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Common Core Essential Elements/Common Core State Standards side by side for English Language Arts

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Common Core Essential Elements/Common Core State Standards side by side for English Language Arts

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Kevin Schaefer Guru Info

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See all the wonderful things Kevin Schaefer has made

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6-8 ELA

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9-12 Math

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6-8 Math

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K-5 Math

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9-12 ELA

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K-5 ELA

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Introduction

All students deserve access to welcoming, supportive, and safe schools and classrooms. Successful school climates and student discipline involves setting all students up for success by meeting their academic, social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health needs and ensuring schools have the necessary tools to assist students with addressing any behaviors that could otherwise interfere with their learning or others' learning or impact school safety. It also means preventing and eliminating discrimination in the administration of student discipline.

The Department recognizes and appreciates school administrators, teachers, and educational staff across the nation who work to provide a safe, positive, and nondiscriminatory education environment for all students, teachers, and other school staff. The Department is committed to protecting our students' wellbeing, and we recognize that a strong foundation in building healthy and productive relationships with others helps students thrive. A key component of supporting schools is ensuring they have information and guidance about their obligations under federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination by states, local educational agencies, and schools that receive federal funds. The Department has taken steps to address the needs of schools by providing substantial resources to support the challenging work of setting all students up for success and meeting their academic, behavioral, and mental health needs.

Administrators, educators, students, parents, guardians, and other stakeholders can find on this site tools, data, and resources to:

Meet students' social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health needs;

Help schools understand and comply with Federal laws, including laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, sex, and disability; and

Find information and resources for promoting welcoming and safe schools.

Featured

Supporting Students' Social Emotional, Behavioral, and Academic Well-Being and Success:

Strategies for Student and Teacher Support Teams English [PDF, 1.6M] | Español [PDF, 1.3M] (May 26, 2023)

Strategies for Educators and School-Based Staff English [PDF, 1.4M] | Español [PDF, 1.4M] (May 26, 2023)

Strategies for Schools to Enhance Relationships with Families English [PDF, 1.9M] | Español [PDF, 1.2M] (May 26, 2023)

Letter from Secretary Cardona Calling for End to Corporal Punishment in Schools (March 24, 2023)

Guiding Principles for Creating Safe, Inclusive, Supportive, and Fair School Climates (March 24, 2023)

A letter from Secretary Cardona to our nation's Educators, School Leaders, Parents, and Students about the importance of supporting the needs of students with disabilities. (July 19, 2022)

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discipline; discrimination; school safety; disadvantaged youth; school climate

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School Climate and Student Discipline Resources

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Information and guidance related to school climate and student discipline

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UDL Lesson Planning.pptx - Google Slides

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UDL Lesson Planning.pptx - Google Slides

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Rewordify.com | Understand what you read

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Rewordify.com | Understand what you read

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Rewordify.com | Understand what you read

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Rewordify.com helps you read more, understand better, learn new words, and teach more effectively.

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Shelley Moore: Transforming Inclusive Education - YouTube

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Shelley Moore: Transforming Inclusive Education - YouTube

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Shelley Moore: Transforming Inclusive Education

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Inclusion Collaborative State Conference 2016 - YouTube

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Inclusion Collaborative State Conference 2016 - YouTube

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Inclusion Collaborative State Conference 2016 - YouTube

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Sign in now to see your channels and recommendations!

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People with disabilities are - first and foremost - people who have individual abilities, interests and needs.

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In this collection of tools and advice from Edutopia and the web, find resources to help you adjust instruction in response to diverse learner needs and interests.

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All Learners Learning Every Day Webinars NJCIE

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All Learners Learning Every Day Webinars NJCIE

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Webinar Archive - NJ Coalition for Inclusive Education

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LRE & Inclusion: Utilizing a tiered-system of supports to support students with disabilities in general education settings LRE FINAL from NJCIE on Vimeo. Dr. Rhonda Bondie - Background on ALL-ED www.all-ed.org Dr. Rhonda Bondie - Group Learning Routines www.all-ed.org Webinar Handouts Elbow Partner Domino Discover Think Talk Open Exchange Dr. Rhonda Bondie -...

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The Mind Sight Approach

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Getting Up to Speed with UDL: Interview with author Katie Novak

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Katie Novak Ed.D., author of "UDL Now" sits down with us to give an overview of Universal Design for Learning in the classroom. View Katie's tips for teachers at: http://yaleschool.com/2015/12/katie-novak-brings-us-up-to-speed-on-udl/ Katie Novak designs and presents workshops both nationally and internationally focusing on teacher implementation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), MTSS, 21st Century Skills, and Common Core implementation.

