Instructional Support & Alignment Resources

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  • Progressions Documents are under development by members of the CCSS working groups and writing teams (via the Institute for Mathematics and Education) to give educators and curriculum developers information that can help them develop materials for instruction aligned to the standards. In addition, the Council of Great City School, working with IM&E has developed classroom tools for teaching progressions across grade levels, including resources for teaching fractions, which were developed in partnership with Achieve.
  • EQuIP Rubrics and quality review process were developed to evaluate the quality and alignment of lessons and units intended to address the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English Language Arts/literacy. EQuIP builds on the “Tri-State Collaborative” which was led by Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island and facilitated by Achieve. To access the EQuIP Rubrics and learn more about the EQuIP Collaborative and EQuIP E-Learning Modules click here
  • Achieve the Core is a website launched by Student Achievement Partners, an organization founded by authors of the Common Core State Standards, to share free, open-source resources to support Common Core implementation at all levels. Resources currently available include the most recent edition of the Publishers’ Criteria (designed to guide publishers and curriculum developers as they work to ensure alignment with the K-2 and 3-12 standards in English language arts (ELA) and literacy for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects) as well as for K-8 and high school mathematics and a series of tools for addressing the major instructional shifts in the CCSS, as developed by classroom educators.  
  • Achieve and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) launched a new tool hosted at OER Commons for users to rate the quality of open education resources. The tool allows educators to rate the quality of these teaching and student learning resources, align these resources to the CCSS, and evaluate the extent to which the individual resources align to specific standards. (Click here for more on Achieve's work with OER rubrics.)
  • The Teaching Channel aims to provide innovative videos and resources to educators to meet its goals of building teacher-driven professional learning, deepening and improving opportunities for teacher learning, and elevating and celebrating teachers in society. The website includes a growing collection of videos that focus on the CCSS, some of which focus on the background of the Common Core in certain grades/subjects, while others highlight instructional practices aligned to specific standards. 
  • America Achieves features videos of lessons focusing on the instructional shifts within the CCSS, editable lesson plans, and other instructional resources (the creation of a login required).
  • CCSS Model Course Pathways in Mathematics were developed by an Achieve-led expert group to help states and districts decide how to organize the standards into possible high school mathematics courses.
  • The Illustrative Mathematics Project offers guidance to states, assessment consortia, testing companies, and curriculum developers by illustrating the range and types of mathematical work that students will experience in a faithful implementation of the CCSS. The website features a clickable version of the Common Core in mathematics and the first round of "illustrations" of specific standards with associated classroom tasks and solutions. 
  • Achieve, in partnership with the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education (NASDCTEc), led a pilot project to help educators integrate the Common Core State Standards in math and Career Technical Education (CTE) expectations as they modify and develop instructional tasks. For more information on this project and the educator-developed tasks, see here. To access a set of resources to help state, district, or school leaders replicate such an effort, see here.
  • Prior to the development of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics, a series of documents were produced by writers of the Common Core that described a specific topic or concept across a number of grade bands. Classroom tools and videos for teaching fractions progressions across grade levels are available from the Council of the Great City Schools website
  • Beyond the Bubble is a site developed by Stanford History Education Group that includes easy-to-use history assessments, aligned to the CCSS in ELA/Literacy, that feature interactive rubrics, examples of student responses, and relevant links to Library of Congress primary sources.
  • The Council of the Great City Schools and Student Achievement Partners jointly launched the Basal Alignment Project (BAP) in an effort to increase district capacity for writing text-dependent questions to existing ELA textbooks. The new repository is located at "Basal Alignment Project" on the education site Edmodo. Simply create a teacher user name and password and use the group code "etuyrm" to join the Basal Alignment Project group and access the resources.
  • The IDEA Partnership has created a Collection of resources on the Common Core State Standards to provide stakeholders with access to a comprehensive collection of materials and resources to help them further understand the CCSS. Tools include fact sheets, dialogue guides, and videos on how to use the various resources made available.
  • Colorin Colorado includes materials on what the CCSS will mean for ELLs. Resources include articles, research reports, video interviews, and implementation guidelines. The site also features materials developed by the Albuquerque Teachers Federation (funded by their AFT Innovation grant) around ELL/CCSS such as video modules feature teachers from Albuquerque working with Dr. Diane August to create CCSS-aligned lesson plans for ELLs.