Professional Development | News

ASCD, McTighe, and Wiggins Develop New Common Core Courses

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/30/12

A membership organization that creates professional development programs and products for educators has produced two courses specifically to help teachers implement the Common Core State Standards. The new online courses from ASCD use video presentations to explain how to create standards-based curriculum in math and English language arts.

The Common Core standards are a state-led effort to standardize the knowledge and skills students should have during their K-12 education. So far, 46 states, the District of Columbia, and the US Virgin Islands have decided to adopt the standards, which will be in place in those entities by 2015.

The two separate editions of The Common Core Standards and the Understanding by Design Framework, developed by education experts Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, lay out the relationship between the standards and their well-known "Understanding by Design" template used to plan units of instruction. The authors demonstrate the need to read the standards document closely and show different approaches to "unpack" and group standards to optimize instruction. They also introduce a new version of their template, "Template 2.0," updated to work with the Standards.

The new courses are $99 each.