1. Prior to this class, what experience/exposure have you had to national/state/local standards?
2. What are your concerns about the standards?
Last semester for my fiction for adolescence class we had to pick a project to do. I choose to write a lesson plan; with that choice i had to find CSO's that related to my lesson. While research and typing up my unit plan for the book Speak I found that my lesson plan covered many CSO's. I found this project to be very beneficial. I was able to incorporate a book i enjoyed with many fun and student oriented activities that covered a wide range of CSO's. As a teacher I now know that one activity may be able to cover a few different CSO's. This will be important if I need to cover a certain amount throughout the school year.
My only concern is that I will not be able to come up with an activity that incorporates a state standard or CSO's. However,with the use of technology today I'm sure between internet and my cohort I will be able to find something that my student can do that they will find useful that incorporates a standard.
Does covering CSO's and state standards such as SAT's in a high school English classroom help students to do better in their high school classes as well as their state standards?
Good question! I have always assumed that the folks who come up with those CSO's had been actual teachers with classroom experience, but I must admit sometimes I was concerned that some of the things I considered important were left out of the CSO's. But for the most part, I have to believe that the CSO's and state standards do help the teacher cover material that will promote learning and benefit the student. It is amazing how you can cover several CSO's in one lesson, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about CSO's. Though I have not ever had my own classroom, I can imagine it would be hard to try to incorporate all the CSO's into each lesson. It seems that CSO's would be a good skeleton, or rough idea to work with, but I also have my wonderings about them.
ReplyDeleteI'm also concerned about being able to cover all of the CSOs throughout the school year. And in response to your question, I think that yes, to a certain extent, covering CSOs helps students do to better in other classes. For example, one CSO that I can think of off the top of my head is to practice the different steps of drafting for essays. Because the students will practice this in the English class, they will have a better understanding and ability to perform well on essays for other classes.
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