Common Core Standards | PARCC Assessments Released Items

PARCC Prototype Test Items for Common Core Assessments | PARCC Assessments Released Items | PARCC Released test sample ELA Grade 3, 6, 7, 10 |  PARCC Released test sample MATH Grade 3, 4, 6, 7, High School

ELA/Literacy Sample passages, items and rubrics

• Grade 3

GR 3 PARCC ELA Item 1.pdf
GR 3 PARCC ELA Item 2.pdf

• Grade 3 EBSR from End-of-Year Assessment
• Grade 3 TECR from End-of-Year Assessment

• Grade 6

GR 6 PARCC ELA Item 1.pdf
GR 6 PARCC ELA Item 2.pdf
GR 6 PARCC ELA Item 3.pdf
GR 6 PARCC ELA Item 4.pdf

• Grade 6 EBSR from Narrative Writing Task (Vocabulary)
• Grade 6 EBSR from Narrative Writing Task
• Grade 6 TECR from Narrative Writing Task
• Grade 6 Prose Constructed Response from Narrative Writing Task

• Grade 7

Gr 7 PARCC ELA Item 1.pdf
Gr 7 PARCC ELA Item 2.pdf
Gr 7 PARCC ELA Item 3.pdf

Grade 7 Prose Constructed Response from Research Simulation Task (Summary)

Grade 7 TECR from Research Simulation Task

Grade 7 Prose Constructed Response from Research Simulation Task (Analytical Essay)

• Grade 10

GR 10 PARCC ELA Item 1.pdf
GR 10 PARCC ELA Item 2.pdf
GR 10 PARCC ELA Item 3.pdf
GR 10 PARCC ELA Item 4.pdf

• Grade 10 EBSR from Literary Analysis Task
• Grade 10 EBSR from Literary Analysis Task (Vocabulary)
• Grade 10 Prose Constructed Response—Sample #1 from Literary Analysis Task
• Grade 10 Prose Constructed Response—Sample #2 from Literary Analysis Task

Mathematics sample items.

• Grade 3

PARCC Math Sample Problems_GR3_Frac-Num-LineV2.pdf
PARCC Math Sample Problems_GR3FluencyV2.pdf
PARCC Math Sample Problems_GR3_The Field_PartAV2.pdf

Fractions on Number Line Fluency

The Field

PARCC Model Content Frameworks for Mathematics.

• Grade 4

Prototype Items

• Grade 6

PARCC Math Sample Problems_GR6_SliderV2.pdf

Grade 6 (Slider Ruler)

Prototype Items

• Grade 7

PARCC Math Sample Problems_GR7_SpeedV2.pdf

Speed

Prototype Items 

• High School

PARCC Math Sample Problems_HS-FunctionsV2.pdf
PARCC Math Sample Problems_HS-QuadEquation.pdf
PARCC Math Sample Problems_HS-SeeingStructureV2.pdf

• High School Functions
• High School (Seeing Structure in a Quadratic Equation)
• High School (Seeing Structure in an Equation)
• Prototype Items 
• Prototype Items 

Generic Rubrics - ELA/Literacy

Grade 3 ELA Expanded Rubric FOR ANALYTIC AND NARRATIVE WRITING.pdf

Grade 4-5 ELA Expanded Rubric FOR ANALYTIC AND NARRATIVE WRITING.pdf

Grade 6-11 ELA Expanded Rubric FOR ANALYTIC AND NARRATIVE WRITING.pdf

The CRCT is a good Practice Test To Prepare for the PARCC CCSS

1st Grade LANGUAGE ARTS:ALL DOMAINS
GRAMMAR & MECHANICS
RESEARCH PROCESS
SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION & REVISION

MATH:ALL DOMAINS
COMPUTATION & ESTIMATION
GEOMETRY & MEASUREMENT
NUMBER SENSE & NUMERATION
PATTERNS & RELATIONSHIPS/ALGEBRA
PROBLEM SOLVING

READING:ALL DOMAINS
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
READING FOR LOCATING & RECALLING INFORMATION
READING FOR MEANING
READING FOR VOCABULARY IMPROVEMENT

