Common+Core+Gap+Analysis

The Renewal and Design Team will identify a meaningful process to review the current PSD curriculum as compared to the Common Core Standards adopted by the State of Wisconsin in June, 2010.

Grade Level Reports:

K-5 Commonalities: Differences:
 * Key ideas and details
 * Range of reading and level of text complexity
 * Development of readers, writers, speakers, and listeners
 * Foundational skills
 * Integration of knowledge and ideas: compare and contrast
 * Recounting stories, fables, and folktales
 * Author studies: compare and contrast
 * Craft and structure: drama, poetry, and mood
 * Fluency and reading rate (4th-6th grade)

Concerns:
 * Drama, poetry, myths, folktales, and fables

6-12 Commonalities:
 * The goal: Students become better readers and writers as they progress through 6-12
 * Reading a text explicitly, making logical inferences, and citing text evidence for support

Differences:
 * Poetry is taught in Honors level courses, yet not addressed much in regular classes. We can all incorporate poetry throughout the school year.
 * HS does a lot with drama, MS does not cover it, 6th grade will do one unit or more

Concerns:
 * In direct instruction, we need to use a common language. For example, explain what an "inference" is and use this language during instruction.
 * Lack of spiraling (common language, knowledge of the previous year's curriculum)
 * Courses taught in isolation versus courses that build upon the previous ones
 * More opportunities for speaking and listening needed in the MS
 * Waukesha School District has moved to a workshop approach -- is this the direction we need to be going? If we move to this model, what kinds of training would be needed?
 * Conventions of language: taught in isolation; does it transfer into writing? Do the students understand it?
 * Creating an instructional approach that kids can "bank on"
 * Transfer of skills vertically and also to cross-curricular classes

Recently, CESA 1 schools started a process that involved 13 school districts representing over 30,000 students to identify pathways for integrating the Common Core. In English/Language Arts about 40 teachers analyzed the new standards, attempting to prioritize the power standards. This document outlines prioritized and supporting standards from that process.