Sigh! When I started teaching in the 70's our objectives were very similar to The Common Core. I just went and briefly reviewed the CC homepage. Starting my career as a sixth-grade teacher, we had no limitations or expectations that we would explicitly follow any Teacher Edition and I have been itching to recommend a return to the use of basal texts.
At Hayfield, we used a read-aloud program from the University of Nebraska provided by our principal. Every grade level used the program. There were specific novels or trade books paired with art projects and discussion questions. This mitigated the argument that basal texts made students dislike reading.
Reading over the criticisms of basal texts I found via Google - I have to respectfully disagree that most of the problems aren't fixable. CC emphasizes non-fiction so the theme approach of basal texts and inclusion of non-fiction, multiple genres, charts, graphs, science articles and author bios should help teachers retain their sanity as they endeavor to find all the non-fiction materials needed to support the requirements of CC.
Transitioning to the requirements to immerse students into a more complex world view will be easier if teachers have similar starting points and then can develop workarounds for the problems that all text books have with scope and sequence issues. Principals and school districts with thoughtful instructional support teams can help teachers develop and share ways to pair texts (possibly on IPads or other tech devices) to target the underlying goal of CC which is to prepare students for a complex world.
Students face challenging tests that ask them to move to higher order thinking and (one kind of amusing requirement to me) is to compare/contrast written material to visual presentations of the same title (or in the same general field of study) and defend which is more effective. It's amusing on a few levels - we've worried for so long about the negative effects of watching too much television and/or movies and squabbled over the death of students' love of reading and now we promote writing in-depth essays about it.
If you get a chance to review the rather wooden anchor papers and the expositions explaining why these are effective exemplars, you should be able to spot the pattern underlying these compositions.
Mark Twain might have a field day with all the unnecessary verbiage: I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.
- Mark Twain in a Letter to D. W. Bowser, 3/20/1880 http://www.dowse.com/articles/twains-quotes.html accessed 7/13/2014
Additionally, as I indicated in an earlier post, teachers must really be on guard for the tricks text book companies play on us - changing very little even from grade level to grade level in terms of repeating objectives and boring students to death or drilling them to death. The plus in using a strong basal program is the range of materials from across multiple disciplines and we must push companies to keep providing us with up-to-date information, written materials and effective teaching tools.
Reading aloud every day to students even in high school is a must! Find books or articles you love and share! That's how you encourage students to become life-long readers. Classy teachers are passionate teachers.
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