2nd Grade LANGUAGE ARTS:ALL DOMAINS
PARAGRAPH CONTENT & ORGANIZATION
GRAMMAR & MECHANICS
RESEARCH PROCESS
SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION & REVISION

MATH:ALL DOMAINS
COMPUTATION & ESTIMATION
GEOMETRY & MEASUREMENT
NUMBER SENSE & NUMERATION
PATTERNS & RELATIONSHIPS/ALGEBRA
PROBLEM SOLVING

READING:ALL DOMAINS
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
READING FOR LOCATING & RECALLING INFORMATION
READING FOR MEANING
READING FOR VOCABULARY IMPROVEMENT

3rd Grade LANGUAGE ARTS:ALL DOMAINS
PARAGRAPH CONTENT & ORGANIZATION
GRAMMAR & MECHANICS
RESEARCH PROCESS
SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION & REVISION

MATH:ALL DOMAINS
COMPUTATION & ESTIMATION
GEOMETRY & MEASUREMENT
NUMBER SENSE & NUMERATION
PATTERNS & RELATIONSHIPS/ALGEBRA
PROBLEM SOLVING
STATISTICS & PROBABILITY

READING:ALL DOMAINS
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
READING FOR LOCATING & RECALLING INFORMATION
READING FOR MEANING
READING FOR VOCABULARY IMPROVEMENT

4th Grade LANGUAGE ARTS:ALL DOMAINS
PARAGRAPH CONTENT & ORGANIZATION
GRAMMAR & MECHANICS
RESEARCH PROCESS
SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION & REVISION

MATH:ALL DOMAINS
COMPUTATION & ESTIMATION
GEOMETRY & MEASUREMENT
NUMBER SENSE & NUMERATION
PATTERNS & RELATIONSHIPS/ALGEBRA
PROBLEM SOLVING

READING:ALL DOMAINS
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
READING FOR LOCATING & RECALLING INFORMATION
READING FOR MEANING
READING FOR VOCABULARY IMPROVEMENT

5th Grade LANGUAGE ARTS:ALL DOMAINS
PARAGRAPH CONTENT & ORGANIZATION
GRAMMAR & MECHANICS
RESEARCH PROCESS
SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION & REVISION

MATH:ALL DOMAINS
COMPUTATION & ESTIMATION
GEOMETRY & MEASUREMENT
NUMBER SENSE & NUMERATION
PATTERNS & RELATIONSHIPS/ALGEBRA
PROBLEM SOLVING
STATISTICS & PROBABILITY

READING:ALL DOMAINS
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
READING FOR LOCATING & RECALLING INFORMATION
READING FOR MEANING
READING FOR VOCABULARY IMPROVEMENT

Problems with the Common Core Standards

Problems with the Common Core Standards

The Common Core Standards are being adopted by 47 states the next few years and most of these states could not meet the easier NCLB standards and mandates. The Common Core Standards are a great idea in principle but implementing them is the problem. The same old bloated districts, and fat cat educational publishers are going to do what they always do, give us the top down bloviated decision making model, that makes the teachers accountable, parents and students mad, lost, or confused, then they blame everyone else when things fail. The same people that have made the last 20 years of educational reform a disaster are in-charge of the new Common Core Standards reforms. The Common Core are part of the GERM! Global Education Reform Movement!

The Biggest Problem Implementing the Common Core State Standards

• No money for the transition and implementation
• No parent and student buy in
• No genuine support for teachers
• Reading standards that are not attainable with an alliterate society

Reading Boot Camp | Too Cool For School

Reading Boot Camp has something for every child, even the kids that are too cool for school! Many kids get jaded about school or have already shutdown and stopped participating in the academic learning because they are too cool for school. Reading Boot Camp tries to break down those attitudes with fun camp style learning activities. Many kids at the beginning of Reading Boot Camp stay on the side lines when we do something silly like sing and dance to pop songs but when you show them these videos many will join in the silliness and have fun and learn.

