Common Core

With everyone focusing on the new Common Core Standards for ELA, I thought about looking through the suggested canon of works. The list is extremely varied and will cause a big shift in what each grade is teaching. Since our textbooks were not designed based on the CCS, I wonder if the state will be helping us to supplement our teaching materials? Who will decide which grade will be teaching a particular work? Will there be a pacing guide for each grade based on the end of year tests? The major shift will be for the students who are in the middle of the transition. For example, a student who studied Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade and should have Macbeth in 11th or 12th grade in our current COS, may miss this wonderful play because of the change. I like to "change it up," so I'm looking forward to studying some different works in preparation for working with the CCS. Here's a list of reading titles for middle and high school listed by the CCS:

6-8th Grade:

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott , 1869
•  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain , 1876
•  “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost , 1915
•  The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper , 1973
•  Dragonwings by Laurence Yep , 1975
•  Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor , 1976
•  “Letter on Thomas Jefferson” by John Adams , 1776
•  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass , 1845
•  “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: Address to Parliament on May 13th, 1940 by Winston Churchill , 1940
•  Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Ann Petry , 1955
•  Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck , 1962

9-10th Grade:

•  The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare , 1592
•  “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley , 1817
•  “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe , 1845
•  “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry , 1906
•  The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck , 1939
•  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury , 1953
•  The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara , 1975
•  “Speech to the Second Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry , 1775
•  “Farewell Address” by George Washington , 1796
•  “Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln , 1863
•  “State of the Union Address” by Franklin Delano Roosevelt , 1941
•  “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. , 1964
•  “Hope, Despair and Memory” by Elie Wiesel , 1997

11-12th Grade:

•  “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats , 1820
•  Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë , 1848
•  “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson , 1890
•  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald , 1925
•  Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston , 1937
•  A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry , 1959
•  The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri , 2003
•  Common Sense by Thomas Paine , 1776
•  Walden by Henry David Thoreau , 1854
•  “Society and Solitude” by Ralph Waldo Emerson , 1857
•  “The Fallacy of Success” by G. K. Chesterton , 1909
•  Black Boy by Richard Wright , 1945
•  “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell , 1946
•  “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry” by Rudolfo Anaya , 1995