Common Core for Teachers

World Cultures are the focus of the National Endowment for the Humanities Lesson Plans

Angkor Wat Buddhist monument photo by Matthew Bamberg

A good set of world history lesson plans is available from the NEH. The plans include multicultural topics that cover Asian history and culture.

The Angkor Wat lesson is particularly noteworthy in that these ruins in Cambodia is the largest religious monument in the world.

5 Photography Lesson Plans with CCSS Standards

Photo by Matthew Bamberg

Common Core? Photography? Are there CCSS standards that incorporate photography into the curriculum?

1. Documenting Learning with Digital Cameras

2. Portraits that Capture Character

3. Bringing Cuba to Life with Photographs

4. 10 Intriguing Photographs to Teach Close Reading and Visual Thinking Skills

5. Teaching Photography's Rule of Thirds

Units on Mexican and Guatemalan History and Culture that would Align Well With Common Core

Mayan Ruins at Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, Mexico
Courtesy of Chris Newsome

Looking for lessons about Mayan Civilizations connected to the CCSS?

Harvard puts out a great teacher's guide, Magnificent Maya, and NASA puts out Calendar in the Sky that deals with the Mayan concept of time.

Both would align well with the following Common Core standards:

Grade 2: Recount stories, including fables and  folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.

Grade 6-8: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

In addition, check out the resources for the Magnificent Maya lessons and a study of Mayan fables.

Multicultural Poetry for Phonological Awareness and Reading Fluency

Multicultural Poetry is also a good way to teach rhyming words. Also, you can consider culture with respect to poetry and read poems by diverse groups of poets. See https://poets.org/anthology/popular-poems-teach

Teaching students multicultural poetry requires that they "develop an established receptive and productive oral language vocabulary, an established understanding of the concepts of print (e.g., directionality, the understanding that print carries a message), the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words (phonemic awareness), a basic sight-word vocabulary (i.e., any word the learner can recognize immediately and without decoding; Ehri, 1995), and a growing understanding of how words work within the larger grammatical structures of language (syntax). Prepared with these skills, students can begin to develop automatic word recognition, or automaticity" (Helman, p. 182).

Once they have these skills they can learn poetry as part of the third grade standard for reading literature. 

Teaching poetry gives all students a chance to learn about the flow of the English language when it's read aloud, or it's prosody, which is oral reading expression. When students read aloud with prosody they are showing that they are comprehending the text. Poetry is a good way to illustrate prosody. You can also teach prosody by modeling it and then having students follow repeat what you said with expression. 

Distance Education Websites

Use these websites for distance education activities for K-12.

• Newsela
• Teachers PayTeachers
• Spelling City
• Slide Share
• Super TeacherWorksheets
• Flip Grid Allows students to record themselves.
• Edhelper
• Readworks for reading comprehension
• Freckle Math
• Khan Academy
• Kahoot Game-based learning 
• Mystery Science
• Listenwise--podcasts
 

 

Learning Maps and Lesson Plans--What are the Differences?

A learning map is similar to a  five step lesson plan in that includes elements of instruction. Elements of instruction include materials and procedures, two of the most important parts of a lesson plan.

A learning map contains UDL elements and classroom management strategies. A lesson plan does not.

Learning maps also refer to “Learner” as the student and “Target” as the standards and objectives.

A learning map contains the following:

PLANNING

Uses the guiding questions

Use what is already known about the Learner,

Create Target (standards, including ELD standards, goals, objectives)

Unpack Standard

Barriers to learning

Learner misconceptions about target

Whole group needs; focus student needs

UDL

Classroom Management

TEACHING

Write Instructional plan—include materials and procedure

Create Assessment—formal and informal

 

I’ve created a lesson plan for close reading  for all grade levels at http://www.commoncorestandardslinks.com/2014/09/grade-1-8-ccssclose-reading.html

Note that the lesson plan contains many elements from a learning map. Lesson plans are more commonly used in school districts.

I have a lesson plan template at http://www.commoncorestandardslinks.com/2016/09/lesson-plan-template.html

Digital Resources that Support Online Learning at Home

It's an unfortunate situation to have children at home all day. They're used to being in school.

Here's a link, Resources that Support Distance Learning, that gives you some great online resources to help students whether you are a teacher or parent.

There are digital resources to content areas in ELA, math, writing, science, PE, history/social science and others to access at  https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/hn/appendix1.asp#six

Dozens of links connect you from to worksheets in  math to to the videos of Khan Academy. Sites are user friendly. For example in order to find a video on Khan Academy, all you do is search for the topic that you want the video on.

One caveat to the website is that a few of the links require you to sign up, which is unfortunate because they want a phone number. 

Social Emotional Skills and Holistic Education

Holistic education focuses on students identity in order for them to become good  community members by teachers instituting appropriate  moral, social, emotional, psychological and academic goals for functioning as a productive member of society.  As a teacher, you have to consider what's going on in students' lives order to teach the students coping skills to deal with challenging situations. Holistic education can really help students who are falling behind. Creating engaging lessons that reach all students is the primary focus of planning for instruction in most schools.  You can combine this inclusion with extensive education in all areas. "All students will learn the skills they need to succeed across all domains, including social, cognitive and academic" (Schwartz as cited in Volk, 2013, para. 5). Students perform better academically when teachers address the social emotional needs of students

Socio-emotional skills are for school, work and life. They include:

•Self-Awareness--conflict mediation, circle talk (talking stick), journaling

•Self-Management—self-motivate, self-control, regulate emotions

•Social Awareness—embrace diversity, empathy for others, role playing, service learning, social justice

•Relationship Skills— rules for working cooperatively, conflict resolution

•Responsible Decision-Making—choices lesson

Holistic education also aligns with an important Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs) such as TPE element 3 of TPE Stnadard 1, which focuses on relating lessons to real life. 

TPE 1.3 states that beginning teachers will: "Connect subject matter to real-life contexts and provide active learning experiences to engage student interest, support student motivation, and allow students to extend their learning." 

Most importantly, when teachers include social emotional goals as part of student learning they will end up with students who function better in class by being able to work with others in groups with diverse members.

Volk, D. (2013). UW's focus on holistic education is reshaping childhood learning.  University of Washington Magazine. Retrieved from https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/uws-focus-on-holistic-education-is-reshaping-childhood-learning/

Unpacking an ELA Standard for Third Grade

Matthew Bamberg unpacks a third grade English language arts standard.