Confusing Common Core Curriculum!!

I have to be honest, I have never really been involved in a project other than the small one’s that I embark on with my wonderful second grade students.  However, this year there has been a big change in the curriculum program in my state along with many other states in the United States.  We have currently switched to the Common Core Curriculum (CC).  There can be one or more projects within a program to accomplish specific results that are related to the programs goals (Portny et al., 2008).  This has been a big project/program change not just for me but for many teachers in my district.   

At the end of 2011-2012 school the K-3 teachers were introduced to the CC.  We were handed a Common Core Curriculum Map book and trained for two days. The CC Curriculum Map is a guide for us to follow when planning.  We were then asked to go back to our schools and work with our teams to map out the first six weeks of school for the following year. At this point I have to admit that we were all very confused and wondered how we were going to take on this big change.  At my school specifically we created an assessment map.  We use the assessment map to help us connect the standards to the activities that we plan for our classes and to help keep us on track and when to give our formative and summative assessments. It also helps my team and I stay on track with each other. At our first meeting my team and I decided to dive head first into the CC Curriculum Map and plan out our first six weeks using our assessments maps.   I really felt like this did not go well, even though we had the academic coach supporting us and trying to help, I still felt really confused about where our kids were going with the CC or for that matter where we the teachers were going with it.      

A week before the 2012-2013 school year started, my team and I were able to sit down and rework our assessment maps.  In doing so we were really trying to use the CC Curriculum Map for our lessons.  However, when we started teaching from our assessment map using the lessons planned out in the CC Curriculum Map lessons started to fall apart.  I have to be honest; I felt like I had forgotten how to teach.  So we went back to the drawing board.  We were able to link the Common Core State Standards to the lessons that we know how to teach and integrate science and social studies into our lessons.  Now we create our assessment maps using the standards that are mapped out for the six week unit according to the CC Curriculum Map to help us stay on track.  This program will be on going.  Next year grades 4-6 will be picking up the Common Core Curriculum.  It has been a big change for all of us!!

The most frustrating part about the program was that there was not enough training available and the basic operations were not clear.  I believe that the project/program would have started out successful if we had a clear understanding of the CC Curriculum, the programs plans and the resources we needed available to us on time.  Most of the resources were given to us a few weeks after school started.          

Resources

Portny, E., Mantel,J., Meredith, R., Shafer, M., Sutton M., & Kramer, E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.