Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

         The CCSS are pretty straight forward. I like that they didn't make each standard wordy. What the students need to know is easily accessible and not tied up in pointless jibber jabber. I remember looking at the EALRs for the first time and I got extremely confused. I am glad the Common Core State Standards are used now. I think they are much less confusing, and easy to work with.

          As I was reading through the standards I thought it was interesting that the standard from grade level to grade level had another detail added to them. Instead of having the standard being completely different from year to year, another level of difficulty is added on to the previous grade's standard. When teachers are starting a new school year they might wonder what was taught to their new students in the past year. The CCSS can  help teachers figure out what the students should know , so they have some where to start when the school year starts. The CCSS gives teachers a framework for what they should be teaching and what the students should be able to do by the end of their given grade level.

          CCSS can be helpful to avoid students having gaps in their learning. Each grade level has skills that a built upon so teachers of a certain grade level won't miss a key piece of information that should be taught to the students.

          The CCSS specify which skills should be taught, but are broad enough for other skills to be learned along with the standard that is being met in lesson. For example a lesson can cover how to pick out a word in, lets say The Scarlet Letter, and they can describe how that word is being used in reference to the text the students are reading. The students are learning about vocabulary words within a text and they are also being exposed to new thoughts in a text.