Resource Library Highlight: BetterLesson

The Pepper Resource Library is a valuable component of Pepper that contains professional learning tools, curriculum, and open education resources. One of these resources is BetterLesson. Founded by a group of teachers from Atlanta and Boston public schools, BetterLesson strives to help prepare and support teachers by providing high quality lesson plans and curriculum resources. They are focused on collecting and sharing the most innovative content and practices from the highest performing teachers across the country.

They have partnered with educators across the country to run Master Teacher Projects and have created over 16,000 rich lessons, covering Common Core ELA and math, Next Gen Science, and Blended Learning. In addition, their community of teachers has contributed over 1 million resources proven to work in their classrooms. All of this content is completely free of charge and available through BetterLesson in your Pepper Resource Library.

The Master Teacher Project brings together more than 130 brilliant and creative teachers in grades K-12 math and ELA. These talented and hardworking teachers are sharing lessons they teach everyday. And these aren't just the normal lessons - they're lessons that are super accessible and classroom-ready. Teachers using the site can "like" lessons, provide feedback, download resources, and read Master Teachers’ commentary that provides insight for effective lesson implementation. BetterLesson is free, but teachers must create an account in BetterLesson to gain unlimited lesson browsing.

BetterLesson is one of several great resources available through the Pepper Resource Library.

Where is your Pepper Resource Library? You can find the link on the top center of your dashboard:

Then, once you're in the library, you can find BetterLesson here:

Also be sure to check out our Pepper course offerings - including new ELL and Writing courses for K-12.

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Pepper Resource Library Highlight

Graphite: Digital Tools for the Classroom

The Pepper Resource Library is a valuable component of Pepper that contains professional learning tools, curriculum, and open education resources. Currently there are 7 categories in the Resource Library: engageNY: Common Core Library, Common Sense Graphite: Digital Tools for the Classroom, Better Lesson: What Works, Stem Builder: Stem Curriculum Resources, Smarter Balanced: Practice Assessments, PARCC Practice Assessments, and Pepper Course Libraries.

Due to the vastness of each of these resources, we’ll look at each one independently. Today we’ll look at Graphite: Digital Tools for the Classroom. Graphite™ is a free service from nonprofit Common Sense Education designed to help preK-12 educators discover, use, and share the best apps, games, websites, and digital curricula for their students by providing unbiased, rigorous ratings and practical insights from an active community of teachers. Common Sense is the largest, independent nonprofit organization committed to helping kids, teachers, and families manage media and technology in life and learning. They have technology education curriculum being used in more than 55,000 schools across the U.S.

So, what can you find in Graphite? Categories at the top of the page direct you:

Reviews and Ratings  - Reviews of popular tools, apps, and software by teachers and tech experts for educational use.

Top Picks - "Top Picks" are editorially curated lists of the best edtech tools reviewed on Graphite. You can browse through the full library of Top Picks lists by grade, subject, and/or skill.

Common Core Explorer - Find the best digital products for your curriculum by using intuitive filters that quickly guide you through the Common Core State Standards.

Lesson Flows - Created by teachers, these innovative, tech-rich lesson plans combine great digital tools and inspiring teaching practices.

Teacher Center - The Teacher Center provides a professional development hub for teachers and administrators using Graphite. Find resources for integrating technology into the curriculum effectively, as well as advice on how to best use Graphite to find high-quality edtech for the classroom. Check out Lesson Flows to inspire your teaching, join monthly webinars, and find out how to become a Graphite Certified Educator. Whether you’re a newbie or expert, join the growing community of educators with whom you can connect to share best practices.

Boards - Here you can save, organize, and share your favorite Graphite content. Save reviews, Lesson Flows, Top Picks lists, and blog posts to My Desk, then drag and drop content to curate shareable Boards.

Be sure to check out Graphite in Pepper’s Resource Library, as well as other great resources too!

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NEW PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COURSE Just released!

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS

Text Based Discussions in High School*

Explore the research-based strategy of facilitating text discussions that support the close reading, speaking, and listening skills called for in the English Language Arts/Literacy Common Core State Standards for grades 9-12.

Learn More!

*We suggest “ELA101H/Literacy Shifts in High School” as a reference for this course. To enroll in the ELA101H course CLICK HERE. You have full access to all courses in Pepper through the course directory.  There is always something new to learn in Pepper!

 New Course for Elementary Mathematics Coming Soon!

Click Here to view all courses in Pepper.  Simply Select “Sign up & Start Course” on any new course you would like to add to your dashboard!

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Calling All Science Teachers--Common Core Lesson Plan Round-Up!

