The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has partnered with the New York City Department of Education and the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education to develop a set of 9/11 lessons for K-12 classrooms. The lesson plans are divided into multiple themes and across grade level spans. Each lesson draws upon artifacts and oral histories from the 9/11 Memorial Museum collection. They are written for use throughout the school year and across subjects, including Social Studies, History, English Language Arts, and Art. Each lesson is also aligned to the Common Core Standards to ensure relevance in teaching.

Now that the Common Core State Standards are coming to just about every school, what every school leader needs is a straightforward explanation that lays out the benefits of the common core in plain English and gets everyone thinking about how to transition to this promising new paradigm. In this webinar, John Kendall, author of Understanding Common Core State Standards, gave an overview of the new standards in English language arts/literacy and mathematics, highlighting their key aspects. He also suggested transition activities for teachers and districts to consider, including Creating a Crosswalk, which compares the content of the common core with your current standards. Developing transition documents that support deeper understanding of the Common Core State Standards by using current standards as a bridge. Taking the longer view of implementing the common core systemically.

Discover the kinds of formative and summative classroom assessments that best coordinate with the new generation of testing consortia for the Common Core State Standards. Participants will take a close look at the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments and discover how to create classroom assessments that form a balanced system that supports student learning and aligns to the Common Core State Standards. In addition, Brookhart will overview SBAC and PARCC assessments. Identify assessments shifts. Share the implications of the Common Core for school-based formative and summative assessments.

ASCD Director of Public Policy David Griffith shares in-depth information about the various effects the adoption of the Common Core State Standards have had on education policy from the Department of Education down to the school district level. Using his insight from the field, Common Core State Standards Lead Strategist Efrain Mercado shares common hurdles and questions associated with implementing the new standards.

During this session, participants will learn about the overarching priorities of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and literacy. Alberti will discuss the major instructional shifts required by the standards, including the evidence behind the shifts. These same shifts will be represented in both consortia assessments. Additionally, Alberti will present a few recommendations regarding how to introduce changes in a thoughtful, concrete way to prepare both teachers and students for full implementation of the standards.

You don’t have to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) alone! District, school, and classroom personnel can collaborate and create communities of support toward successful implementation. In this webinar, Judy Carr will provide specific protocols and processes that attendees can use immediately. In addition, participants will: Explore questions and processes for gaining shared understanding of the standards. Discover how to become critical consumers. Learn how to use data and engage in "Data Dialogues" as a key element of collaboration. Learn how to support learners to successfully attain the CCSS.

Too often, high standards and a whole child approach are seen as opposite ends of the education spectrum. In this webinar, Molly McCloskey debunks the myth of standards versus support and shares the relationship between the Common Core State Standards and a school improvement approach that ensures each child, in each school, in each community, is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. Going beyond the silos of too many school reform efforts, this webinar will explore integration, collaboration, and comprehensive framing rooted in high expectations for student and staff achievement.

How do the Common Core English language arts standards differ from their predecessors? What do they emphasize? What are logical focus points for early implementation? The English and language arts standards depart radically from their predecessors with their insistence on text complexity and close reading skills.

This session, presented by David Liben from Student Achievement Partners, offered a look at various aspects of text complexity: how it is defined by the standards, as well as a range of measurement tools—including some newly developed and tested by the Race to the Text project—and how to use the tools for professional development. The focus on text complexity, close reading, and informational text has clear education implications as well. The presenter will examine some strategic focus areas for literacy instruction and explore ideas for bringing all constituencies to a fuller understanding of the Common Core standards and the features that make text complex.

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (ELA) and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical
Subjects contains four strands: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language. These four strands are represented in
the National Standards for Learning Languages by the Communication standards (interpersonal, interpretive, and
presentational) and the level of proficiency demonstrated. In addition, the standards of the other four goals areas for learning
languages – Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities – also support and are aligned with the Common Core.
These standards describe the expectations to ensure all students are college-, career-, and world-ready.

The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts shift the balance of literature in the elementary grades to 50 percent informational texts and 50 percent literature. This balance is important in preparing students for later grades and non-literary texts.

Task Description: This task asks students to recognize geometric patterns, visualize and extend the pattern, generate a non-linear sequence, develop and algebraic generalization that models the growth of a quadratic function and verify the inverse relationship of the quadratic relationship. The Aussie Fir Tree task is a culminating task for a 2-3 week unit on algebra that uses the investigation of growing patterns as a vehicle to teach students to visualize, identify and describe real world mathematical relationships. Students who demonstrate mastery of the unit are able to solve the Aussie Fir Tree task in one class period.

Task Description: Students are asked to demonstrate the different possible combinations when placing 6 books on 2 shelves. Books on Shelves is the culminating task in a multi-week unit focused on operations and algebraic thinking. Students demonstrate mastery by completing the Books on Shelves task in one class period.

Task Description: This task is embedded in a 3-4 week unit that uses the topic of animal cognition as a means to teach students how to analyze and navigate informational texts, as well as study the purposeful decisions an author makes to best convey his/her point of view in writing. This unit contains a series of 3 tasks that build in complexity. This task asks students to read an informational text and write an essay in which they use textual evidence to explain how the author develops his/her point of view on the question, "Can animals think?" Responses must adhere to standard English grammar and usage convention, focusing on standard capitalization.

Task Description: The mathematics of the task involves understanding the meaning of base ten and using that understanding to compare the magnitude of numbers. The number line is used as a tool to help articulate understanding of base ten. The mathematics of the unit involves understanding the meaning of base ten and using that understanding to solve number and real life problems. The number line is used as a tool to help articulate understanding of base ten and to solve problems using addition and subtraction of numbers less than one hundred. The focus is on the big idea of going around groups of ten. Strategies will involve applying number properties including distributive, associative, and commutative.

Task Description: This task asks students to visualize geometric shapes, identify plane figures and their attributes, prove triangles are congruent, determine the area of quadrilaterals, make geometric conjectures and justify geometric arguments. This 3-4 week unit uses an investigation of rigid motions and geometric theorems to teach students how to verify congruence of plane figures and use the implications of congruence to solve problems and create proofs about geometric relationships. Students will demonstrate mastery of the content by making sense of the Company Logo Performance Task and persevering in solving the task.

Task Description: The tasks in the unit access the full range of Depth of Knowledge, including Recalling and Recognizing, Using Procedures, Explaining, Concluding and Making Connections, Extensions and Justifying. This packet contains a curriculum-embedded CCLS aligned task and instructional supports. The task is embedded in a 4-5 week unit on interpreting and linking representations, modeling situations, solving non-routine problems and justifying arguments of multiplication and division.

This unit builds directly from prior work on proportional reasoning in 6th and 7th grades, and extends the ideas more formally into the realm of algebra. Task Description: This sequence of tasks ask students to demonstrate and effectively communicate their mathematical understanding of ratios and proportional relationships, with a focus on expressions and equations. Their strategies and executions should meet the content, thinking processes and qualitative demands of the tasks.

Task Description: Students use fractional parts of a whole, properties of shapes, congruency, and computation using fractions and money to determine the fair value and total worth of eight fields. This approximately 4-week unit centers around understanding fractional parts of a whole and using fractions and mixed numbers to solve problems.

Task Description: This task asks students to write an informative/explanatory essay, demonstrating knowledge they have gained about the science of forensic anthropology. Student must be able to determine the central idea of a text and analyze its development through the course of multiple texts and differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information. The Forensic Anthropology task is embedded in a 4-week curricular unit on informational texts in which students read four informational texts on the subject of forensic anthropology. The students complete three assessments tasks that build in complexity and are sequenced to scaffold student learning.