The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that established a single set of educational standards for Grades K–12. This initiative was requested by the Council of Chief State School Officers, but some states have opted out.
The purpose of establishing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) was to improve learning outcomes and better prepare students for college and careers.
The implementation of the CCSS presents unique challenges for English learners. The Pearson English Learning System brings together assessment, instruction, and professional development to help meet these standards by providing appropriate scaffolding and practice as students also acquire English.
Meeting the CCSS with the Pearson English Learning System
What are the Common Core State Standards?
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This guide introduces how the Pearson English Learning System helps you teach and allows students to practice the standards.
It is important to understand the structure and organization of the standards. The standards comprise three main sections: a comprehensive K–5 section and two content area-specific sections for Grades 6–12—one for English Language Arts and one for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. The K–5 standards integrate history/social studies/science, and technical subjects into one set of English Language Arts (ELA) standards.
Each section of the CCSS is divided into strands. ELA strands include Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language.
Each strand is headed by a strand-specific set of College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards that is identical across all grades and content areas. Each of these CCR anchor standards has an accompanying grade-specific standard.
You can find a copy the CCR anchor standards and your grade-level CCSS in Appendix A of your Teacher’s Edition for Cornerstone, Keystone, or Language Central for elementary and secondary students.
Each reading standard falls under one of the following categories:
• Key Ideas and Details• Craft and Structure• Integration of Knowledge and Ideas• Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
The reading standards have a strong emphasis on reading comprehension. You should expect your students to read a variety of classic and contemporary literature, as well as a range of informational texts.
The K–5 reading standards also address the following foundational skills:
• Print Concepts• Phonological Awareness• Phonics and Word Recognition• Fluency
The CCSS focus on three types of writing: argument, informational/explanatory, and narratives. Each writing standard falls under one of the following categories:
• Text Types and Purposes• Production and Distribution of Writing• Research to Build and Present Knowledge• Range of Writing
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Definitions of the standards’ three text types
ArgumentArguments are used for many purposes—to change the reader’s point of view, to bring about some action on the reader’s part, or to ask the reader to accept the writer’s explanation or evaluation of a concept, issue, or problem. An argument is a reasoned, logical way of demonstrating that the writer’s position, belief, or conclusion is valid. In English language arts, students make claims about the worth or meaning of a literary work or works. They defend their interpretations or judgments with evidence from the text(s) they are writing about. In history/social studies, students analyze evidence from multiple primary and secondary sources to advance a claim that is best supported by the evidence, and they argue for a historically or empirically situated interpretation. In science, students make claims in the form of statements or conclusions that answer questions or address problems. Using data in a scientifically ac-ceptable form, students marshal evidence and draw on their understanding of scientific concepts to argue in support of their claims. Although young children are not able to produce fully developed logical arguments, they develop a variety of methods to extend and elaborate their work by providing examples, offering reasons for their assertions, and explaining cause and effect. These kinds of expository structures are steps on the road to argument. In grades K–5, the term “opinion” is used to refer to this developing form of argument.
Informational/Explanatory WritingInformational/explanatory writing conveys information accurately. This kind of writing serves one or more closely related purposes: to increase readers’ knowledge of a subject, to help readers better understand a procedure or pro-cess, or to provide readers with an enhanced comprehension of a concept. Informational/explanatory writing address-es matters such as types (What are the different types of poetry?) and components (What are the parts of a motor?); size, function, or behavior (How big is the United States? What is an X-ray used for? How do penguins find food?); how things work (How does the legislative branch of government function?); and why things happen (Why do some authors blend genres?). To produce this kind of writing, students draw from what they already know and from primary and secondary sources. With practice, students become better able to develop a controlling idea and a coherent fo-cus on a topic and more skilled at selecting and incorporating relevant examples, facts, and details into their writing. They are also able to use a variety of techniques to convey information, such as naming, defining, describing, or dif-ferentiating different types or parts; comparing or contrasting ideas or concepts; and citing an anecdote or a scenario to illustrate a point. Informational/explanatory writing includes a wide array of genres, including academic genres such as literary analyses, scientific and historical reports, summaries, and précis writing as well as forms of workplace and functional writing such as instructions, manuals, memos, reports, applications, and résumés. As students advance through the grades, they expand their repertoire of informational/explanatory genres and use them effectively in a variety of disciplines and domains.