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Over the past few months, we've posted lots of individual articles and success stories on UDL, accommodations, and peer supports. In today's Inclusion Lab post, we'll take a look at how all of these elements can work together in an inclusive classroom to help every student succeed. You'll see how one high school science teacher used a UDL approach to teach his whole class-and how the education team for one of his students added accommodations and supports to meet the needs of Leslie, a learner with significant disabilities.

(This post was excerpted and lightly adapted from the book More Language Arts, Math, and Science for Students with Severe Disabilities, edited by Diane M. Browder, Ph.D., & Fred Spooner, Ph.D.)

High school teacher Dan Bisaccio was designing an environmental science unit around New Hampshire's science process skills (such as generating hypotheses) and content standards (such as describing the impact of environmental changes on local environments). With UDL principles in mind, he set about creating a unit that would engage and challenge every student in his class and offer multiple ways to learn new concepts.

Mr. Bisaccio wanted to avoid the stultifying scenario of previewing a unit by "talking at" students and asking them to read the headings of a book chapter. Instead, he kicked off the unit with a "grabber" activity that would hook the interest of all students: those with some prior knowledge, those with none, those who had a difficult time reading, and those whose attention span was short. The activity had an overarching question: Are the New Hampshire forests healthy?

For the grabber activity, Mr. Bisaccio divided his 30 students into groups of 10 and gave each group a partially decomposed tree branch. First, he asked them to describe the stick. After ten minutes, a spokesperson for each team described the stick's bark, its size and weight, its smell, and other characteristics. Mr. Bisaccio then asked the students to tell a plausible "story of the stick" using the creative talents and learning styles of all their group members. After about 20 minutes of preparation and rehearsal time, groups acted out narrative stories and skits, read poems, displayed charts and diagrams, and even performed a rap song that depicted their hypotheses. This simple activity set the stage for a unit that engaged all students.

During the rest of the unit on New Hampshire forest health, Mr. Bisaccio presented information in multiple ways, including text and videos. Though he presented a short daily lecture that aligned with the reading or homework, the students took active part in their own learning by doing library research, conducting observations in the nearby woods, listening to a first-hand account from a New Hampshire forester, and engaging in small-group discussions and debates. At the end of the unit, Mr. Bisaccio gave a traditional multiple-choice test in addition to a performance exhibition in which groups presented arguments supporting their answer to the unit's essential question.

Leslie, a student with significant disabilities, was fully included in Mr. Bisaccio's class. Her IEP team used a routines-based planning process and format to design support plans for Mr. Bisaccio's teaching routines. Carefully planned supports would allow Leslie to participate in the same activities as her peers instead of engaging in an alternate activity.

For example, during the teaching routine in which students read from a handout and took notes, students had to decode and comprehend the text, choose important information to write in their notebooks, highlight key words, and ask questions to clarify their understanding. Leslie needed the following individualized supports to participate in all aspects of this routine:

1) Enlarged text-written at a first- or second-grade level-containing key vocabulary and concepts

2) Aided language boards or graphic organizers to enhance her receptive understanding and expressive communication

3) A notetaking template on her laptop

Leslie's team also used a second planning process to identify her priority learning objectives for each unit. She would focus on the same essential question as the other students: Are the New Hampshire forests healthy? Leslie was expected to master core vocabulary terms such as ecological system, bio-diversity, pollution, and environmentalist. Her learning standards would be similar to those for students without disabilities, but reduced in depth, breadth, and complexity.

Instead of this knowledge standard: "Describe the type of impact certain environmental changes, including deforestation, invasive species, increased erosion, and pollution containing toxic substances, could have on local environments."

Leslie's knowledge standard was: "Describe the impact that two ecological threats have on trees and animals in the New Hampshire forest."

Leslie's high-priority IEP goals included managing her materials, taking notes on key points in an informational text, asking and answering questions, and fulfilling a meaningful role in group activities.

Leslie benefitted from the UDL principles Mr. Bisaccio used to design his unit, deliver instruction, and assess student learning. Here are some success factors that helped Leslie participate in this science unit alongside her peers:

Mr. Bisaccio differentiated his questions throughout the unit to target Leslie's specific learning objectives.

As students worked in their cooperative groups, Mr. Bisaccio circulated through the classroom and spent a few minutes of each class period with Leslie, providing some extra support or instruction.

Effective peer supports were put in place. Leslie's peers were taught how to provide support to her without giving her the answer. She also went to a noncategorical academic support center daily where she was tutored by an upperclass peer.

The special education teacher came into the classroom several times a week to co-teach a lesson, facilitate Leslie's small group, provide her with direct instruction, or model for and coach her paraprofessional.

