What does it look like to read a high-quality work of literary non-fiction? This presents a picture of how to present an in-depth analysis and discussion of Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Examples are drawn from specific, well-argued paragraphs, with an explanation of the cognitive requirements of the Standards.

In their WISELearn grant application, Bonduel School District wrote, “The teachers at Bonduel Middle/High School will create units to address our deficits in our curriculum and increase student learning for college and career readiness, including creating a new junior level English class. Our first step will be to look at our current curriculum and decide where we have gaps. Although we have worked to align our curriculum to the Common Core standards, we believe there are gaps which have led to lower test scores. We also would like to better align our curriculum in grades 7-12.” In order to meet their grant goals, teachers will be trained in the EQuIP rubric to assess the level of alignment and rigor in existing units. Then teachers will use the rubric to review and revise current units for English 9 and 10, embedding Open Educational Resources which were determined to be high quality instructional materials by EdReports to fill in gaps in the curriculum. In addition, teachers will be reviewing published high quality instructional materials from EdReports as they undergo materials adoption for grades 7, 8 and 11.

This is an article that I used to open a professional development session on word study. It was a great way to get teachers engaged and thinking about the upcoming learning.

Students work to understand the language of word problems, using specific words as clues to the mathematical operations embedded in the problem. Teacher will use examples of student work to uncover misconceptions and errors and help support the students in developing the ability to critically evaluate their own strategies.Mathematics tasks include: Ability to read a problem in context and choose an operation to solve the problem; Ability to set up a number sentence that represents the problem; Accurately and efficiently solves two-digit addition and subtraction equations; Understands how to compose and decompose numbers; Can prove a sum or difference is correct using pictures, words, and/or symbols. (2nd Grade Math)

Students who attain to the Common Core writing standards will possess the ability to write to inform and make arguments. This will require student analytical writing, the ability to render complex information clearly and to write across multiple disciplines.