As Common Core standards change the way math and literacy are taught, more and more districts are focusing on training programs that help teachers properly teach students to critically think.

When considering specifically literacy standards under Common Core State Standards, students are now required to think more critically about informational and literary texts, and as a result, teachers are required to pose the right questions to trigger deeper thinking.

"To that end, a number of new district and researcher-led programs are being developed to help teachers learn to ask better questions in connection with reading assignments or activities," said Education Week.

In order to help facilitate this, a number of researchers have been awarded millions of dollars in federal grants to develop first-of-its-kind professional development programs that would help teachers to "improve discussions during close reading as prescribed under the common core."

Whereas teachers are traditionally used to focusing on basic story structure, researchers P. Karen Murphy and Lindsay C. Matsumura are respectively using $1.5 million federal grants to help train teachers to focus on asking better questions to evoke deeper thinking.

Many experts argue that closer reading not only improves student learning, but it also levels the playing field for low-income and disadvantaged students.

"Close reading is intended not only to push students to think more deeply and critically about what they read, but also to put students with less background knowledge on more equal footing with classmates during class discussions, according to Matsumura," the article said.

By training teachers on how to properly select "meaty texts" and how to stimulate deeper understanding with well-poised questions, experts hope that Common Core will gets its due justice in the classroom with proper implementation.

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Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

10/2/2015