English Language Arts Common Core State Standards

 
In the back of my head, I've always known there are standards to which we teach to, but it's hard to remember that they are the core of everything that we do in the classroom. In my head, I'm solely teaching To Kill a Mockingbird or solely having students write an essay that helps back up what we are currently reading in class. I have to constantly remind myself that the piece of literature I am focusing on at the time is just the means to get to the standard--it's my vehicle.  I suppose this is the very reason why they beat so heavily into teacher candidates the importance of standards, how to implement them, and how to create targets from them. It should be the number one step in every lesson plan. The means by which we achieve these standards are interchangeable, but the standards remain firm.

 CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.1
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

In order to support the claim that Boo Radley is considered a "mockingbird" within To Kill a Mockingbird, students have to pull quotes from the text that backs up this claim.  There is a skill being utilized alongside simply reading the book and talking about it.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.2
Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Perhaps students read an article about The Crash of '29 and the aftermath of the crash in order to better understand what the characters of Maycomb County were dealing with. Through the analyzation of this article, they would need to tell me how the crash was shaped and shaped America. This aids in the background knowledge of students.