Common Core Curriculum

Common Core Curriculum

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a U.S. education initiative that seeks to bring diverse state curricula into alignment by setting academic standards for what students should know and be able to do. Common Core State Standards address the subject areas of English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, Technical Subjects, and Mathematics.

English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

The stated goal of the English & Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects standards is to ensure that students are college and career ready in literacy no later than the end of high school. There are five key components to the standards for English and Language Arts: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Language, and Media and Technology. The essential components and breakdown of each of these key points within the standards are as follows:

Reading

As students advance through each grade, expected reading level increases in complexity. There is also a progressive development of reading comprehension so that students can gain more from what they read.

There exists no reading list to accompany the reading standards. Instead, students are simply expected to read a range of classic and contemporary literature as well as challenging informative texts from an array of subjects. This flexibility exists such that students can acquire new knowledge, insights, and consider varying perspectives as they read. Teachers, school districts, and states are expected to decide on the appropriate curriculum, but sample texts are included to help teachers, students, and parents prepare for the year ahead.

There exists some critical content for all students — classic myths and stories from around the world, foundational U.S. documents, seminal works of American literature, and the writings of Shakespeare — but the rest is left up to the states and the districts.

Writing

The driving force of the writing standards is logical arguments based on claims, solid reasoning, and relevant evidence. The writing also includes opinion writing even within the K–5 standards.

Short, focused research projects, similar to the kind of projects students will face in their careers as well as long-term, in-depth research is another important piece of the writing standards. These standards exist because written analysis and the presentation of significant findings is critical to career and college readiness. The standards also include annotated samples of student writing to help determine performance levels in writing arguments, explanatory texts, and narratives across the grades.

Speaking and Listening

Although reading and writing are the expected components of an ELA curriculum, standards are written so that students gain, evaluate, and present complex information, ideas, and evidence specifically through listening and speaking. There is also an emphasis on academic discussion in one-on-one, small-group, and whole-class settings, which can take place as formal presentations as well as informal discussions during student collaboration.

Language

Vocabulary instruction in the standards takes place through a mix of conversations, direct instruction, and reading so that students can determine word meanings and can expand their use of words and phrases. The standards expect students to use formal English in their writing and speaking, but also recognize that colleges and 21^st century careers will require students to make wise, skilled decisions about how to express themselves through language in a variety of contexts. Vocabulary and conventions are their own strand because these skills extend across reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

Media and Technology

Since media and technology are intertwined with every student's life and in school in the 21^st century, skills related to media use, which includes the analysis and production of various forms of media, are also included in these standards.

Mathematics Standards

The stated goal of the mathematics standards is to achieve greater focus and coherence in the curriculum. This is largely in response to the criticism that American mathematics curricula are "a mile wide and an inch deep. "

The mathematics Standards include Standards for Mathematical Practice and Standards for Mathematical Content.

Mathematical Practice

The Standards mandate that eight principles of mathematical practice be taught:

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them;
• Reason abstractly and quantitatively;
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others;
• Model with mathematics;
• Use appropriate tools strategically;
• Attend to precision;
• Look for and make use of structure;
• Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

These practices are to be taught in every grade from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Details of how these practices are to be connected to each grade level's mathematics content are left to local implementation of the standards.

Mathematical Content

The standards lay out the mathematics content that should be learned at each grade level from kindergarten to Grade 8 (age 13-14), as well as the mathematics to be learned in high school. The Standards do not dictate any particular pedagogy or what order topics should be taught within a particular grade level. Mathematical content is organized in a number of domains. At each grade level there are several standards for each domain, organized into clusters of related standards (see examples below).

Four domains are included in each of the six grades from kindergarten (age 5-6) to fifth grade (age 10-11):

• Operations and Algebraic Thinking;
• Number and Operations in Base 10;
• Measurement and Data;
• Geometry.

Kindergarten also includes the domain Counting and Cardinality. Grades 3 to 5 also include the domain Number and Operations--Fractions.

Four domains are included in each of the Grades 6 through 8:

• The Number System;
• Expressions and Equations;
• Geometry;
• Statistics and Probability.

Grades 6 and 7 also include the domain Ratios and Proportional Relationships. Grade 8 includes the domain Functions.

In addition to detailed standards (of which there are 21 to 28 for each grade from kindergarten to eighth grade), the Standards present an overview of "critical areas" for each grade (see examples below).

In high school (Grades 9 to 12), the Standards do not specify which content is to be taught at each grade level. Up to Grade 8, the curriculum is integrated; students study four or five different mathematical domains every year. The Standards do not dictate whether the curriculum should continue to be integrated in high school with study of several domains each year (as is done in other countries, as well as New York and Georgia), or whether the curriculum should be separated out into separate year-long algebra and geometry courses (as has been the tradition in most U.S. states). An appendix to the Standards describes four possible pathways for covering high school content (two traditional and two integrated), but states are free to organize the content any way they want.

There are six conceptual categories of content to be covered at the high school level:

• Number and quantity;
• Algebra;
• Functions;
• Modeling;
• Geometry;
• Statistics and probability.

Some topics in each category are indicated only for students intending to take more advanced, optional courses such as calculus, advanced statistics, or discrete mathematics. Even if the traditional sequence is adopted, functions and modeling are to be integrated across the curriculum, not taught as separate courses. In fact, modeling is also a mathematical practice (see above), and is meant to be integrated across the entire curriculum beginning in kindergarten. The modeling category does not have its own standards; instead, high school standards in other categories which are intended to be considered part of the modeling category are indicated in the Standards with a star symbol.

Each of the six high school categories includes a number of domains. For example, the "number and quantity" category contains four domains: the real number system; quantities; the complex number system; and vector and matrix quantities. The "vector and matrix quantities" domain is reserved for advanced students, as are some of the standards in "the complex number system".

Implementation

The Common Core State Standards require that standards to be implemented within a "content-rich curriculum," however they do not specify the content that will comprise the curriculum. In other words, the development of curriculum - that is, the specific works of literature, historical events, or scientific processes to be covered and the pace and order in which this content will be delivered in the classroom - typically falls to schools, districts, states, and individual teachers.

Curriculum Mapping is the procedure of planning and reviewing the classroom operational curriculum. Schools often use curriculum templates that display key components of the curriculum: content, skills, assessments, essential questions, and correlation with the Common Core curriculum.

Some states such as South Dakota have adopted Curriculum Mapping on a state-wide basis and provide detailed online Curriculum Mapping Resources for their professional staff. Other states such as Indiana have mandated Curriculum Mapping as a tool for schools which do not meet Annual Yearly Progress and also provide numerous online tools.

Key to the approach is that each teacher enters what is actually taught in real-time during the school year, in contrast to having an outside or separate committee determine decisions. The entries by teachers are not left alone, however; in fact, because the work is displayed via internet-based programs, it is open to view by all personnel in a school or district. This allows educators to view both K-12 and across grade levels and subjects what is transpiring in order to be informed and to revise their work.

Assessment

With the implementation of new standards, states are also required to adopt new assessment benchmarks to measure student achievement. According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative website, formal assessment is expected to take place in the 2014–2015 school year, which coincides with the projected implementation year for most states. The assessment has yet to be created. The final decision of what assessment to use will be determined by individual state education agencies. The Common Core State Standards website explains that some states plan to work together to create a common, universal assessment system based on the common core state standards while other states are choosing to work independently.

Teaching the Common Core

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a U.S. education initiative that seeks to bring diverse state curricula into alignment by setting academic standards for what students should know and be able to do.