I am taking a professional development class on pdesas.org, the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Standards Aligned System site. For PA teachers, it’s a great resource and a great way to earn Act 48 hours at no charge. One must be a self-directed learner to fully appreciate the course and be successful, but teachers have been teaching themselves new things since the beginning of their careers, I suspect. Now, they have a resource that is organized well and conforms to the latest ideas in the PDE about effective teaching. I recommend the site and the professional development opportunities. I also wish I had a classroom where I could try out the ideas more effectively, especially the PA Common Core standards recently adopted. While finishing my recent assessments, I found the PA Core standards to be very helpful, to guide my lesson plan development, and to help me understand Long-term Transfer Goals, Big Ideas, and Essential Questions. The standards have been condensed into (in my opinion) easier to follow guidelines. It also seems like they allow more freedom to teachers to design instruction that will work for their students. Perhaps I’m wrong; let me know.
Here is an example of a unit plan that I wrote using the PA Core and the Curriculum Framework (sort of) as a guide. Please let me know what you think.
Next time, I will present arguments against the Common Core. There are plenty! Below are some links to articles that feature arguments against these standards.
[google-drive-embed url=”https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7RDkAr1Yz9AOUdlTmkxaThpd2M/edit?usp=drivesdk” title=”Debate Camp.pdf” icon=”https://ssl.gstatic.com/docs/doclist/images/icon_10_pdf_list.png” newwindow=”yes” style=”normal”]
[liveblog]
Related articles
