Two Common Core Books Every ELA Teacher Should Read

The Common Core State Standards are on the minds and lips of educators across America. With ELA’s increased focus on text complexity, informational texts, and evidentiary-based reasoning, these standards require a shift not just in what students learn, but also in how they learn it. Implicitly, we as educators must structure new types of learning opportunities. These require, at the very least, different approaches to lesson design, and at  most, fundamental shifts in our definition of what it is to teach.

Preparing to meet the expectations of the standards is a daunting task, particularly as most teachers must continue to meet requirements of current standards while simultaneously trying to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Add that to the already-sparse budgets of many US schools and the ever-increasing demands on a teacher’s schedule, and one begins to wonder just when we are going to have the resources, let alone the time, to make the necessary shifts.

However, as we always do, educators will rise to meet the challenge set before us. Here’s a review of two books that will help ease the transition, whether you teach first grade or twelfth grade. Full of handy strategies and no-frills explanations, these practical guides are a must for every English language arts instructor.

Pathways to the Common Core

Intelligently organized, this book is authored by venerable ELA gurus from the Columbia Reading and Writing Project, such as Dr. Lucy Calkins. It offers a pragmatic look at what the ELA and Literacy standards (yes, these are two distinct elements of the Common Core) actually mean.

Moreover, it includes a concise and easy-to-follow assessment of how the standards fit together, both in their basic structure and across grade levels, which is important since a major tenant of the Common Core is that teachers must understand at a deeper level where students have come from, and where they will be going to in terms of conceptual understandings.

Particularly useful are the many suggestions the authors give for practical approaches to collaborating with colleagues to determine how the standards can successfully be implemented in your educational community.

Supporting Students in a Time of Core Standards

This is actually a series of books, with one book each dedicated to PreK-2nd, 3rd-5th, 6th-8th, and 9th-12th. Each book is broken into two distinct sections. The first aims to break the Common Core ELA standards into comprehensible chunks to understand, while the second takes you into actual classrooms to see the pitfalls and successes real teachers are having in their pursuit of meaningful curriculum change.

While the books are not as even-handed as Pathways to the Common Core in their explanation of the standards (there is certainly an elusive sense that someone might have paid them not to say anything negative), they do offer solid advice and practical ideas. Plus, they are fairly short and organized into few-page sections, making for an approachable read.

Read these books with colleagues, use what fits, and modify where needed to meet the needs of students in your community. However you choose to implement what you read, both of these books should help to practically ease the transition to incorporating the Common Core into your classroom.