Creating Standards-Based Integrated Curriculum: The Common Core State Standards Edition

Translate the new standards into meaningful curriculum!

The Common Core State Standards offer a shared language that ensures consistency and accountability, while also giving you the flexibility to design a curriculum that′s right for your students. Of course, knowing what you need to teach doesn′t tell you how to teach it―and that′s where curriculum integration expert Susan M. Drake comes in.

In this new edition of her classic text, Drake applies the essential principles of standards-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment to today′s unique challenges. Focusing on multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches, she provides guidance on

• Unpacking the Common Core State Standards
• Planning assessment tasks
• Designing instructional strategies
• Developing daily activities
• Helping students connect essential questions to enduring understandings

Included are new examples of exemplary programs, discussion questions, a sample completed interdisciplinary curriculum, and activity suggestions for building your own standards-based integrated curriculum. This proven resource is the road map teachers and curriculum developers need to navigate the unfamiliar territory of the CCSS and to develop a curriculum that helps their students thrive. 

Susan M. Drake is a professor in the Graduate and Undergraduate Department of Brock University, St. Catharines, ON. She earned a PhD in curriculum from the University of Toronto. She has taught at all levels of education. She taught physical education and Health and English for 18 years at the high school level. She worked on school improvement teams at the elementary level and spent one year as an elementary teacher. As well, she was a partner in a private adult education company that provided organizational development, consulting and adult learning courses. Today, Susan teaches curriculum/assessment courses for Masters of Education and doctoral students and for undergraduate students who will soon be entering the teaching field. As a researcher, she seeks out educators who are involved in exemplary practices, as she believes that a good practice makes good theory. This is Susan’s seventh book on the topic of curriculum integration and she has published over 48 articles and 9 book chapters. She coauthored Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum (2004) for ASCD with Rebecca Burns. As well, she authored Creating Integrated Curriculum (1998) for Corwin Press (1998) and Planning for Integrated Curriculum: The Call to Adventure (1993) for ASCD. She has lead interdisciplinary curriculum design teams from the school to the provincial level. Susan travels extensively and has done workshops/presentations across North America and in Europe, Asia and Africa.