Each Friday we highlight some of our favorite education blog posts from the week. This week’s edition includes new ideas for teaching history and the importance of remembering our past.
Struggling to integrate the Common Core into your curriculum? Check out Benjamin Herold’s post about award-winning software that can help.
Why should students study the Gettysburg Battle? Brad Burenheide explains as we approach the 150th anniversary.
We’re excited to introduce a new contributor to the WSPWH website: Anne Continetti!
Anne is a history teacher at the Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, and she will be creating classroom-ready lesson plans and activities that are based on WSPWH materials and aligned to the Common Core standards. Anne teaches AP US Government and Politics, Modern World History, and Comparative Religious Ethics. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree … Read more »
Looking for a story to have students closely read for Memorial Day? Read and discuss this powerful excerpt from Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (a Common Core exemplar text!) with the help of our discussion guide and video seminar. Even better, our friends at NEH EDSITEment have adapted the discussion guide for students!
Student Achievement Partners had new tools for teaching the Common Core State Standards at achievethecore.org. A quick look at what’s new:
In yesterday’s poem, Walt Whitman wrote about how he hears America singing—songs by mechanics and carpenters, masons and boatmen, shoemakers and wood-cutters. In today’s poem, Langston Hughes declares that “I, too, sing America.”
Earlier this week, the American Enterprise Institute hosted an all-day conference examining how the Common Core State Standards fit into the larger reform movement in education. Panelists came together to discuss whether the Common Core initiative complements or conflicts with the school reform agenda that many states are already pursuing, and new research was presented by education leaders such as Deven Carlson (University of Oklahoma), Ashley … Read more »
According to a new study by the EPE Research Center, nearly half of teachers across the nation feel unprepared to teach to the Common Core State Standards. Though 92 percent of respondents report being at least slightly familiar with the new standards in English and Language Arts, when asked to rate their level of preparedness to teach the standards on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 … Read more »
Lyn Cannaday, a 16-year veteran high school English teacher in Phoenix, Arizona, recently took to the pages of Education Week to detail her experiences implementing the Common Core State Standards in her classroom. Though not without its challenges, she writes, using the Common Core has helped her students better appreciate and understand the fiction they read precisely because it is paired with related informational texts. Her positive experience is … Read more »
Over at the Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” blog, Valerie Strauss has just reprinted three different opinion pieces about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Though nearly all of the states and the District of Columbia have adopted the CCSS in English language arts and math, as states prepare to implement them in their schools, there has been a growing distrust of and resistance to such implementation. As Strauss notes, reasons for … Read more »
Earlier this month, the New York State Education Department and the Board of Regents released a new draft of the state’s Social Studies Common Core framework for grades 9–12. (The proposed framework for K–8 grades was made available in September.) The boards are now seeking feedback on the proposed framework, and residents have until March 8 to complete a survey and provide any input they have on … Read more »
Distinguished scholar-teachers Amy and Leon Kass demonstrate how short stories, speeches, and songs can be used to enhance civic education and how a pedagogical approach that stresses learning through inquiry can make primary sources come alive for students of all ages.
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“What a wonderful collection of American songs, speeches, and stories. It should be valuable for teachers, students, parents, and readers of all kinds.”
— Diane Ravitch