I’ll be the first to admit that I get turned off by publishers who put Common Core in the title of their teaching resource books. I know it probably sells books off the shelves like crazy (particularly for administrators desperate to be doing something, anything, to shift forward with their staff), but I am sensitive to marketing gimmicks. So when Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans, by editor Lauren Davis, arrived at my house from the publisher (Eye on Education), I was wary (although they get points for honesty in advertising, since the title pretty much directly sums up the content of the book in a no-nonsense way).
Luckily, I looked inside.
The book, which is geared towards middle school, is chock full of well thought-out lesson plans, activities and handouts that might connect to the Common Core in overt ways, but are just as likely to be good ideas that teachers can pull into the classroom around reading and writing and research. In fact, the book is built around the main themes of the Common Core: Writing, Reading, Speaking/Listening, and Language. Even if your state and school is not a Common Core follower (mine is), that organizational strategy makes sense. Each section has a solid introduction, with tips for teachers to pay attention to, and many of the lessons have reproducible handouts (which are also available online, with a code from the book)
In fact, the day after I got Common Core Literacy Lesson Plans, I was using one of its resources with a lesson that I had designed for my sixth graders around paraphrasing, summarizing and quoting from direct sources. This tied in perfectly with our inquiry research project, and the handout that we used from the book included as short piece of reading and three questions, which led to some great discussions in class about how to use sources without the “copy/paste” mentality. Over the next few days, as my students were writing, I reminded them about our work around paraphrasing and summarizing.
I know I will be returning to this book when we get to our Digital Lives unit because some of the lessons and handouts here around evaluating websites and understanding the influence of media are part of the work that my students do to understand their role as writers and readers in the digital age. I’ll also be sharing it with my sixth grade teaching team as part of our Community of Practice meetings, as we talk about how to keep moving reading and writing and literacy more and more into the content areas.
Peace (outside the core),
Kevin