Common Core Standards Lexile Range and approximate NWEA RIT range

Common Core Standards Lexile Range and approximate NWEA RIT range

This is the CCSS Text Lexile reading ranges that are the new standards starting this year and an approximate NWEA MAP Reading RIT range 

 Grade 2 Lexile Range 450-620    NWEA MAP RIT RANGE 200-205

 Grade 3 Lexile Range 620-790    NWEA MAP RIT RANGE 205-210

 Grade 4 Lexile Range 770-875    NWEA MAP RIT RANGE 210-215

 Grade 5 Lexile Range 875-980    NWEA MAP RIT RANGE 215-220

 Grade 6 Lexile Range 955-1021  NWEA MAP RIT RANGE 220-225

Harry Potter Book Club | Harry Potter Reading Club

J.K Rowling's new Harry Potter Book Club | Scholastic's Harry Potter Reading Club

Scholastic and J.K Rowling have launched a new Harry Potter Reading Club website, hpread.scholastic.com! J.K. Rowling will be participating in a live webcast on Thursday, October 11, 2012 12pm ET/ 9am PT/ 5pm GMT. You can register your class for this LIVE webcast from Edinburgh, Scotland! The exciting news for me, is the Harry Potter Reading Club website is using some of my ideas! Sean Taylor The Reading Sage 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160319095416/http://hpread.scholastic.com/

“I use great literature like Harry Potter as the cornerstone of my literacy program to build a love of reading also to teach the ins and outs of literary elements in a kid friendly way."”

I use great literature like Harry Potter as the cornerstone of my literacy program to build a love of reading also to teach the ins and outs of literary elements in a kid friendly way. WHY Harry Potter! Students that need to make the greatest gains in reading have a limited reading vocabulary, and they are under exposed to quality literature like Harry Potter. Using Harry Potter for core literacy planning and book clubs gives my students access to challenging books, but also the great movie clips and inspirational theme music that can assist with lessons. The HP characters have a special appeal for kids that face daily adversity if taught in an enriching way. In short Harry Potter helps to make reading fun! I tell my kids, “If the don't like reading Harry Potter, you are doing it wrong.”

Students always have a stronger auditory or spoken vocabulary due in part to exposure to Tv and Movies. Using the student's strengths to build connections to literary elements, in a format kids love, watching movies clips and listening to music makes building background knowledge fast, easy and fun for students. Using auditory knowledge to develop areas of vocabulary weakness is one method that helps my students become fluent, excited, erudite readers. Students will quickly transition from the cinematic elements to the literary elements using Harry Potter.

Students will understand settings, characters, plot, theme, mood, antagonist, and protagonist faster when you have a movie clip, or theme music to tie in or build background knowledge and understanding of literary elements.

HARRY POTTER: GOBSMACKED Game!

Have your students stand up, or sit on their desk so they are facing the teacher. Start at either end of room and give a random Harry Potter trivia question to a student (Reading Comprehension question). If they answer correctly they stay standing until all students have a chance to answer a question. The game can be played as a lightning round with just one quick round or many rounds until you have two kids standing for a few Harry Potter HOT (Higher Order Thinking) questions. When students cannot give an answer to a question they have to say "GOBSMACKED" (Brit slang for dumbfounded) and must sit down. Students that answer correctly get a Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean if you are playing the lighting round, if playing for a Gobsmacked champion the game continues until you have a winner. The student that wins usually gets Harry Potter popcorn. Extensions: Students can ask for a challenge question that relates to a literary element, HOT questions, or a Tier 3 academic word that relates to HP, and every child that answers a hard vocabulary question correctly gets a nice small sample of jelly beans or pretzels, stamp, or a sticker. Anytime students' answers any question correctly all students including those that are out have to buddy buzz with a partner the question and the answer. Students love this activity and it's a great review (Formative Test) of Harry Potter, and a great opportunity to teach complex literary concepts. We start with a mix of easy and hard questions to get the kids excited and motivated to keep the Harry Potter reading fresh and exciting. I ask my students if they want a hard, medium or easy question to give every child a real chance at answering correctly! Background information: We read all Harry Potter chapters twice before we jumping into games like Gobsmacked.