When you're thinking through the best ways of engaging your students, communicating and reinforcing concepts, helping them achieve mastery of new ideas and ways of thinking, and just plain getting excited about learning, it can help to have a little inspiration. Seeing what other teachers have done to develop creative, CCSS-aligned lesson plans, or looking through resource libraries to find interesting lesson plans can give your own planning an energy boost.

Here's a round-up of some websites that provide science teachers with CCSS-aligned ideas for the classroom. Look for other subjects/disciplines in future posts!

Check out these FREE SCIENCE LESSONS from AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). You can filter your search by grade and content to find what you want more easily!

Who doesn't love cookies? This series of blog posts by science writer Bethany Brookshire is called COOKIE SCIENCE! She takes educators and students step-by-step through applied science, all in the name of finding cookies that taste better. If you're looking for student-friendly science news, don't miss the website, hosted by Society for Science & the Public.

MIT BLOSSOMS is a wonderful website with a focus on videos for classroom use. You can do a very focused search, including by content standard, and locate science video lessons--each of which is a complete resource, with teacher's guide and supporting materials. CLICK HERE to search by education standards!


Got students who are into sports? Then GO HERE to the Connect A Million Minds website to find science-friendly learning activities and games for kids. These would make great additions to lesson-plans.

Engineering and applied science lessons are free and searchable on TeachEngineering.org! You can browse across multiple categories or search by content standard. There are hands-on activities, lessons, and supporting materials!

For a big-picture look at how real science educators are making CCSS work in their classrooms, check out this Edutopia.org blog post, "Common Core in Action: How Two Science Teachers Are Implementing Common Core." Get tips, ideas, and best practices!

Finally, take a look at the Utah Education Network. They have easy-to-browse, free lesson plans that are aligned to Utah's Core (based on CCSS). CLICK HERE for K-6 science lessons. CLICK HERE for 7-12 science lessons!

BRAND NEW! Check out these AMAZING Math courses that just hit PEPPER!

Two fantastic new middle school mathematics professional development courses are available in Pepper now. Take a look at the courses and their descriptions and get excited about the opportunities to be prepared and ready to work with your students as the new school year kicks into gear! Click on the course titles to learn even more about what you'll discover if you sign up!

Getting Started With Expressions and Equations (6-8)

Take a deep dive into the Expressions and Equations domain and the clusters of standards it includes at each grade level. Study the clusters of standards for each grade, work on math tasks related to each cluster, and learn more about the mathematics education research behind the CCSS.

Implementing Expressions and Equations (6-8).

Continue your journey into Expressions and Equations by understanding how to implement the domain effectively in your classroom. This course is designed to follow Getting Started with Expressions and Equations course.

Project-Based Learning and the Common Core!

Many educators already have made a shift in the direction of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in recent years as research has shown just how effective it can be in broadening and deepening students' knowledge-base and in helping students develop connections between concepts and applications, and in improving their communication skills.

You may be wondering, though, just how project-based learning might intersect with the Common Core State Standards, and what resources might be out there to help educators ensure that their project-based learning strategies are aligned with CCSS.

This blog post from Edutopia.org, is a great place to start! In this post, "The Role of PBL in Making the Shift to Common Core," Sara Hallermann and John Larmer present six big ideas that help educators understand exactly how PBL and Common Core go hand-in-hand. The takeaway, as they explain, is that "Common Core has embedded within it some Big Ideas that shift the role of teachers to curriculum designers and managers of an inquiry process." PBL puts that inquiry process front-and-center, and encourages students to take ownership of what they're learning about.

For a more in-depth look at the connections between Common Core and PBL, you can check out this FREE PBL WEBINAR from ASCD.org. Led by Andrew Miller, the webinar explores the essential elements of PBL, and the best ways of ensuring that PBL units are aligned to Common Core. Be sure to check out the supporting resources, handouts, and slides!

College and Career Readiness--Ensuring Students' Success in the Future!

College and Career Readiness (CCR) is an enormously important part of the Common Core State Standards. As an educator, it can be difficult at times to find creative, effective ways to bridge the gap between the K-12 classroom and the world of post-secondary education and career training. One helpful strategy is to understand what it is that businesses and growth-oriented careers actually look for and need when they're hiring.

To get a better idea of what awaits your students when they leave the classroom, CHECK OUT BUSINESSANDEDUCATION.ORG, a fantastic collection of resources and information supported by achieve.org, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization focused on making CCR an education priority.

On the website you will find extensive, well-supported information about CCR, along with an overview of CCR standards and links to business and career-related resources. You can even look at what's happening with the CCR initiatives in your state and see how you can integrate your classroom practices with these initiatives!

Choosing Texts for ELA CCSS

The Common Core State Standards for ELA are in part designed to help students become engaged, critical, interactive readers and interpreters of texts and information. As students grow into more capable readers and learn new strategies for engaging with texts and resource materials, educators can select texts with increasing levels of complexity to challenge their students and motivate them to move forward. Many teachers have questions about how to make these text selections, and how to find texts that are aligned
with the CCSS.

Achievethecore.org has a toolbox of resources for teachers to help them better understand what goes into text selection, and how to choose texts and reading materials that align with the expectations for text complexity set by the CCSS for each grade level.

CHECK OUT THEIR TEXT COMPLEXITY PAGE to find resources for measuring text complexity, finding texts, lesson planning from text complexity, and more.

Common Core--Spanish Translation!

For educators who work in Spanish-English bilingual classrooms, the notion of translating the Common Core State Standards can mean something much more concrete than finding ways to build rubrics, or develop crosswalks, or create links from one set of resources to another. It can mean finding ways to make actual translations of the standards. And anyone who works across multiple languages knows that translation can very often be a challenging exercise--even moreso when contending with phrases and concepts within the CCSS that demand precision, accuracy, and specificity.

This initiative, a collaboration from the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the California Department of Education (CDE) and the San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE), offers a free version of the Math and ELA Common Core State Standards, in Spanish translation.

CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE! There are book recommendations and other resources available as well, so be sure to look around.

Common Core and English Language Learners--A GREAT Blog to Follow!

Ensuring a smooth transition to Common Core State Standards is especially important for English Language Learners (ELL), who have unique learning needs.

Take a look at the COLORIN COLORADO BLOG, which aims to provide commentary, resources, and support for CCSS implementation with English Language Learners.

There are many great hands-on resources on offer here--one of the most popular posts provides a rubric or crosswalk to help educators determine whether Common Core-aligned curriculum being developed for English Language Learners actually meets the needs of those students. Here is the link to the RUBRIC, which is also available HERE AS A PDF file.

FREE WestEd Webinar: Reading and Writing, Common Core Style!

One of the areas on which the goals of Common Core are focused is building literacy--not only in traditional ways via ELA education, but also across the curriculum. Reading and writing, and the skills that are part of reading and writing, have an enormous role to play as students learn to engage with a variety of texts, topics, ideas, and problems.

This WestEd webinar takes a closer look at Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 1, and attempts to connect it to evidence-based interpretation in other subjects and areas as well. This is a great opportunity to gain a better, clearer understanding of how the CCSS can help students develop literacy and put interpretive skills to work across disciplines.

TAKE A LOOK HERE for the webinar (approximately 34 minutes), and be sure to CLICK ON THE FOLDER to download supporting PDFs and other materials!

Early Childhood Education and Common Core--Resources and Information

One of the major points of focus of the new Common Core State Standards is a seamless connection from early childhood education all the way to higher education and career preparation. But many people have questions about how CCSS can work with very young children. How can early childhood educators align their instruction with Common Core and make sure that they're maintaining developmentally appropriate practices and helping prepare the littlest learners for a transition into elementary school?

Here are a few great blog posts, articles, and resources directed toward early childhood educators. They represent different perspectives and are worth examining for anyone who works with young children, and who wants to learn more about how Common Core will impact the world of early childhood education.

Check out THIS POSITION PAPER from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which discusses both the benefits and the challenges of the Common Core for early childhood education.

Take a look at THIS COMPREHENSIVE INTRODUCTION to a pre-kindergarten foundation for the Common Core, developed by the New York State Education Department. It includes a vetted sample instructional unit as well!

Watch THIS PRESENTATION by Professor Gillian McNamee as she discusses what it means to have high-quality PreK-3rd grade education in the context of Common Core.

Prof. McNamee's talk was the wrap-up for a conference held by the Erikson Institute of Chicago, focused on pre-k and early childhood education and the impact of Common Core. CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE for a complete list of talks, papers, and resources.

Free Lesson Plans From Smithsonian Education!

Whether you've been to Washington, D.C. or not, no doubt you know about the amazing museums and research centers of the Smithsonian Institution. But did you know that they have a website just for educators, with links to online resources, lesson plans and curriculum guides, and access to some of the museum's exhibits and collections?

Take a look HERE to find their educator homepage, where you can browse to see what they have on offer! And be sure not to miss THIS LIST of lesson plans--they're easy to search by keyword, by standard, by subject and by grade, so finding resources that you can use right away is incredibly user-friendly and easy! The search fields are to the left.

Finally, be sure to check out their Resource Library and their list of Online Events, where you can see how to incorporate museum collections and artifacts into your classroom lessons, and access supporting podcasts and webcasts for free!

The Changing Landscape of ESL Instruction--FREE WestEd Webinar on June 18th!

How will the transition to Common Core State Standards impact students in English Language Learner / English as a Second Language settings? What will the new standards mean for educators who work with these students? How can educators use this transition to Common Core as an opportunity for making deep and lasting transformations in their pedagogy in order to meet the needs of their students in new and significant ways?

