Deborah Meier brought to my attention this series of workbooks that contain 180 days of Common Core worksheets in math and English. What a relief for anxious teachers! No more worrying about what to do. Here are the daily activities you need. No more planning or thinking. A standard a day keeps the evaluator away! Not only problems, but answers too!
From: “Emily Self, Great Educators”
Subject: 180 Days of Common Core Worksheets: Math and ELA Available
Date: February 2, 2014 9:50:09 AM EST
To: deborahmeier@me.com
Reply-To: “Emily Self, Great Educators”
Common Core State Standards:
Language Arts and Math Bellringers
Second Editions released for school year 2013-2014
– Are you stressed about the common core standards?
– Do you want to expose your students to the common cores now or wait until the last minute?
CCSS: Bellringers – Includes 180 days of worksheets!
We’ve released the second edition of our CCSS Math and ELA Bellringer sets. These new editions include at least 180 days of worksheets – enough for every single day of the school year!
Kindergarten through High School Available Now
Expose your students to every language arts or math common core standard for their grade. These bellringers are short 5-minute quizzes/lessons that will walk your students through each standard.
Bulk Order Discount: Order three or more sets and get 10% off!
The Math bellringers focus on one standard a day and include examples (with the correct answer) to help your students understand the type of question tested under that standard. The bellringers also include 2-3 additional questions for your students to work through on their own.
The language arts bellringers include 3 sections: Reading (literature, informational text, and foundational skills), Writing, and Language.
The Writing and Language bellringers focus on one standard a day and include an example (with the correct answer) to help your students understand the type of question tested under that standard. The bellringers also include 2-3 additional questions for your students to work through on their own.
The Reading bellringers include (per week) a story followed by 3-4 days’ worth of questions. The reading section includes reading: literature and reading: informational text.
Get more information here>>
To order with a PO, click here>>
$100 per grade for Math a nd $100 per grade for ELA; includes access to two PDF files per set (one is the teacher book and other is the student book) and full rights to print, copy, and/or project as needed in your classroom.
It isn’t too early to start working with the common cores in your classroom and school for the upcoming transition. Our bellringers will allow you to expose your students to each and every standard for their grade – no research or searching for appropriate questions. Use these ready-made lessons to review the standards now!
With the common core standards just around the corner, many teachers are stressed and unsure about how the new standards will affect their classroom and curriculum. Don’t be stressed; Use these bellringers to prep your students!
Bellringer Information: Now includes 180 worksheets!
What’s Included? We have studied the common core standards and created bellringers to test each standard up to three times. Each day, your students will work through a bellringer by first examining a sample question and answer and then working through several problems on their own. We’ve included a place for the student to write notes or reminders about that type of question.
Sample of student edition language>>
Sample of student edition writing>>
Sample of student edition reading>>
Sample of student edition math>>
The teacher’s edition includes the actual common core standard of the day taken directly off the common core website – no guessing or researching required! Also, we’ve provided all correct answers to all questions in the teacher’s edition.
Sample of teacher edition language>>
Sample of teacher edition math>>
What do I get with my purchase? With each purchase, you will receive access to two PDF files – one is the teacher version and the other is the student version. You will have full rights to print, copy, and/or project as needed within your classroom. If you or your school would prefer printed copies , please respond to this email for an appropriate quote.
Great Educators
Mailing: PO Box 4187, Waynesville, MO 65583
Phone: 573-336-3372
Fax: 866-317-2749
Why Use Bellringers?
1. They expose your students to each and every standard.
We’ve represented each and every math and ELA standard in these bellringers. No holes – no missing information! Be assured that your students will be exposed to all standards across the board.
2. We’ve done the research for you.
Use your time on something else – we’ve put together a comprehensive resource that will assist your classroom’s transition to CCS.
3. They are 100% applicable to your grade level.
Do you know what’s changing for your grade in the upcoming transition? These bellringers only cover the standards for your grade level – take the guesswork out of the equation.
4. They are quick and won ‘t interfere with your normal lesson.
We designed these bellringers to take no more than 5-10 minutes each, so you will still have time for your normal lesson while exposing your students to the CCS.
5. You can feel confident that your students have been exposed to all of the common core standards before the transition!
To unsubscribe, please click the following link: Unsubscribe me from this list Please be aware you may receive a few more emails as it takes a few days to fully remove you from our list.
Great Educators, PO Box 4187, Waynesville, Missouri 65584 P: 573-336-3372
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sounds like an article straight from The Onion! Seriously? How sad! I guess the ed rheeformers really do want Deltas, not Alphas!
As teachers, we can’t be trusted to do anything. Never mind that all of us have bachelor’s degrees and many of us have master’s degrees or higher and have taken countless hours of classes and professional development and read widely and work daily with students. Now that I know that all I need to do is “expose” my students to a standard a day and they will ace the tests, that sure is a load off of my (apparently stupid) mind!
And never mind that Common Core was supposed to be about deeply thinking about fewer standards. I guess there are so many that we can “expose” kids to a different standard every day for 180 days! Hurrah!!!
And if each day comes with a customized date (in accordance with your particular school calendar)… if a student is absent or there is a bad weather day… voila.. the particular standard of the day becomes homework. And here is a comment that is telling:
“2. We’ve done the research for you… Use your time on something else …”
I guess “thinking” is SO DEPASSÉ…
Okay now that I have SO MUCH TIME I will spend it on rubrik making for each of those 180 day lessons… unless of course you are working on that too and will shortly have a 180 day rubrik guide to sell me!
Now if you do publish and sell me the rubrik… then you can work on creating the daily objective for the board for each of those 180 days.
Now once I have purchased that, maybe you want to sell me the bulletin board objective for each of those 180 day activities. I surely will have time to change my bulletin boards frequently.
Now can you provide me with a set of anchors for each of those questions as to how they should be answered because then grading would be very easy.
I will have so much time on my hands that maybe I will have time to sharpen pencils.
But then again maybe you will come up with 180 days of activities for teachers who have time on their hands in case I get done sharpening pencils early.
Is there anything else I forgot to “think about” here? I am getting a bit fuzzy in the “thinking department”…
Be careful what you ask for. Your job will be replaced with a programmed robot!
Actually, that’s our dear leader, Arne Dumbcan
Art,
You may spend your time posting blog comments!
Ah, but you’re not a TFA-er with 5 weeks experience. I’m sure those “teachers” find these resources invaluable.
Exposure…as in getting exposed to the mumps?
Also coverage. Cover every standard. Check it off. Done.
The ELA Curriculum Maps project of Common Core (jump started with funding from Bill Gates) is an online resource with a spreadsheet so teachers can document which standards they have covered, uncovered, treated, whatever.
I visited my local retail shop that caters to teachers. Common Core products is grade-level sets were available. These were in boxed sets suitable for display in a classroom, edited a bit. Posting these becomes important to keep “on task” and to prove to any observers with checklists that you are doing your job.
When I asked the clerk, part owner of the store, if she was aware of any licencing agreements for the products and if more were in the works. She didn’t know, but she did say that the teachers she has talked to hate the CCSS.
The whole point of the Common Core was to create a bullet list to tag educational software to. That’s why the folks who paid for it (Gates and Pearson) paid for it.
It was a necessary first step in a business plan. I call it the Powerpointing of U.S. education.
Creating a national market for education vendors was the goal. Here is the evidence.
“.,,to help your students understand the type of question tested under that standard.”
They don’t even pretend that it’s about learning, just about being able to take the test.
Sounds like the perfect tool for this lazy (non) union thug waiting for golden money retirement. Now I won’t have to do hardly anything. I can probably find another boxed set for the rest of the hour-COOL! Let me finish my donut before helping you with your question.
OH, WAIT! I don’t teach ELA or Math! Damn, I guess I just have to keep on doing what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years.
ELA and math teachers will not be using this crap either so we TOO will continue doing what we’ve been doing for many years. It’s called teaching.
They’ll be coming for you, too, Señor!
Do “they” just sit in their cubes all day thinking of ways to add insult to injury? Maybe bonuses are earned for the most creative (or not) ways to attempt to kick us when we’re down. Wow, that’s just sadistic. Oh, right……
I guess if it’ s warmups, it might be a way to say “I’ m teaching common core, ” and after 5 minutes, teach what you know students really need to learn. But 100 $? Is this thing have gold leaf around the edges?
Check out the worksheets ready for purchase at the “great educators” store.
http://greateducators.com/store/index.php?id_product=346&controller=product
ELA Test Bank: All Grades, CD-ROM, $700.00
BAD! BAD! BAD! This is totally ridiculous. And these people are in charge? OY…guess they don’t think for themselves, too. Just remember WHO grades the short response on those TESTS….TEMPORARY WORKERS who get paid about $10 – $12 per hour. How else are the yahoos going to dumb down the curriculum and make kids robots who don’t question THEIR authority…ever. THE HUNGER GAMES…is well and alive folks.
Reblogged this on Middletown Voice.
Great news for TFA!
I agree, Dianne! Also, I heard that they have these things called “textbooks” now, that purport to include lesson plans for everyday of the year! Can you believe it?! If only we didn’t have Common Core, then all teachers would plan everything from scratch and we could all pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps individually. How dare Common Core incite people to develop curriculum materials and then sell them!?!
My girlfriend worked in publishing. They were subcontractors hired to write teacher guides and practice sheets for the “new” textbooks back in the day ie making each one match some state’s standards….well….the stories she should tell. Imagine who gets hired to write these things. Imagine how well-versed they are in child development, imagine how much teaching experience they have had. Imagine having a cubicle job all day having to create worksheets to go along with text linked to a standard, and do it according to strict rules about language, sentence length, how not to offend anyone etc. Don’t spend too much energy imagining. It would be a waste of time. The new science program/ textbook our school eagerly purchased when we had a new and young curriculum coordinator had oodles of supplemental materials ie worksheets. And in a word: awful. But the worst part? Trying to find the materials in the teacher’s manual and understanding the convoluted coding system. And of course you “had” to use some of the dumb worksheets since they were “adopted” by the grade level and went onto the “map”. There is a story that needs to be told. Has anyone ever said, “gee, I remember Mrs. X or Mr. Y or Ms. Z and that science worksheet from chapter 3 she had us do. Wow, that was great, I loved it. Taught me so much.” In one ear, out the other education….not the goal of (forgive me) rigor and challenging standards, I am sure. But disjointed worksheets is not going to create skilled, excited learners who want more. Unless they have some data to prove it works longitudinally, I am not buying.
I can assure that the multiple coding system so dense in nearly indecipherable is/was a by-product of a publisher trying to market their materials in the face of very different sets of expectaions from the teachers in varied states. Be there, arguing for something simple, wow a table of contents, structured and alphabetical indices. But that was before the CCSS which differently complicates efforts to code because there are 1,620 of those standards if you count parts a-e. The claim that the CCSS are fewer and clearer is wrong.
Stop trying to confuse people with the facts, Laura! 🙂
Oh it’s just another scheme to “conformity” which will have us all doing the same thing every day. We are a factory model. We do make widgets. But then they tell us it is about what kids are “learning”, not about “presenting” (exposing). And then they tell us it’s about going deeper on a few standards and not shallow on many. Also they tell us CC$$ is not a curriculum. Then they grade US on the assumption that all children will learn at the same rate. NOW I know why I didn’t become a rocket scientist. It was my TEACHER’S fault. Riggghhhhht. Double speak……..they will eventually trip themselves up. That’s why they don’t debate….only dictate
I am a public school teacher and I received this exact unsolicited ad through my school email address recently. I get several of them DAILY from different corporations, but the language in this one took the cake! I forwarded it to my supervisor and complained about getting them all the time, my point being the idiots trying to profit from school reform, etc. Her brief response? ” I just unsubscribe.” I am furious!
I thought thisnpost was a joke–really. I am sitting here this morning aghast at the reality. Another large nail in the coffin of the Great American School System.
But if you “do ever want to think for yourself again”… Susan O’Hanian has posted Ralph Nader’s top 10 books to read this year…
This is the point, ultimately, of the Common Core. It is to replace teachers with not workbooks, like this, but with software. Really. If you will read closely Mr. Gates’s speeches and writings about education over the past decade, you will see that he returns again and again to these themes that a) schools are too expensive, b) class size doesn’t matter, c) a good teacher with more kids is better than a poor teacher with fewer kids, and d) everything will be great when we have computer-adaptive software teaching for us.
Here: the true story of the Common Core, in all it’s ugly glory:
In the New York Times recently libertarian economist (and sociopathic robot) Tyler Cowan opined that our economic recovery is flagging because of “inefficiencies” in the education and healthcare sectors. I think the view that we need to Walmartize or automate the teaching corps is widespread among the free market fundamentalist crowd. They may be thinking to themselves, “We may not be able to substantially improve education, but at least we can make it more like other industries where labor has been crushed and profits maximized.”
This has been the undercurrent of the whole thing, Ponderosa. It’s the subtext in every speech, every bit of PR, from the principals in the Ed Deform movement–the real movers and shakers. It’s horrific that the unions have allowed themselves to be so totally PLAYED here. The Plutocrats must be really laughing at that. Here: the true story behind the Common Core:
Pearson’s Scott Foresman Reading Street is ridiculous; too many developmentally inappropriate busy work work sheets. I’ve even found spelling and grammar errors on a few of the pages. These workbooks will be going in recycle at the end of the year and i’m not even passing them out next year. Pearson has things set up so that a caveman could supposedly take over my class. All he’d have to do is turn on a Smart Board and then, when that presentation was over, tell kids to open their workbooks and do such and such pages.
Oh, we switched this year to Journeys. After just a few years of Reading Street. Much better-NOT! Kindergarteners now have to learn 80 sight words! My kids’ sight words are meaningful ones – names of people and things important and relative to them.
Our district constantly spends money on new programs. And of course, we, the idiot teachers who are incapable of designing curriculum and tailoring it to each student’s needs, have to do training on the new one-size-fits-all programs. Waste of time and money on nothing useful and usually something inappropriate!
The whole point of the Common Core is to make this stuff as algorithmic as possible to facilitate a transition away from teachers and toward computerized delivery to the extent possible. The teacher’s unions haven’t understood this.
What about the Curriculum Associates garbage that my daughter keeps bringing home from school? If their goal is to do test prep but make it more confusing than ever, they are a success.
Before you ask… no this is not a satirical piece from us… but it should be.
180 days. must be for those schools with no testing. Or does it include blank pages for test days?
Actually it says “more than 180 worksheets.” Phew! I was afraid those teachers who are at schools with an extended year of more than 180 days would have no idea what to do!
@Barbara Braden.. aahh but I forgot those testing days… perhaps “Bellringers” will allow us to forward our testing schedule so that they can leave these days blank (or better yet supply teachers with blank paper to cover anything resembling the English language or math that teachers are mandated to cover during the testing period… they can do some branding as I am sure Pearson will allow a picture with the “bellringer” logo!!!
But wait. It’s only a set of standards. Not a curriculum.
The curriculum will be offered to schools and teachers at a dandy price.
I guess these worksheets solve all my problems. I mean, if the kids do poorly, it isn’t my fault. (And seriously! Worksheets. If there’s anything that kids hate more than worksheets in the day-to-day setting, I can’t think of what it could be.)
It’s funny how, last fall, the whole nation was praising to the heavens that kid from Oklahoma who was filmed railing on a teacher because (according to him–in fairness, I don’t know what really happens in that class) all they did was packets. Everyone touted this kid as some kind of folk hero for standing up to the teacher about busy work. It was all over the news. And yet, CC crap is all about busy work. Has no one made the connection, outside of actual teachers, that is?
Well I hope this will substantiate the comment I made as to how some teachers liked CCSS (engaged NY) being laid out for them is probably a reason they liked it. Now we have fillers in case we have down time. This should help those who liked being told what to do.
To be fair to the teachers, the CCSS are a nightmare to interpret. Read the whole document carefully and you’ll be left with your head spinning. Do I have the right lexile level? Where does this fit on the Depth of Knowledge chart? What does this standard actually mean and how in the world do I get kids to reach it? The prefab materials are wretched, but I understand why teachers might cling to them.
So if I use these worksheets and receive a less than effective evaluation on my appr, can I blame it on the products? I mean if I am told this is what the district wants me to use how then is it my fault if students don’t meet their magic score?
It is always the teacher’s fault!
Interestingly, the educational software our district uses, Aspen (courtesy of Follett Educational) which purports to allow “curriculum mapping” that is “standards-based” was a failure when we tried to reference many of the state standards (Mass. state standards are basically the original CC standards), and it was a complete failure at including any other type of standards. If the goal is to automate education, it doesn’t look as if it’s going to be a rousing success.
Thank goodness. Thinking gives me a headache.
The whole point of the Common Core is to make K-college public school education as algorithmic as possible to facilitate a transition away from teachers and professors and toward computerized delivery to the extent possible. Here’s the vision:
No more textbooks because those are costly to manufacture. 300 kids in a room with one low-paid “teacher” walking around to make sure that the kids’ tablets are turned on and working, someone who stops on occasion to help the student with something particularly difficult.
The big cost of education is teachers’ salaries and benefits. The CC$$ deform goal is reducing those ENORMOUSLY. Thus the deformer mantra that “class size doesn’t matter.”
Less money spent on teachers. More money spent on software and data systems. There are “laboratory” implementations of just this model going on all around the country even as you are reading this.
The leaders of the teachers’ unions have not understood this, and the fact that they haven’t, that they don’t understand what game is being played here, is very serious. It will have very dramatic long-term consequences for their members and for kids.
Unfortunately, a lot of teachers aren’t aware, either, of what is really behind Common Core either. All they know is the cover story, the PR.
Again, read my piece about this. It explains why the ed book publishers and a certain computer mogul are collaborating to bring about the Common Core-based ed tech “disruption.”
If you did your close reading you would realize this is advertisement is for a product that is anti common core. “4. They are quick and won ‘t interfere with your normal lesson. We designed these bellringers to take no more than 5-10 minutes each, so you will still have time for your normal lesson while exposing your students to the CCS.”
I interpret this to mean they will take care of common core for us in 5-10 minutes a day. This will allow us the rest of the time do so some real teaching. At least they admit it!
If you closely read one of their ELA samples, there is no way you can complete their passages and questions in 5-10 minutes. Either way experienced teachers don’t need this garbage. How is it anti common core when each worksheet has many standards tagged?
I was kidding Linda. Sorry if that was not clear. I was making fun of close reading and taking a point they made out of context. Basically they were saying that if you cover a standard in 5-10 minutes then you can do some real teaching. I thought that was funny since it showed they had no understanding of CCSS and they were viewing it as something you just have to go through quickly while admitting teachers would rather teach something else. I thought it ironic they believed learning ever comes from just covering something quickly on a worksheet. They are obviously just wanting to make money off of Common Core- learning is optional. 🙂
The claim that the CC$$ is not a curriculum and does not require particular pedagogy is one of those common Education Deform equivocations, up there with
These are “higher” standards.
These are “state” standards.
Teachers helped prepare them.
Curriculum software that continually tests kids to place them down in the proper spot in an invariant, predetermined learning progression for all “personalizes” learning.
The claim is exploded here:
Educational publishers in the United States are now beginning every project by making a spreadsheet with the list of Common Core “standards” in the first column and the places in the product where those “standards” are “covered” in the next. So, the CC$$ becomes the default curriculum map, or learning progression.
Those “standards” in effect draw boundaries in the vast possible design space for K-12 curricula and pedagogy and say, what is within these boundaries you can think and do, and what is outside them is disallowed. In other words, the “standards” amount to a dramatic narrowing of the possibilities to the hackneyed, received, unimaginative, pedestrian, puerile, often prescientific confines dictated by the amateurs of the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
The standards development was funded by those who wanted a single national bullet list to tag their software products to–products that they believed would effect a disruptive revolution in K-12 education. For their purposes, it didn’t much matter what the standards said, as long as there was ONE LIST of them. Thus the heedlessness with which they went about having them prepared.
Imagine some group handing some amateur a copy of the 1858 Gray’s Anatomy and sending him or her to the woods to write, based on that, new standards for the practice of medicine. Well, that’s pretty much what happened here. The CCSSO, with money from Gates and Pearson, hired David Coleman to hack together a list based on the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the previously existing state standards in ELA. The result reads like what you might have gotten if you asked the insurance and automobile salespeople of some small-town Rotary Club to come up with a list of “stuff to be studied in English class.”
The CC$$ in ELA are embarrassingly badly conceived. I have a rule of thumb for determining whether someone knows the first thing about teaching English: I find out whether he or she is a member of the CC$$ pom pon squad.
This started about a decade ago:
I used to go to a lot of literacy and curriculum fairs. Tech based ones, too. The vendors would either be hawking their wares or doing professional development for what the DOE had already bought into.
I started to notice the phrase, “…and the best part is that you don’t have to do ANYTHING! It’s all scripted out for you. Completely aligned to the standards with worksheets, homework assignments, and assessments already made out for you!”.
I heard it so much that it started to annoy me. Insulting. When I asked, “What if we WANT to do something? Something different from the script?”, I was proudly directed to the little lightly shaded “Differentiation” boxes. Yep. They had it all worked out.
Taking the expertise of the teacher out of the equation. That’s part of the real script.
We’re told not to use worksheets during school or as homework assignments at my school. Wonder if CCSS is going to push for a change on that.
Those bleepin’ little differentiation boxes will get you every time because administrators will catch you if you use any differentiation materials other than the program’s because you are not teaching “with fidelity,” another phrase which needs to be added to the deform dictionary if it isn’t already there.
I have this visual lurking in the back of my mind of a bonfire made of deform vocab sticks slowly being consumed. The flames and smoke have more terms from the dictionary woven into them floating away into the atmosphere. Teachers, parents and students are throwing “sticks” into the flames and enjoying a moment of cathartic release.
Today’s Chicago Tribune has a front page story about the Noble Network of Charter Schools, which controls every aspect of its students’ behavior, down to forbidding Cheetos, mandating sitting up straight, or being one minute late for school. Fines are collected after a certain number of infractions, with some students’ (mostly low-income) families paying up to $200 a year to cover them. Obsessive monitoring is justified by the school administration as necessary for good order, but it means there’s no room for just behaving…The priorities seem to be discipline, obedience, and control, which sounds remarkably like prison. In appropriate doses, these qualities make sense, but it seems you can’t turn around at a Noble school without getting fined for something.
Teachers don’t have much discretion, either, it appears, since they are penalized for lax enforcement. The Trib reports that Noble kicks out well over the charter average of 61 students/thousand each year for disciplinary infractions, which is already way above the CPS average of 5 students/thousand.
Here’s a link to the full story:
http://eedition.chicagotribune.com/Olive/ODE/ChicagoTribune2/
Will Dix, unfortunately the story about the Noble charters is behind a pay wall. I can’t read it.
Sorry! Here it is as a PDF. Keep up the great work. I work with low-income and first hen-college kids so I’ve gotten to know many charters as well as CPS schools.
If you’re interested I can send you news about how the Noble schools have figured out a “data-driven” way to figure out the probabilities of their kids’ getting into college. (Their head college “counselor” is an engineer by training..)
Best, Will Dix
See if the university or the public library has a subscription. I can read online newspapers and mags that my library subscribes to.
Here’s a link to an article about the college predictor being developed by the Noble network: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140404/hermosa/noble-networks-robot-strives-predict-students-college-success.
Another way to try to automate educational “outcomes” and not be bothered so much by the individuality of students. Reminds me of Jean Anyon’s paper “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” She notes that working class kids’ schooling is often simply “following steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice….Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.”
The extreme regimentation of the Noble schools seems ideally designed for this kind of curriculum, one that values obeying orders more than taking intellectual risks or exploring a subject deeply. Anecdotally, I’ve heard from some Noble grads that rather than helping them adjust to college (i.e., independent) life, the rules and regulations actually cripple them because they are no longer hemmed in by rules imposed on them from the outside. In other words, they have not learned self-discipline, only how to avoid punishment.
Will