“Argument,” mentions Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), “is the soul of an education” (p. 24). Why? According to Neil Postman, argument forces the arguer to consider the strengths and weaknesses of multiple perspectives (p. 24, CCSS Appendix A). In other words, arguing helps you see the complex nature of things; it […]
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Happy 4th of July!
My 4th of July will be spent doing the following: Contemplating whether this ridonkulous heat wave is being caused by global warming Installing a broken door, fire alarms, bathroom trim, a dining room light, some doorknobs, and an IKEA couch in our new home Playing with my girls (wife and daughter; daughter #2 is due in […]
Common Core R.CCR.7 Explained
R.CCR.7 — that’s the seventh College/Career Readiness anchor standard within the Reading strand of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA/Literacy — reads as follows: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. This is essentially the research standard within the reading anchor standards, […]
Why I Support the Common Core
I’d bet a Galapagos Tortoise that no one decides to become a teacher based solely on the prospect of adhering to a list of teaching standards. So, here’s a great question: why in the heck should we care about them? (Hint: It’s not because some armageddon is coming in the form of a standardized test […]
Beyond the Common Core Standards
As I mentioned in the first post on Teaching the Core, I’ve never been a fan of teaching standards; in fact, “standards” is a word that I happily deleted from the Tagxedo word cloud that I created out of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) ELA & Literacy document. A ton of things attracted me to becoming […]