4 Steps to Instructional Excellence What is a culture of instructional excellence? It’s a place where teachers and administrators focus on providing excellent instruction for students. It’s a place where everyone knows what excellence looks and feels like, and the whole team supports the goal of obtaining it. Dr. Edwin Feulner, president of The Heritage…
How do EDI and Common Core Standards work together? Let us begin with understanding the terminology to avoid miscommunication. Common Core refers to educational standards created at the national level. Common Core standards are organized by subject and grade. Many teachers have been misled to believe that Common Core requires inquiry learning, project-based learning, or…
The Common Core State Standards include literacy standards that are to be used in history, science, and other technical subjects. These standards focus on developing literacy outside of the English classroom beginning in the 6th grade. There are three major components to these: Reading in History; Reading in Science and Technical Subjects; and Writing…
Narrower and Deeper Look at the two 5th grade assessment questions above. The first question is from a 2012 California Standards Test. The second question is from a 2014 Smarter Balanced Common Core assessment. In the first question, students only need to remember the formula for volume and complete the calculation. In the second question,…
Learning Objectives Guides are digital books that help teachers shift from just reading state standards to quickly creating lesson plans that focus on the required skills and content. Guides are available for Common Core, Next Generation Science, Literacy, and more for K-12 teachers. View All Guides Frequently at DataWORKS, we are asked what it takes…
Welcome to the first of our series FAQ blogs! We just started this blog, so we don’t have many questions from our readers yet. What we do have is a list of questions that we receive regularly as we provide training and materials for schools, districts, and educators in our everyday work. Today, we are going…
Teachers throughout the country are preparing their students for the new Common Core Assessments. This does not mean they are teaching to the test; rather, it means they are evaluating what kinds of questions are being asked – and then deciding how to modify their lessons so the students are ready. This is especially important…