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Common Core Standards

This post really got me thinking about certain projects that we have in class.

1. The book talks - Before reading the standards I was guessing, based off of personal experience, what grade level I would suggest using (insert title here) book for, as well as shaped and directed my thoughts towards topics that would better fit the standards I'm teaching.

2. Our final project - This will be my first time creating a lesson plan, let alone a full unit! Apparently I like a challenge. Going over the standards really helped me by transforming somewhat into a checklist. I started asking myself questions about this work and what it would help me accomplish. Could I reach this standard with this activity? Would this activity encourage or distract from the overall lesson? What are my goals and how can I reach them? Reading the standards also encouraged me to go out of my comfort zone and really start digging for answers I didn't even know myself.

For example:

When looking at the Reading Literature standards grades 9-10, I came across this, "CCSS ELA-LITERACY.RL. 9-10.9: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work." In their example, they addressed influences Shakespeare had on his work as well as, influences authors had from Shakespeare's work. This got me thinking about the Tempest (fair warning I am going to be talking about the Tempest a lot throughout this blog because it is the play I am working on at the moment) and what influenced his work. We were lucky enough to have a dramaturge create an amazing portfolio covering art, geography, society and class, nautical travel, the renaissance, magic, colonialism, and many other topics that had a direct correlation with the world of the play. They created this mainly for us actors and crew to be aware of the time time period and what customs, knowledge, and other devices they used in that time period. But we also would discuss what really brought about the Tempest and one idea that was introduced to us was Shakespeare's character Caliban. Now Caliban is pretty similar to the word cannibal and would often be referred to as the same thing by many people who discuss on it. But there is some debate on where the idea of Caliban came from, and the most interesting idea is that Shakespeare created Caliban based off of certain nautical journals portraying certain "savage civilizations" found in the south americas during the boom of colonialism.


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