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Wednesday, November 14, 2012

School Tech Connect: Your Common Core Moment

School Tech Connect: Your Common Core Moment:


Your Common Core Moment

From a discussion they evidently had over in Frankfort, which I formerly thought was in Germany but is actually in Illinois:

Grand Prairie Elementary School principal Eileen Nelson explained how the school is making changes in accordance with the new state standards. She said Grand Prairie is encouraging student engagement and transitioning from a knowledge and recall style of teaching to a style focused on application and analysis. For example, the school no longer conducts spelling tests, because Nelson said research doesn’t support it.
Several board members asked questions and requested further discussion of specific topics surrounding Common Core’s nontraditional approach to education.
“I don’t want kids being the only people teaching kids — I want teachers teaching kids,” said board member Christopher McFadden.
However, administrators expressed confidence in the new standards.
“There’s a place for explicit instruction,” said Simpkins. “We haven’t abandoned that.”

Second of all, someone tell Perfection Learning to stop cranking out these Common Core spelling workbooks, which look exactly like the old spelling workbooks I used in the 80's, but are aligned in the most serious way now.


By the way, I love the actual CCSS treatment of spelling; here's the specific spelling standard for 8th grade:
That's what you call waving a magic wand.

And first of all, this notion that currently we all have this "knowledge and recall style of teaching" but we're