"Teacher of the Year" quits over Common Core tests

[Anonymous]

Accusation: "Teachers didn't participate!"

Response: "Yes, they did, in fact all of the major teachers unions participated."

Accusation: "Yeah, well all of the teachers that did were paid industry shills!" (acknowledging that teachers did in fact participate but then shifting on to another accusation)

And around and around it goes...

The teachers' unions were paid--I guess they were paid to approve the program because there is no record of meetings they attended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.4
Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

It is vague and imprecise and does not meet the criteria set up by the Common Core group. Go read it.

If you think that standard is totally vague, incomprehensible and not implementable then clearly you are not an educator, and certainly not an English teacher.

The standard is about context clues and getting kids thinking about what questions they might ask to help them start understanding what the new, unknown word is.

For example, asking themselves if the unknown word is talking about a thing, a person (nouns), something that's happening or another type of action (verbs), or if it is describing something (adjectives) et cetera. All of those are appropriate K skills. It's about getting them thinking about how sometimes there's more than one word for things or concepts they already know (synonyms) which can help to understand new words. It's about getting kids thinking about a variety of clues based on the rest of the sentence and context, whether the word might be something good or bad, something funny, something scary - based on what's going on with the rest of the sentence.

And, there are lots of ways that it can be measured, like having kids replace the unknown word with one that they think might make sense based on context.

"The feline meowed and purred."

Replace the unknown word, "feline" with another word that might make sense:

a.) red
b.) run
c.) cat
d.) moon

This is all very typical and doable K teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Accusation: "Teachers didn't participate!"

Response: "Yes, they did, in fact all of the major teachers unions participated."

Accusation: "Yeah, well all of the teachers that did were paid industry shills!" (acknowledging that teachers did in fact participate but then shifting on to another accusation)

And around and around it goes...

The teachers' unions were paid--I guess they were paid to approve the program because there is no record of meetings they attended.

Your record and evidence of where they "were paid to approve the program" is where, exactly?

[Anonymous]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-common-core-ravitch/

Ravitch lays out where the money was spent. Very interesting. I wondered why the unions supported it--should have known.

[Anonymous]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/gates-foundation/
More documentation. Unions received @ 5 Million each. Common Core support is expensive!

[Anonymous]

If you think that standard is totally vague, incomprehensible and not implementable then clearly you are not an educator, and certainly not an English teacher.

But, according to the criteria on the Common Core website, the standards are to be understandable to the general public. By the way, I have advanced degrees in education and taught K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.4
Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

It is vague and imprecise and does not meet the criteria set up by the Common Core group. Go read it.

vague?

This standard focuses on contextual clues.

ex I just found from a random search -

It was an idyllic day; sunny, warm and perfect for a walk in the park.

1. Read the sentence aloud.
2. Ask students to write down words with which they're not familiar. Chances are idyllic will be number one.
3. Examine the the punctuation. A semicolon colon connects two sentences that are closely related in meaning. Therefore, sentence two will most likely stem from sentence one.
4. Ask students what defines the day. They will list the following words and phrases: sunny, warm, and perfect for a walk in the park.
5. Are these words and phrases positive in meaning or negative? Yes, positive
6. Now, flip back to idyllic. Remind them that idyllic was the word unknown to them.
7. Have them reword the sentence using idyllic. "The idyllic day was great for a walk in the park because the sun was out and it was warm."
8. Finally, have them come up with their own conclusion by focusing on the positive words that surround the day.

vague my ass

You aren't an educator; you're a know-it-all moron.

[Anonymous]

Let me add that in this case, I would have tweaked the sentence by adding another complete sentence after the semicolon so as not to confuse matters for young learners.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.4
Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

It is vague and imprecise and does not meet the criteria set up by the Common Core group. Go read it.

vague?

This standard focuses on contextual clues.

ex I just found from a random search -

It was an idyllic day; sunny, warm and perfect for a walk in the park.

1. Read the sentence aloud.
2. Ask students to write down words with which they're not familiar. Chances are idyllic will be number one.
3. Examine the the punctuation. A semicolon colon connects two sentences that are closely related in meaning. Therefore, sentence two will most likely stem from sentence one.
4. Ask students what defines the day. They will list the following words and phrases: sunny, warm, and perfect for a walk in the park.
5. Are these words and phrases positive in meaning or negative? Yes, positive
6. Now, flip back to idyllic. Remind them that idyllic was the word unknown to them.
7. Have them reword the sentence using idyllic. "The idyllic day was great for a walk in the park because the sun was out and it was warm."
8. Finally, have them come up with their own conclusion by focusing on the positive words that surround the day.

vague my ass

You aren't an educator; you're a know-it-all moron.

[Anonymous]

You aren't an educator; you're a know-it-all moron.

Wow. You are seriously wrong. And, I doubt you have been in a Kindergarten classroom for a very long time. How much did you get from the Gates Foundation?

[Anonymous]

you're a know-it-all moron.

Name calling is always helpful. I sure hope you don't do that in a classroom--since you claim to be an educator.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.4
Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.



It is vague and imprecise and does not meet the criteria set up by the Common Core group. Go read it.

vague?

This standard focuses on contextual clues.

ex I just found from a random search -


It was an idyllic day; sunny, warm and perfect for a walk in the park.


1. Read the sentence aloud.
2. Ask students to write down words with which they're not familiar. Chances are idyllic will be number one.
3. Examine the the punctuation. A semicolon colon connects two sentences that are closely related in meaning. Therefore, sentence two will most likely stem from sentence one.
4. Ask students what defines the day. They will list the following words and phrases: sunny, warm, and perfect for a walk in the park.
5. Are these words and phrases positive in meaning or negative? Yes, positive
6. Now, flip back to idyllic. Remind them that idyllic was the word unknown to them.
7. Have them reword the sentence using idyllic. "The idyllic day was great for a walk in the park because the sun was out and it was warm."
8. Finally, have them come up with their own conclusion by focusing on the positive words that surround the day.

vague my ass

You aren't an educator; you're a know-it-all moron.

[Anonymous]

^^^^^got to be a troll. Nobody would do that in kindergarten.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If you think that standard is totally vague, incomprehensible and not implementable then clearly you are not an educator, and certainly not an English teacher.

But, according to the criteria on the Common Core website, the standards are to be understandable to the general public. By the way, I have advanced degrees in education and taught K.

I'm a member of the general public yet I understood it perfectly fine. If you didn't understand it then it leads me to believe you're full of crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/gates-foundation/
More documentation. Unions received @ 5 Million each. Common Core support is expensive!

Documenting what, exactly? Your premise is that the money was for them to rubberstamp CC but you have not posted anything proving that.

[Anonymous]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/a-brief-audit-of-bill-gat_b_3837421.html

for a cohort of teachers to implement Common Core. I'm trying to find a list of those teachers --maybe you can find it.