Understanding Resistance to CCSS

In the last couple of weeks, the Tea Party and some conservative religious groups have been critical of the adoption of the CCSS. Superintendent friends have reported to me that their central offices are fielding phone calls with critical questions about the CCSS. The main concern of the opposition is that local and state control in educating children have been turned over to the federal government.

To fully understand the opposition, check the Tea Party explanation of those for the common core. Also, prominent Education commentator Diane Ravitch has recently come out as anti-CCSS as shown through her blog.  Diane is a wonderful resource but she has done some spectacular flip flops in her career- pro testing/anti testing, etc.

If parents and community members knew more about what is actually in the common core their criticism might be more precise. Hence, the work of Canyon Effect- demystify the common core!

Your child should be able to statements: Kindergarten

The ELA CCSS can be a challenge for teachers and very confusing for parents. Work at the Canyon Effect is aimed at demystifying the standards with parents as the primary audience. Included is work from the phonics and word recognition standards of ELA CCSS Kindgarten. Through color coding and breaking educationese into parent friendly language, it is our belief that parents CAN understand the standards and help school with student mastery in a meaningful way.

If you are interested in helping your parents with helping erase the canyon effect of unlearned knowledge and skills from adopting a new curriculum, email canyoneffect@gmail.com

RF.1.3: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.	Your child should be able to:
a.Demonstrate basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant.	Make the most often heard (major) and other (minor) sounds for specific letters such as "k" and "s" for the letter c.
b. Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.	Make long and short sounds for vowels. (a,e,I,o,u) and uses the right vowel when spelling short words.
c. Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).	Read words that are used greatly such as the, of, to, you, she, my,is, are, do and does.
d. Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.	Know how words such as cow, now, and how are alike and different.

Teacher and district professional development: ELA CCSS

The Canyon Effect parent project is deeply impacted by work done with school districts throughout the country. Ms. Leeann Segalla, the former Executive Director for all of the elementary schools in Guilford County, NC is currently involved with helping Unicoi County, TN teacherrs with the following program in understanding the new  English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core Standards.

Participants learn about the changes that the ELA Common Core Standards require of the teachers and learners. Teachers/Leaders create useful tools for their district that help implement these changes.

Leeann covers the following topics with teachers:

• Overview of the ELA Common Core Standards
• Significant shifts and key changes from current practice to the new standards
• Learning progressions – how standards develop from Kindergarten to Grade
12
• Priority and supporting standards – developing a matrix of key concepts and
skills
• Understanding standards from the learner’s point of view or unwrapping the
standards
• Clustering and pacing the standards across a school year
• Quality instructional unit development

An additional component of this work involves developing teacher leaders and
school/system capacity. Participants are expected to attend all sessions, read the
suggested articles and collaborate to create district curriculum resources. Districts
are responsible for posting resources and making them available to appropriate
audiences - teachers, parents, and students.

If interested in working with Leeann or other Canyon Effect professionals please contact Canyoneffect@gmail.com.