Common Core CPR

Book excerpt: The ideal? Newly minted high school graduates all across the nation, each one a complex text genius, a writer and analytic thinker beyond compare. All on to glorious colleges and careers, thanks to the Common Core. The reality? The 1.3 million students who fail to graduate from high school each year and the hundreds of thousands more who either gave up or lost interest long ago . . . The reality is why Common Core CPR is needed. Urgently. Because if we continue to insist that all students meet expectations that are well beyond their abilities and mindsets, these kids will only decline faster. We must be brave enough-and trained enough-to cast aside what we know harms students and apply with renewed vigor the teaching methods we know work. Releah Lent and Barry Gilmore rise to the challenge, and there are no two authors better equipped to do so. They embrace what is best about the standards-their emphasis on active, authentic learning-and then explicitly show teachers how to connect these ideal outcomes to practical classroom strategies, detailing the day-to-day teaching that can coax reluctant learners into engagement and achievement. You'll learn how to: Consider choice and relevance in every assignment Plan and spot opportunities for success Scaffold students' comprehension of complex fiction and nonfiction texts Model close reading through thoughtful questioning Teach students to use evidence in reading, writing, speaking, and reflection . . . And so much more It's not the big sweeping formulas for achievement that will win the day; it's the incremental growth that teachers need to make happen: that one book, that one writing assignment, to help a student turn a corner. "If we can get that one transformational moment to occur, and follow it up by designing more opportunities for success, that's the ideal," say Lent and Gilmore.