Blog Posts
Monday
Non-Traditional Text and the Common Core
What is text? Is a photograph or illustration text? In this post, we discuss how looking at text in non-traditional ways can help us to think about implementing the Common Core in broader ways.
Tuesday
Text, Context, and the Stanley Cup
In this post, we continue our exploration of non-traditional texts by looking at the way in which coaches examine game tapes. No matter the text or context, close reading aims to scrutinize and analyze to achieve new understandings.
Wednesday
Shorts
This post looks at the advantages of using short, complex texts to support developing reading stamina and proficiency in more difficult material.
Thursday
Critical Sense and Sensibility
What you need to know about how to make text selections both classic and contemporary.
Friday
The Centrality of Text
How important is “text” to the Common Core. In this post we analyze the number of times this word appears in the document and ponder the implications of its importance to understanding the objective of the Common Core.
This week’s recommended reading
Oklahoma and Tennessee published similar documents about teaching academic vocabulary. These two documents have the same beginning, but the document from Tennessee is more about the teaching, offering good possibilities that these two documents could be used in tandem.
Looking for texts for practicing Common Core Standards? Visit Wikijunior, where an array of children’s books are free, reproducible, and part of a creative commons that lets you revise them to suit your students.
Looking for complex text? Pull excerpts from these free e-readers, most of which are in the public domain. There are more than 29,000 books available for Nook, Kindle, iPad, etc.
List of short texts to support developing students’ stamina and proficiency in reading increasingly complex material.
User friendly library of lesson plans supported by National Endowment for Humanities.
Many of the selections place great emphasis on classics and we would recommend balancing the suggestions on this site with voices underrepresented by the classics (such as women) and contemporary selections.
