Your Book and the CCSS

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by all but four states presents an unprecedented opportunity for publishers and authors. For the first time, teachers across the nation are teaching the same English standards. 

What are the Common Core State Standards? The CCSS are specific benchmarks, divided by grade level, that students should master by the end of each year in a certain subject. At this point, there are only standards for Language Arts and Math.  The L.A. standards are divided into Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language.  They are pretty specific.  For instance, one of the Reading Standards for 8th grade reads:

                3. Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text. 

How do you align a book to the CCSS?   Provide teachers with a comprehensive curriculum guide that includes context vocabulary, spiraled chapter questions, short but engaging writing prompts, and related informational text.  A good portion of what is in the curriculum guide should reflect the CCSS.   An aligned curriculum guide is more than a few pages (ours are 30 + ) and provides the handouts, activity prompts, and specific lessons that teachers NEED to teach a novel.  For examples, check out the guide for Jill Corcoran’s  Dare to Dream . . . Change the World or Erin Fry’s  Losing It.

Why should publishers and authors provide a curriculum guide to teachers?  School districts, librarians, and teachers will be more apt to buy classroom sets of new books if they have the materials to teach them. Teachers love teaching new novels but they rarely do, because it takes many hours of preparation. If publishers or authors lift this burden from teachers, especially now with the adoption of the CCSS, those books are more likely to make their way into the hands of students and classrooms.

Don’t publishers already create curriculum guides?  Not really. Sometimes a publisher or author provides a page of discussion questions or general suggestions of things to do with students while reading a book. While these can be good starting points for teachers, they aren't usually standards-based, nor are they as valuable as a well-written curriculum guide that truly guides teachers through a book or novel.  

In future posts, we’ll look more closely at what exactly curriculum guide looks like and the steps it takes to create one.  A really good CG, like any solid curriculum, takes time to develop—as well as a working knowledge of the standards, how teachers teach, and how students learn.

Nicole and Erin feel passionately that standards-based curriculum can be teacher-friendly, engage students, AND be pedagogically sound.  Stick with us as we show you what that looks like.