Sunday, December 30, 2012

Common Core, Common Shmore

 I Need to Sort This Common Core Stuff Out!

I am still fumbling around the Common Core Standards in my planning.  In particular, what exactly do they mean?  Where do i fall short?  Where do the students fall short when they come in to my class?

The PDF document that is provided is not very user friendly in my opinion.  I'm more of an Excel guy.  I like to search, sort, filter, report etc....

I did a search to see if anyone had already done the hard work of getting this mess into an Excel document.  Even though I teach in New Jersey, I looked at the Illinois BOE site and found a pdf with almost exactly what I was searching for.

Using that PDF, I was able to copy and paste into MS Excel and then add some fields with additional descriptions and sort fields and end up with a much more usable document (in my opinion).

If you like Excel and use the Mathematics common Core Standards, you might like this.

Common Core Standards (MS EXCEL)



Please share any input you might have to make this better, and feel free to link back to any docs or edits you make.  :-)

How do I plan on using this?  Well...

  • I will be adding fields that specify when I cover each of the standards I am responsible for
  • Add field to specify which HS course (Alg1, Alg2, Geom, Precalc, etc...) is responsible for each standard for better planning.
  • Determine which standards students fall short in when they enter my class and leave my class.
  • Note which previously "mastered" standards might need some additional focus.  Share that info with other teachers for their planning.
  • Field feedback from other teachers about which standards students fall short in for better planning.
I can think of a lot more to do with it and will share when I finish killing this monster.

Glenn also has another version of a similar spreadsheet.  Worth checking out!