Let’s face it, weak rivets notwithstanding, the Titanic wouldn’t have sunk if the iceberg had been spotted in time. And let’s face it, the CCSS won’t be classroom-worthy unless practitioners chart our course. Depend on Michael Smith, Deborah Appleman, and Jeff Wilhelm to help you navigate through some potentially treacherous waters.
Uncommon Core puts us on high-alert about some outright dangerous misunderstandings looming around so-called “standards-aligned” instruction, then shows us how to steer past them—all in service of meeting the real intent of the Common Core. Smith, Appleman, and Wilhelm counter with teaching suggestions that are true to the research and true to our students, including how:
- Reader-based approaches can complement text-based ones
- Prereading activities can help students meet the strategic and conceptual demands texts place on them
- Strategy instruction can result in a careful and critical analysis of individual texts while providing transferable understandings
- Inquiry units around essential questions can generate meaningful conversation and higher-order thinking about those texts
- Selection criteria that consider interpretive complexity can take us so much farther than those that consider textual complexity alone
Given the number of strategies, lesson ideas, and activities in the book, Uncommon Core is really less about the standards and more about timeless, excellent teaching and how to use it like never before to meet the Core ideals. Let’s put instruction where it belongs: back in the hands of the experts.
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Author Bio
Jeffrey Wilhelm, professor of English education at Boise State University and a middle and high school teacher for 15 years, has authored and co-authored two dozen professional books and resources, including Engaging Readers and Writers With Inquiry and Improving Comprehension With Think-Aloud Strategies.
Deborah Appleman is Professor of Educational Studies and Director of the Summer Writing Program at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Her primary interests include adolescent response to literature, multicultural literature, and the teaching of literary theory to high school students. A high school English teacher for nine years, Deborah works weekly with high school teachers and students in both urban and suburban schools. She is the author of several books including Reading for Themselves.
Michael Smith is a professor in Temple University's College of Education. In his research he works to understand how experienced readers read and talk about literary texts, how adolescents read and talk about texts both in and out of school, and how teachers can help prepare students to have more meaningful transactions when they read, interests he developed during his eleven years of teaching high school English.