Sunday, June 9, 2013

CCSS ELA Curriculum Will Fail Most At-Risk Students!‏


Why the CCSS Curricula will fail most at-risk students? 


Is the CCSS Curricula built on creating educational Equity?   

After spending a year looking at many of the NEW published CCSS Curricula or so-called CCSS programs, I have found they all have fundamental gaps is meeting the needs of at-risk students. The gaps and missing curricula will greatly impact reading and math success? After teaching at-risk students for 14 years, students that may never fully engage with school culture and community, or academic content in its many forms have three things in common. The students lack academic skills, yet more critical to academic success is underdeveloped critical thinking skills and social emotional intelligence. At-risk students come with instructional|curricula, social emotional, critical and strategic thinking deficits, not just academic deficits, and what is imperative, is to close the Socratic thinking achievement gap. At-risk students need a refresher coarse in cooperative learning, Socratic Inquiry and social emotional intelligence. As the adage states "Attitude equals Altitude"! Closing the achievement gap in our poorest schools will not be solved with the new CCSS ELA curriculum. We know that it is always the teacher and the training of the teachers that makes the biggest difference not the published curriculum. When students have real "Equity in Education” not the New and improved CCSS, they will develop critical thinking and social emotional intelligence, and they will soar and achieve any academic goal! The two critical cognitive domains for success are absent or lacking from most school curricula, including the New CCSS ELA reading materials! Sean Taylor
  1. Students need to learn critical and strategic thinking to succeed, teachers need to teach Socratic inquiry skills explicitly!  
  2. Student need to PLAY engaging strategic board games, complex simulations and higher order verbal thinking games daily to help build "Socratic Inquiry Skills"! 
  3. Students need to learn Presence of Mind and Social Emotional Intelligence!  
  4. Students that are not actively engaged with the curriculum will never find success, and developing presence of mind and Socratic Inquiry play a pivotal role in producing the best student outcomes. 
  5. Students need to solve complex problems in a creative fun way!
Areas of Continuing Education and Collaboration That is Needed in All Schools that Serve At-Risk Students!

I’ve placed them in order of importance in my opinion!

  1. Kagan Structures for Cooperative Learning and Active Engagement 
  2. Educational Sloyd or Finnish Käsityö Principles in Schools
  3. Positive Behavior Support or Restorative Practices and Principles in schools
  4. Theory of Mind and Executive Function Development
  5. Critical and Strategic Thinking Development
  6. Inquiry Based Learning Practices
  7. Project Based Learning Practices
  8. Reading and Writing Best Practices
  9. Math, Science and STEM Best Practices.

1 comment:

  1. I love the art on the left-hand side of your page and you're right, creativity is the key to get through to difficult students :)

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!