Common Core, Unit by Unit: 5 Critical Moves for Implementing the Reading Standards Across the Curriculum

Will Common Core switch my focus from students to standards?
Will it make my best units obsolete?
Will my students be able to meet its ambitious aims?

Cheryl Dobbertin’s Common Core, Unit by Unit answers these concerns and many more. It lays out in black and white how to plan instruction that addresses Common Core reading while opening the door for every student to get noticed―every day.

“You may be wrestling with the idea of working even harder than you already do,” Cheryl writes. “Fortunately, the real change will come not through harder work, but through smarter work.” With tools and templates, exemplar units, and explicit action steps that focus and simplify planning in any content area, she walks you through:

• designing engaging, purposeful units around high-interest content
• teaching and assessing close-reading strategies while working in increasingly complex texts
• differentiating so every reader can meet the standards.

Don’t sacrifice your own agency, students’ needs, or what you know about good teaching. Instead, trust Common Core, Unit by Unit to guide the planning of rich, meaningful instruction. Because meeting the standards doesn’t have to distract you from transforming readers’ lives.

Preview the book. Download and read a sample chapter.

For Cheryl Dobbertin, author of the practical instructional planning guide Common Core Unit by Unit, it’s only natural to seek a hands-on approach to meeting classroom issues. She is both the Director of Professional Development for Expeditionary Learning and Co-director of an Expeditionary Learning project charged with designing exemplary units for Common Core implementation in New York State. Together these experiences have shown her the transformational power—for both teachers and learners—of immersion in engaging, challenging curriculum. Common Core, Unit by Unit distills these experiences and her years of experience in teaching, literacy leadership, and school administration into an instructional resource that has a dramatic effect before kids enter your classroom, while they are there, and long after they’ve left it forever.