Have You Looked At the Common Core Anchor Papers for Every Grade Level? If You Haven't You Should No Matter What You Teach . . .

http://educationnorthwest.org/resource/common-core-state-standards-samples-student-writing-scored-61-trait-rubric

Here's the link and now the suggestion.  You find out some interesting things when you look at curriculum/test objectives beyond your grade level.  My own experience serves as a telling example.  I kept going to meetings for language arts/English teachers and hearing 9th grade English teachers wondering what 8th grade teachers were doing to produce such unprepared students.  I listened and wondered what the disconnect might be because I had the same concerns about my 7th grade colleagues.

My next step was to pull up the objectives for the different grade levels and that's how I spotted the disconnect.  Students in the 9th grade were expected to do more sophisticated grammar, writing and literary analysis tasks and the leap from the objectives in 8th grade to 9th grade were huge so it was easy for me to understand my colleagues' frustration.

Imagine learning as climbing stairs and that in each grade you climb a step and are ready in the next year to climb another step, but because of the way the objectives are written you will need two leap up two steps to become proficient in the next year.  The sequencing of objectives is disjointed. That is what I discovered between 8th and 9th grade. I upped my expectations insuring my students would be better prepared.

The result was that my students came back reporting greater success and less frustration and some of the 9th grade teachers commented that the students were better prepared.

Don't be passive and wait for training modules and the like to be prepared for you.  You can't count on them to provide the complete picture for what is going on in the grade levels around your own and what holes you may want to plug.

I found the web site that used to score writing prompts for free - nifty to score your own writing and your students'. Now Holt has it as a paid service - if your school already uses Holt products - you may be able to get the service for free.  Check it out - it really is excellent in terms of instant feedback and giving annotated advice. Back to my theme: Be sure to look into the objectives of other grade levels (use the link).

If you're feeling really powerful - talk to the librarian about getting some Project Based Learning together.
I worked closely with my librarians throughout my career and have found the book lovers in school libraries, public libraries, chain stores, independent stores are remarkably helpful and resourceful researchers so use these next few days to reach out to these people and make connections.  I even found the book buyer for my local Walmart to be an expert in YA literature - and it never hurts to ask about grants.

Link to Holt - http://my.hrw.com/support/hos/index.htm