Connecticut State Department of Education

Connecticut Core Standards

Overview Materials - Curriculum Designers

The Impact of Common Core State Standards on Curriculum Design

  • Illuminating Standards Video Series – What would it look like if standards were met with depth, and imagination? The Illuminating Standards Project, a collaborative project of Expeditionary Learning and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, showcases a video collection of long-term, interdisciplinary, arts-infused, community-connected projects illustrating how to make standards come alive in project-based learning. The videos could be used in a professional development setting to have staff examine the relationship between meeting the demands of state standards and the creation of powerful learning experiences for students.  (centerforstudentwork.elschools.org)
  • Connecticut Common Core Standards Toolbox — This Power Point presentation explains the EQuIP review process, Classroom Look Fors and how to assess and debrief classroom lessons.
  • What Makes Instruction Aligned - The Instructional Practice Guide suite of tools focus not on every pedagogical move in the classroom, but on the specific actions teachers and students take to address the Key Shifts required by the Standards. To understand aligned practice, you must first understand the Key Shifts. (achievethecore.org) 
  • Building Knowledge – provides resources for exploring the shifts required by the Common Core State Standards as well as a link to the Text Set Project. (achievethecore.org) 
  • Finding Overlap in the Common Core Math, Language Arts, and  National Science Standards (Education Week, October 2014)
  • A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas – by the National Research Council, 2012 offers free electronic access to the NRC Report upon which the NGSS were based. It is recommended reading for teachers trying to understand NGSS. (nap.edu) 
  • The Coherence Map shows the connections between Common Core State Standards for mathematics. It illustrates how to build student understanding by linking together concepts within and across grades, identifies gaps in a student’s knowledge by tracing a standard back through its logical pre-requisites, and helps the teacher to visualize and understand how supporting standards relate to the major work of the grade. Standards are illustrated with tasks, lessons, and assessments, as well as excerpts from the Progressions documents. (achievethecore.org)
  • Relationships and Convergences—a Venn Diagram which shows how the practice standards overlap in Math, Language Arts, and Science (ell.stanford.edu)

Common Core State Standards

ELA/LITERACY

MATH

EQuIP Resources for Common Core Alignment

ALL SUBJECTS

  • EQuIP e-Learning Modules - The purpose of this e-Learning module is to develop the learner's knowledge and understanding of the EQuIP Quality Review Process, which is designed to increase the ability of educators – and educational leaders – to identify and create quality instructional materials aligned to the Common Core State Standards. Specifically, learners will explore what effective observations and criterion-based feedback look like and experience the process of reviewing instructional materials using the EQuIP Quality Review criteria, rating scales, and rating descriptors. (achieve.org) 
  • The EQuIP Student Work Protocol is designed to establish or articulate the relationship between student work and the quality and alignment of instructional materials that previously have been reviewed using the EQuIP quality review process. Focusing on this relationship enables educators to develop a common understanding of the challenging work required by the CCSS. (achieve.org) 
  • An Introduction to the EQuIP Rubric – This webinar explores the development of the EQuIP rubric, how teachers use it to improve their practice and transition to the Common Core, and resources available to help teachers make this transition. (LearnZillion and Achieve)
  • Strengthening Lessons for the Common Core – This video explores the role of the EQuIP rubrics in instructional planning, calibration and what teachers might learn from evaluating lessons together. (Achieve and Teaching Channel)
  • EQuIP: Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products (achieve.org)

ELA/LITERACY

MATH

SCIENCE

  • EQuIP Rubric for Lessons & Units: Science – The NGSS EQuIP rubric describes a set of criteria for high-quality science lessons and units.
  • What can the EQuIP Rubric Do For You? – This blog hosted on Teaching Channel provides an in-depth discussion of the NGSS EQuIP rubric as well as links to websites and resources to facilitate implementation of NGSS in the classroom.
  • NGSS Video Series –This video series, produced through a collaboration between Achieve and Teaching Channel, helps educators gain a deeper understanding of the features and shifts that are inherent in the NGSS. Videos showcase explicit “look-fors” used to evaluate the quality of instructional materials using the NGSS EQuIP rubric.

Common Core Implementation for All Students—Curriculum Considerations