HARRY POTTER: Latin Spells

We explore all of the Harry Potter books for magic spells, potions, charms, and incantations to teach and introduce prefixes, suffixes and Latin root words. Students use a basic Latin glossary or collegiate dictionary to decode the spells from Harry Potter and make their own.

A sample of my students invented spells using Latin Roots

• *Comphotoposhous: It blinds your opponent for 10 minutes.
• *Donamorbrev: To make someone fall in love for a short time.
• *Liverphill: It gives a person forever love.
• *Creadecadem: To create 10 clones of yourself.
• *Cosmdokeineiv: To teach people to be wise.
• *Viviodeca: It makes people live for 10 more years.
• *Chronacide: It kills very slowly.
• *Creacosmatic: You can make your own world.
• *Filaendo: Gives someone faith-belief.
• *Dynamgen: It makes you more powerful.
• *Anthropamor: Makes you fall in love with the first person you see.
• *Domindynam: Gives power over all you command.
• *Pathymor: Suffer death instantly.
• *Zodynam: A spell that can give animal power.

- Sean Taylor, 4th Grade Teacher

http://hpread.scholastic.com/

Common Core State Standards | No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)

The Failure of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), Race to the Top, and inevitably the Common Core State Standards.

45 plus years of School Reform, what do we have to show for all that time, effort, and money? We have an education system that is 20 years behind the times, one of the worst graduations rates in the developed world, and soon a place most teachers and students will find lacks any imagination, quality, common sense or wisdom. Socialist states like Finland made fundamental changes in academic expectations (modernity and equality) and overhauled their public education systems over 20 years ago, using the most powerful agents of change in education, the classroom teachers. Today school reform is a political shell game, for profit schema that is disguised to rebrand bad ideas. Charter schools, vouchers, high stakes testing, student and teacher accountability are just ways to distract everyone from the simple fact that the wrong people are in charge of our children’s education. We don’t actuality fix anything we just shuffle the problems from one place to another, or if that doesn’t work they just fudge the data.

We love to blame teachers for students results, even when they have no real voice in creating academic standards, modifying school schedules, designing curriculum, choosing grading policies, mandating parental involvement or the quality of the incoming students. Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, and Michelle Rhee all say they are the denizens of quality education, or the modern sages of school reform, but they will give us another 45 years of high dropout rates and more teacher blaming.  

NCLB Waivers | More states seek waivers from NCLB

NCLB Waivers | More states seek waivers from NCLB

State Seek Flexibility, Relief, from NCLB School Reform | Accountability Movement

Why are all but a few states seceding (NCLB Waivers) from the biggest school reform movement in the history of the United States?

Teacher, parents and students have lived under the false pretext that academic performance would and will improve with student accountability and modern school reform (NCLB, AYP, CCSS, ESEA and PARCC). The idea was, and is, reform schools with a Top Down educational model, to educate a greater number of students. The last 20 years we have seen the opposite with the highest numbers of students dropping out of school and overall literacy on the decline. We have left more and more teaching decisions to the publishers, politicians, billionaires and Wall-Street carpetbaggers the last 20 years, and at the cost of teacher and student liberty. Our schools have turned into institutes of student measurement, not bastions of reasoning and erudite academic discourse. Seeking and receiving an education used to grant its recipients with wisdom, freedom and a better chance at prosperity. Today, students see schools for what they truly are defunct testing factories that neither offers a path to wisdom, freedom or prosperity. Teacher liberty and freedom will only come when the Top Down educational reform model is seen as the problem not the solution. Most school reforms and student accountability ideas are like a rocking chair, they give you something to do but they don’t get you anywhere.

"These states have joined in a nationwide movement toward state-led education reform now embraced by 24 states," said Secretary Arne Duncan. "Their plans are the product of bold, forward-thinking state and local leaders who have moved beyond the tired old battles and partisan bickering to roll up their sleeves and start working together." The leaders are not named but as always no classroom teachers.

Imagine having accountability and reform for politicians and the Wall-Street elite!

100% peace

100% employment

100% safe non GMO food

100% environment friendly products

100% equality and opportunity for all citizens

100% reduction in global warming

0% poverty

0% lies

0% of corporations are people

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its sharp edge." Tyrion Lannister