Although information is provided in both arguments and explanations, the two types of writing have different aims. Arguments seek to make people believe that something is true or to persuade people to change their beliefs or be-havior. Explanations, on the other hand, start with the assumption of truthfulness and answer questions about why or how. Their aim is to make the reader understand rather than to persuade him or her to accept a certain point of view. In short, arguments are used for persuasion and explanations for clarification.
Like arguments, explanations provide information about causes, contexts, and consequences of processes, phenom-ena, states of affairs, objects, terminology, and so on. However, in an argument, the writer not only gives information but also presents a case with the “pros” (supporting ideas) and “cons” (opposing ideas) on a debatable issue. Be-cause an argument deals with whether the main claim is true, it demands empirical descriptive evidence, statistics, or definitions for support. When writing an argument, the writer supports his or her claim(s) with sound reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
Narrative WritingNarrative writing conveys experience, either real or imaginary, and uses time as its deep structure. It can be used for many purposes, such as to inform, instruct, persuade, or entertain. In English language arts, students produce narratives that take the form of creative fictional stories, memoirs, anecdotes, and autobiographies. Over time, they learn to provide visual details of scenes, objects, or people; to depict specific actions (for example, movements, gestures,
Creative Writing beyond NarrativeThe narrative category does not include all of the pos-sible forms of creative writing, such as many types of poetry. The Standards leave the inclusion and evaluation of other such forms to teacher discretion.
The Speaking and Listening Standards emphasize student accountability in listening and speaking activities. Each standard falls under either Comprehension and Collaboration or Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas.
Language is the last ELA strand. Language standards fall into one of the following categories:
• Conventions of Standard English• Knowledge of Language• Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
You can identify individual, grade-specific standards by their strand, grade, and number (or number and letter, where applicable). In this Keystone example below, RL.7.1. stands for Reading, Literature, Grade 7, Standard 1.
The ELA standards are supported by information in three appendices in the CCSS. Taken together, the standards and the appendices define college and career readiness at each grade span and will inform future student assessments.
Appendix A provides research and explanations that support the standards. Appendix B provides samples of the texts that students should read at each grade span and the kinds of tasks they should be able to do. Appendix C provides writing samples for each genre and grade span.
Cornerstone, Keystone, and Language Central for elementary and secondary students provide CCSS implementation support each and every day. Take a look at the instructional support that these programs provide in the Teacher’s Editions.
Next, look at how the Pearson English Learning System—found in the instructional programs Cornerstone, Keystone, and Language Central for elementary and secondary students— supports the CCSS.
The Teacher’s Editions in all of the Pearson English Learning System instructional programs contain CCSS at point of use in the teacher wrap. These boxes identify the specific pages where the listed standards are presented and/or practiced in the content.
CCSS for ELA Appendices
CCSS in Cornerstone, Keystone, and Language Central
Planners The Teacher’s Edition of Cornerstone Pockets features Unit Planner pages that organize all of the references to the CCSS found throughout the daily plan pages.
In the Unit Planner in Cornerstone Grades 1 through 5, references in Teaching the Standards highlight which standards you explicitly teach in that section of the instruction. The Practicing the Standards section highlights which Common Core State Standards you should reteach, recycle, and apply.
Each Unit Overview in the Teacher’s Edition of Keystone contains Teaching the Standards and Practicing the Standards CCSS references. In Language Central for elementary and secondary, you can find the CCSS in each Weekly Planner.
The CCSS are incorporated in the reading selections of all of these programs. The selections include both informational and contemporary literature.
Specific components of the Pearson English Learning system put all together provide opportunities to help students meet the CCSS by providing appropriate scaffolding and practice as they acquire English.
Specific components of the Pearson English Learning System provide opportunities to help your students meet the CCSS by providing appropriate scaffolding and practice as they also acquire English. The professional development resources of the SIOP® in Practice features in the Teacher’s Editions and the A+RISE® Strategies provide additional teaching strategies and techniques to meet the standards. In this Cornerstone example below, the SIOP® in Practice focuses on Feature 15: Promote Higher-Order Thinking Skills and supports student strategy use by providing questions and tasks that encourage critical thinking. This helps students meet the Reading Standards for Informational Text in Grade 4. The use of the A+RISE® activity related to comprehension can help students meet the Writing Standard to recall relevant information.
AIMSweb® allows you to assess your students’ progress toward meeting the standards.
In this example below, you can use AIMSweb to evaluate students in the Reading Standards for Foundational Skills in the Fluency category.
You can use the Stanford English Language Proficiency Test (SELP 2) to assess students in the areas of listening, reading, comprehension, writing, and speaking skills. In this example below, the SELP 2 assesses students on the standard of writing.
