A Treasure Trove of Literacy Instruction Material

In case you have not already visited this website, I’m devoting this blog post to making you aware of what I consider a “treasure trove” of free instructional resources that are evidence-based and tightly aligned with meeting Common Core literacy standards.

Achieve the Core provides tools and resources that teachers can readily use at every grade level and in all subject areas.

Here are some of the resources you should check out:

• Student Writing Samples: Provides hundreds of samples of student writing from around the country that is aligned with Common Core writing standards. Samples are organized into the opinion/argument, informational, and narrative types of writing.
• Close Reading Model Lessons: Sets of lessons at all grade levels that can be used to conduct close reading lessons. The lessons include sample complex text, text-dependent questions, vocabulary, and writing assignments.
• Lesson Bank: A library of almost 300 teacher-developed lessons for grades 3-10. Includes lessons for popular stories, nonfiction texts, basal readers, and anthologies.
• History/Social Studies literacy lessons AND Science and Technical Subjects literacy lessons. Sample lessons for embedding literacy instruction into content learning.
• Mini-Assessments for Grades 3-12: These units include excerpts from classic grade-level text (informational and narrative) along with assessment questions and tasks that are aligned to Common Core literacy standards.
• Text Complexity Collection and Text-Dependent Question Resources: Includes tools for selecting texts that meet the complexity and quality demands of the Common Core literacy standards, and resources for writing and evaluating text-dependent questions.

I visit this website on a regular basis to find lesson examples, student writing examples, and other resources that I use as I train and consult with teachers. I hope you will also take advantage of the many resources on Achieve the Core!