Ready For The Common Core??

How are you feeling about the Common Core?  Have you been trained, feeling ready to tackle it?  Or do your feelings run more towards a little nervous for yet another change?

I am feeling a bit nervous and I always want more information to combat that feeling.  I have spent some time this summer learning about the Common Core.  I found a few resources for us that will hopefully help tame that nervousness that some of us may be feeling.  

  The above  picture is from  Tulare County Public Schools in California and is a great resource.  This site provides half page reference sheets which define each CCSS by grade level.  The bookmark identifies essential skills, concepts, academic vocabulary and question stems relevent to the standard.  I especially appreciate the question stems and prompts that help us to understand exactly how to use the standards. 

Tennessee is a great resource with its Teacher's Reading Toolkit.  They have compiled a lot of information like teaching strategies, lesson plans, and assessments.  This site even unpacks the standards for you, providing a lot of important information that will help you to understand the standards and how to teach them.


I found a couple of books that look to be good common core resources too.  Lucy Calkins helped write Pathways to the Common Core:  Accelerating Achievement.  Anything by Lucy Calkins is great!

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Besides needing resources to help me understand and teach the common core, I also needed a way to track what I had taught and how the students performed on common core assessments.  So I made some tracking sheets that met my needs. 

I didn't just want a sheet that stated the standards.  I needed a way to track how many times I taught the standards among other things.  So I have included in each pack places to write notes on the standards and the dates when they have been taught.  This is a good way to document for yourself and your administration when and how often you taught each standard.  I also included a space for you to record if you gave an assessment on each standard and what percent mastered the standard.  It will be a great way for me to keep myself organized and to have documentation all in one place of what I have done!  If you need this kind of tracking just click on the picture and it will take you to my store. 

I hope this compilation of resources will help you teach and document the common core.  Hopefully with a little less nervousness about it too!  :)