Monday, January 27, 2014

How Will Teaching Writing Differ with the New Common Core Curriculum?




As teachers prepare students for performance based tasks that include the interpretation, analysis, and application of data, the amount of writing they assign in class will increase; however, due to the lack of time teachers have to grade long writing assignments, students will begin taking a much more active role in revising their own work as well as the work of their peers.

Teachers will may scan all papers quickly and assign them in order from best to worst and put them into three piles: average, below average, and above average.
She/he may then identify some general themes and categories of weakness to address and teach a mini lesson on and create a self-analysis checklist. She would then hand the papers back with no grade or teacher comments, but instead with the self-analysis sheet that contains the common errors and problems she identified earlier. Students would review their own papers first and do peer review to learn from their mistakes. Students would then revise their paper based on their self-analysis sheet. Finally, students would then hand in a final paper of high quality that the teacher would review to verify the quality and commend students with comments of encouragement but not a detailed mark- up.

             This process would prepare students to be more independent when they get to college and have to write papers. It would also help them take ownership of and responsibility for producing quality writing.

The information from this blog can be found in Getting Ready for College, Careers, and the Common Core by David T. Conley. 

More educational articles can also be found on our website at http://www.beachcitiestutoring.com

Saturday, January 18, 2014

What You Should Know About The New Common Core Math Assessments



The New Common Core Assessments will differ dramatically from the old CSTs in the format as well as in the types of knowledge they test.  They will be taken exclusively on the computer, and students will have to be able to type sentence responses for some parts. This could pose problems for students who type more slowy.

Students will be expected not only to perform arithmetic operations, but also to be expected to analyze and apply their knowledge to solve complex problems.  There will be 5 different types of questions:

Selected Response- involve answering yes/no questions about a specific problem rather than multiple choice. There may be more than one correct answer.

Constructed Response-open answer questions

Extended response- open answer questions that include having the student type an explanation for how they arrived at the answer

Technology enhanced-solving a problem by moving numbers around (click and drag)

Performance task-Long open-ended story problems in which students have to plan and use multiple operations and steps. They may have to draw diagrams and apply their knowledge to solve complex problems. The new assessments ask students to apply concepts from 2 previous grade levels below their current grade level but vary in complexity to reflect the student’s current grade level.

In addition to the differences in the assessments, high school math classes will differ even though their names may stay the same.

Common Core 8th grade Math- will include Pre-algebra, some high school Geometry and some of Algebra 1A (first semester hs Algebra)

Common Core Algebra 1- will begin with Algebra 1B (second semester Algebra) and do Algebra 2 first semester and some of AP Stats

Common Core Geometry- HS Geometry, Transformational Geometry and some AP Stats

Common Core Algebra 2-Second semester Algebra 2, Trig, Math Analysis,  some Stat AP

These assessments will take some getting used to; however, on a positive note students should be better prepared for college and careers in the global economy. Educators hope that students will be better able to compete with their counterparts around the world.

If you would like to read more educational blogs, please visit our website at http://www.beachcitiestutoring.com, written by credentialed teachers.