This short case study shows how a combination of UDL, peer support, and individualized accommodations can work together for the benefit of all students, with and without disabilities. For more guidance, check out More Language Arts, Math, and Science for Students with Severe Disabilities, and explore the practical posts in our Fair Is Not Always Equal...Now What? blog series.

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UDL, Accommodations, and Peer Supports: How One Teacher Did It

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Over the past few months, we've posted lots of individual articles and success stories on UDL, accommodations, and peer supports. In today's Inclusion Lab post, we'll take a look at how all of these elements can work together in an inclusive classroom to help every student succeed.

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Inclusive Education Research and Practice

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Inclusive Education Research and Practice

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The Connecticut State Department of Education has a new website. If you have existing bookmarks you will need to navigate to them and re-bookmark those pages. Go to the New CSDE Website!

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Carol Dweck - A Study on Praise and Mindsets

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Professional learning community (PLC)

An ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. Professional learning communities operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators.

Read what advocates say about the impact of PLCs.
What Are Professional Learning Communities?

It has been interesting to observe the growing popularity of the term professional learning community. In fact, the term has become so commonplace and has been used so ambiguously to describe virtually any loose coupling of individuals who share a common interest in education that it is in danger of losing all meaning. This lack of precision is an obstacle to implementing PLC processes because, as Mike Schmoker observes, "clarity precedes competence" (2004a, p. 85). Thus, we begin with an attempt to clarify our meaning of the term. To those familiar with our past work, this step may seem redundant, but we are convinced that redundancy can be a powerful tool in effective communication, and we prefer redundancy to ambiguity.

We have seen many instances in which educators assume that a PLC is a program. For example, one faculty told us that each year they implemented a new program in their school. In the previous year it had been PLC, the year prior to that it had been "understanding by design," and the current year it was "differentiated instruction." They had converted the names of the various programs into verbs, and the joke on the faculty was that they had been "UBDed, PLCed, and DIed." The PLC process is not a program. It cannot be purchased, nor can it be implemented by anyone other than the staff itself. Most importantly, it is ongoing-a continuous, never-ending process of conducting schooling that has a profound impact on the structure and culture of the school and the assumptions and practices of the professionals within it.

We have seen other instances in which educators assume that a PLC is a meeting-an occasional event when they meet with colleagues to complete a task. It is not uncommon for us to hear, "My PLC meets Wednesdays from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m." This perception of a PLC is wrong on two counts. First, the PLC is the larger organization and not the individual teams that comprise it. While collaborative teams are an essential part of the PLC process, the sum is greater than the individual parts. Much of the work of a PLC cannot be done by a team but instead requires a schoolwide or districtwide effort. So we believe it is helpful to think of the school or district as the PLC and the various collaborative teams as the building blocks of the PLC. Second, once again, the PLC process has a pervasive and ongoing impact on the structure and culture of the school. If educators meet with peers on a regular basis only to return to business as usual, they are not functioning as a PLC. So the PLC process is much more than a meeting.

So, what is a PLC? We argue that it is an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators. The following section examines the elements of the PLC process more closely.

A Focus on Learning

The very essence of a learning community is a focus on and a commitment to the learning of each student. When a school or district functions as a PLC, educators within the organization embrace high levels of learning for all students as both the reason the organization exists and the fundamental responsibility of those who work within it. In order to achieve this purpose, the members of a PLC create and are guided by a clear and compelling vision of what the organization must become in order to help all students learn. They make collective commitments clarifying what each member will do to create such an organization, and they use results-oriented goals to mark their progress. Members work together to clarify exactly what each student must learn, monitor each student's learning on a timely basis, provide systematic interventions that ensure students receive additional time and support for learning when they struggle, and extend and enrich learning when students have already mastered the intended outcomes.

A corollary assumption is that if the organization is to become more effective in helping all students learn, the adults in the organization must also be continually learning. Therefore, structures are created to ensure staff members engage in job-embedded learning as part of their routine work practices.

There is no ambiguity or hedging regarding this commitment to learning. Whereas many schools operate as if their primary purpose is to ensure that children are taught, PLCs are dedicated to the idea that their organization exists to ensure that all students learn essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions. All the other characteristics of a PLC flow directly from this epic shift in assumptions about the purpose of the school.

A Collaborative Culture With a Focus on Learning for All

Collaboration is a means to an end, not the end itself. In many schools, staff members are willing to collaborate on a variety of topics as long as the focus of the conversation stops at their classroom door. In a PLC, collaboration represents a systematic process in which teachers work together interdependently in order to impact their classroom practice in ways that will lead to better results for their students, for their team, and for their school.

