Common Core in the Library

The Idaho Department of Education Common Core site has a number of good resources.  In particular, there is a Communications toolkit that has brochures and other resources aimed at parents who have questions about the standards and why Idaho has adopted them.

Are you looking for maps?  National Geographic has maps!  Along with Common Core resources of all sorts, in true National Geographic fashion, there are maps galore on this site.  Maps, both historical and current, are a fantastic way to bring depth to lessons, in both the library and the classroom.  Consider using them for themed displays in the library.

The Common Core Teacher Institute at Education Nation give some wonderful examples of close reading lessons.  Use these techniques yourself, or share them with your teachers.  If you explore the rest of the website, there is information on many different topics for all school age groups.

Mary Ehrenworth, author and faculty member at Teacher College at Columbia University, has developed some genre specific Courses of Study in fiction for teen readers.   By using these scaffolded lists,  a student can start at his/her own reading level with genres s/he already likes to improve reading skills.  The student can then apply those stronger skills to nonfiction texts.  Some of the higher level books (marked with *) are intended for young adult audiences and have material that may be inappropriate for younger readers.

The Reading & Writing Workshop is part of Teacher College at Columbia University.  This site has excellent resources and grouped text sets on a variety of subjects.  Some of the links have changed, but it is easy to search the linked sites for the articles since the titles are listed in the set.

This blog is all about nonfiction and the Common Core in the library.  It has excellent ideas, advice and suggestions for school libraries preparing to support the Common Core.  It also has some suggestion on ways to tempt students with nonfiction materials.

Library of Congress has a huge collection of primary doucments to incorporate into Common Core aligned lessons.  Educators can use individual documents, or they can take advantage of dozens of document sets that are grouped by topic.  Also helpful are educational modules that guide patrons through steps to find sources more quickly.

Part of the National Archives, this site provides correspondence and other documents written by or received by some of the founding fathers, including George Washington, Benjemin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and more.  The archives can be searched by author, recipient or time period.

This site has not only the text of the 100 most significant American documents, but also images of the original documents so students can see what official documents looked like before typewriters and printers.

Video of real teachers in real classrooms.  Topics cover most subjects, including Digital Literacy and different aspects of what the Common Core looks like in a lesson.    Users can register on the site for updates and new materials that is sent via email.   The videos are very useful for new ideas and inspiration and there is a Q & A section where users can ask for advice from the Teaching Channel community.