SIGN UP HERE for this free webinar presented by WestEd and the TESOL International Association. You will get the chance to

• Develop awareness of the deep changes required by the implementation of new standards
• Understand the questions that could guide your reflection as you transform your pedagogy
• Understand why prevalent pedagogies do not serve English learners well in the new standards era
• Begin to envision richer, productive pedagogies with English learners

The webinar will be held on Wednesday, June 18 from 10:30-noon EST. You'll need to register at the link above. CHECK OUT THE WESTED SITE to get more info, and if you can't attend at that time, the webinar will be archived!

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Common Core Rubric Creator! FREE!

Many times, educators need to use rubrics to evaluate student performances and assess different kinds of activities that may not lend themselves to more traditional forms of assessments.

Rubrics also can help students better understand what the expectations are for an assignment, and give both students and teachers clear criteria when it comes time for grades to be given. In short, rubrics can be fantastic classroom tools--but educators may be wondering how to ensure that the rubrics they create mesh with Common Core.

Check out this FREE tool to help create Common Core-friendly rubrics! It's fully customizable, and you can choose the elements to introduce into your rubric, and revise it anytime you want to update or make changes. You can also share it easily with others, which makes it great for collaborating with team teaching units.

TAKE A LOOK HERE

to see the tool for yourself--no registration needed!

Watch Math Coach Audra McPhillips Teach a Great Common Core Aligned Math Lesson!

Audra McPhillips is a math coach in Rhode Island. In this video for The Teaching Channel, she works with middle school students on understanding how functions operate. McPhillips believes that students in this age group can be engaged in grasping not only lessons and concepts, but also in seeing the way those connect with the standards themselves.

If you create a free account with The Teaching Channel, you'll be able to access all the supporting materials for this lesson--including the lesson plan. Stick around the website to check out a host of other great tutorials and videos.

Common Core and Languages Other Than English--Ideas and Conversations!

In today's global, connected learning environment, learning multiple languages can provide enormous practical and personal benefits for students. In addition to offering horizon-expanding cultural growth and development, languages give students an advantage when it comes to college and career-readiness.

Much of the focus with Common Core has been on ELA and Math, the first areas in which CCSS will be implemented. Yet it's critically important for students and educators alike that the principles that guide and structure Common Core are present and connected throughout the learning environment. Here are a few great places to look for ideas, resources, and conversations about CCSS and Languages Other Than English (LOTE)!

With the emphasis on developing "globally competent citizens" at the heart of Common Core, there are obvious intersections with LOTE. Take a look at the
se blog posts and essays from Education Week to get your wheels turning!

Where World Languages and the Common Core Intersect

Common Core: Preparing Globally Competent Citizens

Check out the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) website for a number of helpful resources, including this crosswalk,

Alignment of the National Standards for Learning Languages with the Common Core State Standards

Finally, take a look at this fascinating World Languages Skills Map, developed by the ACTFL. You'll see the emerging trends in language education, and get great ideas and interdisciplinary strategies for your LOTE classroom! 

Common Core And Social/Emotional Learning

So much of the conversation about Common Core has centered on the academic side of what goes on in the classroom. But as every teacher knows, social and emotional learning makes up an enormous part of what happens in everyday instruction. Whether it's the ability to collaborate with other students, or the ability to be sensitive and empathetic, or developing the social skills needed to be successful in life after school, social and emotional learning are critical components of learning in general.

Common Core is not just about the academic standards and assessments. As this EdSource article argues (CLICK HERE to check it out!), “You’re not going to be able to achieve Common Core standards if kids aren’t working collaboratively and aren’t engaged.”

For a FREE webinar titled "Integrating Social-Emotional Learning Into State and District Policies," check out THIS WEBLINK. You will need Adobe to access the webinar, which is offered by the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments.

Common Core Resources for Special Education

Calling all special education teachers and administrators!

This wonderful website from the California Department of Education collects tons of great information about special education and Common Core. From webinars to presentations, resources to FAQs, this site can help you find what you need to know about making the transition to Common Core with your special education students.

CLICK HERE to go to the website, and be sure to take a few minutes to see what's offered!

FREE WestEd Webinar--Personalize Learning to Meet the Common Core

For educators who work with special education students, there are a number of questions about how Common Core State Standards will work in their classrooms. How can you balance the diverse needs of your students and meet the standards? How can you create personalized learning environments within your classroom?

This free 30-minute webinar from experts at WestEd can help you answer these questions and give you a better understanding of how personalized learning can support the Common Core.

CLICK HERE FOR THE WEBINAR and make sure to check out the supporting resources and PDFs as well.