Collective Inquiry Into Best Practice and Current Reality

The teams in a PLC engage in collective inquiry into both best practices in teaching and best practices in learning. They also inquire about their current reality including their present practices and the levels of achievement of their students. They attempt to arrive at consensus on vital questions by building shared knowledge rather than pooling opinions. They have an acute sense of curiosity and openness to new possibilities.

Collective inquiry enables team members to develop new skills and capabilities that in turn lead to new experiences and awareness. Gradually, this heightened awareness transforms into fundamental shifts in attitudes, beliefs, and habits which, over time, transform the culture of the school.

Working together to build shared knowledge on the best way to achieve goals and meet the needs of clients is exactly what professionals in any field are expected to do, whether it is curing the patient, winning the lawsuit, or helping all students learn. Members of a professional learning community are expected to work and learn together.

Action Orientation: Learning by Doing

Members of PLCs are action oriented: they move quickly to turn aspirations into action and visions into reality. They understand that the most powerful learning always occurs in a context of taking action, and they value engagement and experience as the most effective teachers. Henry Mintzberg's (2005) observation about training leaders applies here: deep learning requires experience, which requires taking action. It "is as much about doing in order to think as thinking in order to do" (p. 10). In fact, the very reason that teachers work together in teams and engage in collective inquiry is to serve as catalysts for action.

A Commitment to Continuous Improvement

Inherent to a PLC are a persistent disquiet with the status quo and a constant search for a better way to achieve goals and accomplish the purpose of the organization. Systematic processes engage each member of the organization in an ongoing cycle of:

Gathering evidence of current levels of student learning

Developing strategies and ideas to build on strengths and address weaknesses in that learning

Implementing those strategies and ideas

Analyzing the impact of the changes to discover what was effective and what was not

Applying new knowledge in the next cycle of continuous improvement

The goal is not simply to learn a new strategy, but instead to create conditions for a perpetual learning environment in which innovation and experimentation are viewed not as tasks to be accomplished or projects to be completed but as ways of conducting day-to-day business- forever. Furthermore, participation in this process is not reserved for those designated as leaders; rather, it is a responsibility of every member of the organization.

Results Orientation

Finally, members of a PLC realize that all of their efforts in these areas (a focus on learning, collaborative teams, collective inquiry, action orientation, and continuous improvement) must be assessed on the basis of results rather than intentions. Unless initiatives are subjected to ongoing assessment on the basis of tangible results, they represent random groping in the dark rather than purposeful improvement. As Peter Senge and colleagues conclude, "The rationale for any strategy for building a learning organization revolves around the premise that such organizations will produce dramatically improved results."

This focus on results leads each team to develop and pursue measurable improvement goals that are aligned to school and district goals for learning. It also drives teams to create a series of common formative assessments that are administered to students multiple times throughout the year to gather ongoing evidence of student learning. Team members review the results from these assessments in an effort to identify and address program concerns (areas of learning where many students are experiencing difficulty). They also examine the results to discover strengths and weaknesses in their individual teaching in order to learn from one another. Most importantly, the assessments are used to identify students who need additional time and support for learning. Frequent common formative assessments represent one of the most powerful tools in the PLC arsenal.
Please also see What Is a "Professional Learning Community"?DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, T. (2006). Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work™, pp. 2-4.

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An ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. Professional learning communities operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators.

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PBIS World | A Complete Tier 1 Through Tier 3 Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports System

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PBIS World is in no way affiliated, associated, or connected with any other website, entity, organization, or federal, state, local, or other government agency, department, program, policy, organization, or initiative.

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Focus On Inclusion 2014 Dr. Lisa Dieker Charting A New Future For All Learners

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Dr. Lisa Dieker presents on the topic of Charting A New Future For All Learners at the 2014 Focus On Inclusion conference

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Focus On Inclusion 2014 Dr. Lisa Dieker Inclusive Practices Secondary Students

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Dr. Lisa Dieker presents on the topic of Inclusive Practices Secondary Students at the 2014 Focus On Inclusion conference

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Improve your students' reading comprehension with ReadWorks. Access thousands of high-quality, free K-12 articles, and create online assignments with them for your students.

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Unit 1: What is a Multi-Tiered System of Supports? :: Multi-tiered System of Supports: A Comprehensive Framework for Implementing the California Common Core State Standards :: Digital Chalkboard

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The media file may take a few minutes to load. The video will begin automatically once the upload is complete. Ensure that your computer audio is on or speakers are available for a group presentation. Be sure to have the Participant Packet for Unit 1 on hand as you work through the unit.

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From our offices in Japan, Canada, and Australia, Wabisabi Learning works with schools in over 20 countries transforming to Future-Focused Learning. Our professional learning programs, award-winning blog, and books and resources support the journey.