to teach 70% nonfiction to their classes...and that lexiles, those arbitrary grade levels for books, will rule our choices. BTW -- in lexile speak, Grapes of Wrath is about 3-4grade...
Wessling specifically refers to longer works, novels and drama, in her book and examples of unit-building center around these. She calls the FULCRUM texts. I researched, and it looks like they're mentioned several places in the CCSS Appendices. Must admit, I have NOT read every word of the documents yet. But I feel mollified to find longer works featured in this book.
The author and her collaborators also specifically state that the 70%-30% reading split reflects a student's full school day, and that other core classes will be responsible for more quality nonfiction reading.
Not a lot was said about lexiles vs. text complexity, but it was clear the authors understand text complexity must be balanced when teaching texts.
There were charts, some easy, some impossible to understand. There were planning charts that will help all of us rethink CCSS...
In their minds, we begin where good teachers always do: not by deciding to teach The Odyssey, but deciding on the theme, the essential question, the big idea of the work, then amassing other pieces, fiction and nonfiction, to supplement the fulcrum text. Begin with the end in mind: your summative assessment. What do you want kids to know and be able to do? How will formative assessments support this?
IF this is an accurate view of CCSS, our task is not as daunting as I feared. The authors are very honest about the sticking point: CCSS standardized assessments have not been developed, so we don't really know yet what's in store.
BUT I absolutely believe this book will be a strong tool for us as we, once again, gear up to change our classrooms in response to edicts from policy makers who have never been in the classroom...we can do this...again.
Two of my biggest concerns is the assumption (heard from several sources) that CCSS will essentially end the reading of longer works in ELA classes...that ELA teachers will have to teach 70% nonfiction to their classes...and that lexiles, those arbitrary grade levels for books, will rule our choices. BTW -- in lexile speak, Grapes of Wrath is about 3-4grade...
Wessling specifically refers to longer works, novels and drama, in her book and examples of unit-building center around these. She calls the FULCRUM texts. I researched, and it looks like they're mentioned several places in the CCSS Appendices. Must admit, I have NOT read every word of the documents yet. But I feel mollified to find longer works featured in this book.
The author and her collaborators also specifically state that the 70%-30% reading split reflects a student's full school day, and that other core classes will be responsible for more quality nonfiction reading.
Not a lot was said about lexiles vs. text complexity, but it was clear the authors understand text complexity must be balanced when teaching texts.
There were charts, some easy, some impossible to understand. There were planning charts that will help all of us rethink CCSS...
In their minds, we begin where good teachers always do: not by deciding to teach The Odyssey, but deciding on the theme, the essential question, the big idea of the work, then amassing other pieces, fiction and nonfiction, to supplement the fulcrum text. Begin with the end in mind: your summative assessment. What do you want kids to know and be able to do? How will formative assessments support this?
IF this is an accurate view of CCSS, our task is not as daunting as I feared. The authors are very honest about the sticking point: CCSS standardized assessments have not been developed, so we don't really know yet what's in store.
BUT I absolutely believe this book will be a strong tool for us as we, once again, gear up to change our classrooms in response to edicts from policy makers who have never been in the classroom...we can do this...again.
March 16, 2014
why: This is a text I need to review for the course I'll be teaching at CU this fall.
when: start and end 7/14
how: I read this in hard copy, sitting in the passenger seat on the first leg of our summer road trip (to Badlands National Park in South Dakota). I read with sticky notes in hand, making notes on each chapter and how it would fit into the syllabus for the course I'll be teaching.
thoughts: This is a helpful text for language arts teachers who may have anxiety about what the Common Core State Standards are asking of us to do differently. Great practical work here. This is one book in the series coordinated by a smart professor in Michigan. Incidentally, one of my former high school students worked with this professor on the middle school book in this series.
review haiku:
common core standards
don't worry. They only ask
more of our best work
when: start and end 7/14
how: I read this in hard copy, sitting in the passenger seat on the first leg of our summer road trip (to Badlands National Park in South Dakota). I read with sticky notes in hand, making notes on each chapter and how it would fit into the syllabus for the course I'll be teaching.
thoughts: This is a helpful text for language arts teachers who may have anxiety about what the Common Core State Standards are asking of us to do differently. Great practical work here. This is one book in the series coordinated by a smart professor in Michigan. Incidentally, one of my former high school students worked with this professor on the middle school book in this series.
review haiku:
common core standards
don't worry. They only ask
more of our best work
January 13, 2013
This book had some of the best enduring understandings and essential questions I've seen for 9-12 literacy lessons. I really liked the author's suggestion to use a thematic approach to 9-12 literacy to accomplish the CCSS without fragmenting instruction to skill-based lessons. Although, I found some of the suggested activities to be very teacher directed and sometimes artificial in application. She provided thoughtful content and plenty of examples of application with room to create and implement your own instructional application. Overall, the book was well worth my time, and made me think about our instruction and planning for CCSS implementation.
January 28, 2016
This book is going to very helpful to me as a first year teacher. Wessling shares many of her strategies for incorporating Core Curriculum State Standards into units of study. I wish the book was longer and gave more examples of supporting texts for an English classroom. This is a good starting place for developing units. I appreciate how she emphasizes that the student needs to be at the center of all planning and that using the CCSS should be integrative and not used as a checklist. She makes reference to the NCTE website and wow - what a plethora of information is at that cite. It is reassuring that there is so much support out there for teachers.
Read
May 13, 2012Brown-Wessling and NCTE have a must-read for all ELA teachers. The teachers and their classrooms that are highlighted in this book strike a chord of deep resonance with us in this time of transition and hope for American public schools.
July 23, 2012
I love the information in this book...especially the Reading Complexity Circles (27). There is so much information in here to help teachers truly teach the Common Core Standards in ways that are authentic and engaging. I'm using a lot of the tips in here for my planning for this upcoming year.
January 16, 2012
A great book for my pre-service teachers to see how it all comes together--
January 1, 2017
I won this book by tweeting my thoughts and reflections to #NCTELearning while attending an NCTE Webinar with Sarah Brown Wessling. I received it in the mail on December 21st or 22nd.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews