Week 6 CCSS for Writing and CCSS for Language

I was surprised to find some of the language core standards that were placed in for example grade 6 and stated that the students should know intensive pronouns such as "myself and ourselves." This seemed like something that was being built on from 5th grade, but I would have expected that 6th graders would have already known how to do this. I did find the section 'Knowledge of Language' to be very helpful too, as in grades 5-8 it demonstrated that students should know how to speak and write. I think this is important because when you think of an English Language Arts class, normally speaking and listening are not something a student would expect to be apart of the curriculum. I also found it helpful to read the 9-10th grade standards as well as the 11-12th grade ones because it was more general and I felt as though that gave the teacher more room to incorporate other activities that could meet other standards that the core standards has set for students. However, some of the stuff I was not ever taught in high school, such as how to interpret was a word means based upon Greek or Latin words. That is something that I encountered on the NES, and although I passed, I would have liked have been more prepared for it in my English classes.

In the writing part of the of the common core was really surpassing for me to read because the information it stated was similar if not the same as the stuff that I did in college, rather than high school. All of the punctuation is very reasonable for the high school age students to be able to learn, as well as the flow charts and mind maps to be able to organize ideas and help support students writing with text evidence. It seemed like a lot of what was listed was to be built upon past knowledge, which is what my middle and high school English classes felt like. I only did 9-10th grade at a high school and then moved on to Running Start, and through both of those years the only writing that we did was on two books that we read and we were supposed to make a claim in our essay and write about it. I understand the 9-10th grade core standards are grouped together, but it still seems as though there should be more writing and more creative writing. The only form of creative writing that I saw listed was to be to be able to introduce a narrator and characters into a story. While I was reading it I wondered whether or not this was left more open so teachers could have more time to teach the standards and then introduce their own writing styles and approaches to how they want to teach their students in order to prepare them for future grades.

In the NES book, I found some of the stuff surprising to find. I did not spend too much time in school spelling, or learning spelling rules. Some teachers did do a pretty good job of this, but I don't remember them as well as others. For me, spelling has always been something I struggled with, and I want to learn more about it not just to be able to teach it but to be able to become a better speller myself. Finding out how I would best learn spelling is a great way to get my students motivated and create lesson plans based on what I learned and what worked best for me. Some of the other content in the book, such as punctuation I expect to find but found it difficult to make my way through. Teaching the rules to students of spelling, grammar, and punctuation will be difficult because I want to find a way to make it relatable and fun and not repetitive and boring. I thought it was really informative that the text contained strategies such as the outline strategy or the good essay strategy, in which it gives examples and ideas of how a teacher could use this in their classroom. It was good to be able to read what will be expected from secondary teachers and the skills they will have to teach students and strategies for teaching those skills.