The Common Core State Standards provide us with clear student learning goals for each grade level, but what is instruction actually supposed to look like to realize those goals? Many educators and school districts assume that practicing the discrete skills outlined in the standards such as finding the main idea and determining cause and effect are what the authors of the CCSS had in mind. However, the authors actually wrote that “the standards themselves are not the goal of daily instruction; understanding the texts encountered and being able to express that understanding is.” This session will discuss the research and associated instructional practices one district used to significantly improve student literacy outcomes.
