Recently, on March 6, 2013, the State Education Department sent a memo
to school administrators across NY regarding the transition to Common Core
assessments. The memo states,
“Despite New York State having some of the most successful
individual districts and individual schools in the country, too many of our
students do not graduate, and too many of our high school graduates find
themselves taking remedial courses when they enter college. These students pay
college tuition for learning that should have happened in high school, and
students who take remedial courses in college are less likely to finish their
studies.”
As a result, the bar has been raised for
what students must know and be able to perform upon completing their high school
graduation. Nonetheless, the state
claims that student performance has not risen to meet these new and rigorous
expectations. We need more accurate measures of assessment and student
progress to better track their performance throughout the year.
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were
developed by mapping curriculum starting from college and working backwards all
the way to Kindergarten. Each of these
grade levels have benchmarks set forth by the Common Core that each student
must master before moving onto the next phase.
Student mastery of these benchmarks must now be assessed.
In addition to higher expectations for
students, teachers need to adjust the way material is being taught within the
classroom, develop new skills, and more closely and frequently reflect on their
own pedagogical skills. More specifically, in ELA, teachers must
balance informational text and literature in addition to increasing the time
and attention students spend on analyzing the text they are reading. In Math, teachers must work to focus less on
content and more on fluency of math facts and real world application.
A question being raised in my mind
continuously falls back on the teachers.
What are teachers doing to better engage their students? If students are engaged in the material, they
are more likely to learn. After spending
countless hours in the classroom, I have seen students’ eyes glaze over from boring
teacher delivery of content. Although
teachers cannot be held solely accountable for student performance, I feel that
more rigorous assessment of teaching skills is absolutely mandatory as part of
this new shift. I am happy to see that
the expectations are being raised for teachers as well as students.
A successful classroom lesson should
clearly state the learning objectives so that students understand what they are
going to be learning for that period and the measurable expectations of how
they will be assessed. A lesson should
also incorporate guided instruction from the teacher, independent practice,
peer involvement, as well as student discovery.
Providing opportunity for students to work directly with the material allows
them to discover mistakes being made.
Students are more likely to retain information if they are the ones
directly involved in the learning process. I love the idea of students correcting their
own mistakes and applying these lessons to real-world applications. Lessons should always have a closure and an
assessment of learning so teachers can better assess student progress.
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