Five “Core” Instructional Practices Educators Should Use to Help Students Master the Common Core State Standards

The Common Core State Standards chart a bold and compelling vision for moving beyond the rhetoric of college and career readiness to making certain students actually are ready. The Core Standards have the potential to significantly increase students’ learning but not without considering how students are taught them. When the Core standards were released, we began to consider what type of instructional practices would be needed to help ensure students mastered them, so we developed the Insight Core Framework to clearly spell them out. 

The Insight Core Framework is comprised of five “Core Practices,” derived from the “Big Ideas” in the Common Core, which are concrete, strategic actions teachers can take to help orient their overall approach to teaching with the Common Core. The Core Practices include:

1.    Know the Discipline Well

2.    Prioritize Evidence Over Opinion

3.    Grow and Improve Students’ Knowledge Base

4.    Assess Progress Towards Mastery

5.    Promote Intellectual Risk Taking and Persistence

Know the Discipline Well

·      Models precise content knowledge

·      Models and uses academic vocabulary

·      Uses resources that are high quality and appropriately complex

Prioritize Evidence Over Opinion

·      Asks questions that require evidence-based answers

·      Creates learning activities that require the use of evidence when building arguments, making claims or explaining thinking

Grow and Improve Students’ Knowledge Base

·      Makes connections within and across disciplines

·      Provides assignments that require the application of knowledge for real purposes

·      Requires the exchange and analysis of multiple perspectives

Assess Progress Towards Mastery

·      Provides multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding

·      Provides timely and effective feedback

·      Makes adjustments based on a variety of student data

Promote Intellectual Risk Taking and Persistence

·      Builds a supportive and challenging learning environment

·      Builds a climate that encourages academic curiosity

·      Uses time, space and routines to allow for deep engagement with content

For a complete explanation of each core practices visit www.insightcoreframework.com.

The Four “Big Ideas” in the Common Core State Standards You Should Know

Over the past couple of years, we've been studying the Common Core State Standards in order to help educators implement them well and put students on a strong course for success in careers and college. Part of our work resulted in the development of the Insight Core Framework that assists educators understand the instructional practices needed to help students learn and master the Common Core standards.

Instead of jumping straight to developing a list of instructional strategies, as is often the case, we took a step back and distilled what we thought were important “Big Ideas” inherent in the Common Core that would help teachers and those that support them better understand and increase their effectiveness in implementing them. We then used these “Big Ideas,” in the Insight Core Framework, to guide the development of a set of instructional practices we believe will help students achieve mastery of the Common Core.

The Common Core Big Ideas, explained in greater depth below, include:  Relevance, Rigor, Coherence/Focus, and Mastery.

1.    Relevance

Knowledge is never just for knowledge’s sake. Students need to see the connections between what they learn inside the classroom to what they experience outside of it. Relevance is what keeps students engaged while persisting through complex tasks because they see value and purpose in it—for both personal and academic pursuits.  Academic relevance involves helping students realize that some content helps them to understand the discipline well. Personal relevance means maintaining and nurturing students’ natural intellectual curiosity and helping them connect content within their personal context.

2.    Rigor

Within the context of the Core Standards rigor means developing higher order thinking capabilities to engage students in complex content immediately. The immediate jump into complex tasks and material may defy the common practice of “scaffolding” instruction from simple to complex tasks. Rather, the Core Standards require students to master basic skills and foundational concepts while simultaneously digging deeper into the content so that each process reinforces the other.

3.    Cohesion and Focus

Cohesion and focus were a central design consideration for the Common Core authors. Focus refers, in large part, to keeping the standards sets robust and limited in number. Practically, this means that teachers will have the time for teaching complex subject matter and engage students deeply in it. Focus lends itself to cohesion. Cohesion, in the Common Core context, refers to how the Standards are arranged over time and how the Core Standards build students’ conceptual knowledge.

4.    Mastery

When students leave our public education system, they should be equipped with a repertoire of skills that will allow them to be successful in whatever path they choose. This type of flexibility with skills and knowledge only comes from preparation focused on mastery, not coverage. The attention to focus and cohesion of the Core standards should help teachers manage time, space, and resources to allow students at all levels of performance the opportunity to master the standards. Helping students achieve mastery means both teaching so that they learn complex subject matter but also that they approach learning with an ethic towards mastery.

 

Our work on the ground with educators continuously brings us back to these “Big Ideas.” We continue to wrestle with them, modify them, and think of ways to advance our understanding of them.  We’d welcome your feedback, please provide it at www.insightcoreframework.com.