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The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 6-8 - Book Cover

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The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 6-8

What They Say, What They Mean, How to Teach Them

By: Jim Burke

Don’t spend another minute poring over the standards. Focus instead on how to teach them, using The Common Core Companion as your one-stop guide across subjects.

Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781452276038
Published By: Corwin
Series: Corwin Literacy
Year: 2013
Page Count: 280
Publication date: August 30, 2013

Price: $39.95

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Description

That version of the standards you wish you had

All over the nation, teachers and administrators are poring over the Common Core State Standards to come up with meaningful plans for raising student achievement. But as clear as the standards are, they are more of a sundial than a GPS for pinpointing just what to teach and how to teach it.

Enter Jim Burke with The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 6-8. It’s that version of the standards you wish you had: a roadmap of what each standard says, what each standard means, and how precisely to put that standard into day-to-day practice across English Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects.

Designed to provide schools, districts, and departments with a common language or set of reference points for effective school-wide implementation, The Common Core Companion clearly lays out:

Grades 6-8 standards side by side with key distinctions highlighted so teachers know what they must teach from grade to grade
All the different content-area versions of each standard arranged on one page to facilitate easy reference and school wide collaboration
Explanations of each standard on a corresponding page, written in accessible language, along with prompts and questions to help students learn and apply each standard
Essential content to cover and lesson ideas for modeling the literacy skills behind the standards
Instructional techniques for each standard based on Jim’s extensive teaching experience and current research on effective instruction
Complete glossary for each standard and adaptations for ELL students

Don’t spend another minute poring over the standards. Jim has already done that for you. Focus instead on how to teach them, using The Common Core Companion as your one-stop guide for teaching, planning, assessing, collaborating, and designing powerful reading and writing curricula.

“One cannot benefit from or use a document that demands more time than a teacher or administrator has each day. So I share with you, my fellow educators, the reformatted, parallel version of the standards I created to make the document itself more efficient, more usable, more helpful.”
-—Jim Burke

Take a quick tour of The Common Core Companion

Author(s)

Jim Burke

A longtime English teacher, Jim Burke is the author of more than 20 books and senior consultant for the Holt McDougal Literature program. Jim has received several awards, including the 2000 NCTE Exemplary English Leadership Award. In 2009, he created the English Companion Ning—the largest online community of English teachers in the world. More recently, Jim has served on the AP English Course and Exam Review Commission and the PARCC Consortium.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Getting to the Core of the Curriculum

Moving Forward--Together

A Brief Orientation to The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 6-8

How to Use This Book

Accepting the Invitation

Quick Reference: Common Core State Standards, 6-12 English Language Arts

Quick Reference: Common Core State Standards, 6-12 English Language Arts in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

The Complete Common Core State Standards: Decoded

Part 1. Reading

Key Ideas and Details

Craft and Structure

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

Part 2. Writing

Text Types and Purposes

Production and Distribution of Writing

Research to Build and Present Knowledge

Range of Writing

Part 3. Speaking and Listening

Comprehension and Collaboration

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

Part 4. Language

Conventions of Standard English

Knowledge of Language

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

Resources

Resource A. Common Core Recommended Reading Lists

Resource B. Text Complexity Tool

Resource C. Planning Calendar Templates

Teacher Notes

About the Author

Reviews

“I love what Jim Burke has done to make the Standards less threatening and more useful for teachers. In particular, the indicators for what students and teachers should be doing, given the Standard, are extremely helpful; as are such a clear glossary and illuminating examples. All in all, The Common Core Companion is bound to be enormously useful and thus dog-eared!”

Grant Wiggins, President
Authentic Education, Hopewell, NJ

“Fundamentally different from other Common Core books, The Common Core Companion is s a user’s guide designed by a teacher who actually uses the standards in his daily work with students. Jim Burke gently demystifies the Common Core State Standards and offers a practical tool for curricular alignment. I think you will find The Common Core Companion helps schools help themselves.”

Carol Jago, Member
Common Core State Standards Feedback Committee

“I have never read a book for teachers so well laid out and highly useful. I predict administrators across the country will purchase this book for their secondary teachers to use in their staff meetings, individual department meetings, their PLCs, and for individual teachers to use as Burke puts it as ‘a personal compass to navigate the complexities of the Common Core Curriculum.’”

Debbie Silver, Ed.D., Author of Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers and Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8

“I must say, I am duly impressed. This book gives the kind of ‘hands-on’ support classroom teachers and curriculum committees really need in doing the work of ‘unpacking’ the standards and interpreting those standards into curriculum documents. The very detailed, complete discussions of the standards and the breakdowns that the Burke does are, in my opinion, exemplary . . . Well done!”

Joe Crawford, Author of Aligning Your Curriculum to the Common Core State Standards

"This very practical guide makes a complex topic easier to understand and less formidable. Schools will want to purchase copies for all teachers and personnel working with the Common Core."

Library Media Connection, August/September 2014