The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 6-8: What They Say, What They Mean, How to Teach Them (Corwin Literacy)

I bought this to be able to use to write my curriculum that would allow cross-curricular ideas in the lessons. I love it so much because it had everything I used, and it was all in one organized place. I shared it with all new teachers in my building and wondered why they are giving them out to teachers as a gift for passing the state teaching tests or new school hires!

Our district adopted the CCS last year. While non-core subjects like mine (Art) were expected to implement them, nobody could say just HOW TO DO THIS! During training our instructors would ask "...what do you think the standards mean and how will you apply them in your classroom? WELL, have you seen the list of these standards?! Slogging through all of that and dealing with our own standards at the same time about put me over the edge. I eventually grasped a better understanding, but wish I had this book LAST YEAR! This book puts all of the academic verbosity into perspective and lays it out in terms that even an oldish teacher like me can understand and incorporate. It also has great sections of academic vocab aligned to the standard and practical ways to implement them plus- BONUS TIME a monthly planner so you can prove to the world just how CCS savvy you are! I recommend it to any teacher who is tired of hearing gobbledy gook and needs some straightforward useful answers about the COMMON CORE. Anyway, I have to go. I am PROCRASTINATING writing my CCS lesson plan.

I bought this to unpack the standards. I taught 4th ELA and moved to 6th. I hoped this would be a good starting point. Instead, it was word salad.

This book is what I've been looking for for a few years now. The book itself is organized well and extremely easy to use. Each standard has its own section that breaks down the standard to clearly identify what the student and teacher should be doing in easy to understand language. It's great for helping to write student friendly learning objectives for the classroom! In addition it's full of suggested activities for each standard in case you need some help with developing solid lessons to address CCSS. Great book, great buy!

Nearly all of the language arts teachers in my building are using this book as a planning resources. Really breaks down the standards and how to approach them with the students. Some of the methods seem a little out of order for what I would use as logical steps, but that's a condition of my teaching style and I have easily organized those steps in the way I would teach them. My only complaint - this book desperately needs tabbed sections! All of us who use it has it filled with post-it flags to separate the sections.

One of the best sources for unpacking the standards. For each standard it spells out what the student should be able to do, what questions should be asked and answered. Very clear guidelines for what teachers can do to work in each standard. Love the question stems. Great for all content areas and has the social study and science/tech standards directly addressed. I am a literacy coach and this was a great resource to share with teachers--easiest I have found.

This book was perfect for what I needed as a Grade 6 teacher attempting to get a handle on implementing the ELA Common Core. I purchased it sight unseen but was immediately impressed with the way each anchor standard is organized for Grades 6-8 in the same section accompanied by the standards restated in general terms he refers to as the gist. Jim Burke clearly understands what anyone working with the Common Core needs for effective implementation and has produced a valuable resource.

A very good resource to understanding what is needed to meet the CC standards both from the teacher perspective and from the student perspective.