Career and Technical Education

Units

• Grades 9-10: Researching to Deepen Understanding - Technology
• Grades 9-12: Personal Finance - Chevy Volt...It's Electric!
• Grades 9-12: Banking and Finance - Unit 4
  • To access the unit, select Finance/Finance and Accounting Curriculum. Scroll to Table of Contents to view the units listed. Select Unit 4 which begins on page 33.
• Grade 9-12: Agribusiness Unit Aligned to the CCSS
• Grade 9-12: Architecture Unit Aligned to the CCSS
• Grade 9-12:Health Sciences Unit Aligned to the CCSS
• Grades 9-12: Culinary Arts – Food and Sanitation
• Grades 11-12: Researching to Deepen Understanding – Food

Understanding/Implementing CT Core Standards in the Classroom

General Overview of the Common Core State Standards

• Common Core State Standards and Career and Technical Education: Bridging the Divide Between College and Career Readiness (achieve.org)
• What Makes Instruction Aligned - The Instructional Practice Guide suite of tools focus not on every pedagogical move in the classroom, but on the specific actions teachers and students take to address the Key Shifts required by the Standards. To understand aligned practice, you must first understand the Key Shifts. (achievethecore.org) 

• Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects including: Appendix A - College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards, Grades 6-12 Literacy Standards, Research Supporting Key Elements of the Standards, and a Glossary of Key Terms  (corestandards.org)
• ELA 6-12 Standards Progression (PCG in collaboration with the Connecticut State Department of Education)

Common Core Implementation for All Students

• NEA - How Educators Can Advocate for English Language Learners: ALL IN! 2015 Advocacy Guide (nea.org and colorincolorado.org)  
• Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners by Jennifer Himmel - This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels. (colorincolorado.org) 
• Using Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) to Implement Common Core—The Council of Great City School’s white paper encourages schools to embrace the needs of ALL students, and recommends implementing the standards within a framework of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that will help ensure that all students succeed. (cgcs.org)

Classroom Resources

Toolkits and Materials

• VISIBLE THINKING – This website is for teachers, school leaders and administrators in K-12 schools who want to encourage the development of a culture of thinking. Many resources for classroom use are described in detail. (visiblethinkingpz.org) 
• See, Think, Wonder Visible Thinking Routine – This is a routine for exploring works of art/photographs and other interesting things; it encourages students to make careful observations, thoughtful interpretations, and sets the stage for inquiry. (visiblethinkingpz.org)    
• See-Wonder-Think Strategy Sample Video Lesson demonstrates a routine that helps students to analyze and interpret art and/or photography. It was developed by Visual Thinking. (teachingchannel.org) 
• SweetSearch is a search engine designed for students that lists websites reviewed by a team of educators. It also provides social media tools that enable users to send their results to others. (sweetsearch.com) 
• WebTools4U2Use--Finding the Right Tool (webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com)
• Newsela’s Text Sets Toolkit – This Learning & Support feature contains various resources to help educators to understand what text sets are, how to create their own text sets, how to edit them, how to use text sets in their classrooms…and more. (newsela.com)  

• Connecticut State Department of Education CTE Web Page  
• National Research Center for Career and Technical Education—This website provides teachers with evidence-based solutions to better engage students in the school experience; recommendations on how to improve academic as well as technical achievement; and findings on how to improve the transition of college and career ready young people from high school to continuing education beyond high school (nrccte.org)
• Learning that Works for America—Common Career Technical Core- This website provides news about CTE programs and professional development opportunities including a state by state update on the changes in CTE around the country. (careertech.org)
• iCONN, a comprehensive search engine for educators and students – provides all students, teachers and administrators with free online access to a wealth of essential library and information resources from trustworthy sources. It is freely accessible from every school, library, and home. Access from home requires a public library card. (iconn.org)
• Open Professionals Education Network - This website provides openly licensed education content that can be used in whole or in part. It includes links to photos, videos, audio/music, general recorded lectures & video tutorials, open textbooks, simulations and animation, as well as modular course components and complete courses. (open4us.org)
• CommonLit—This website offers teachers a free collection organized by theme and Lexile level of news articles, poems, short stories, historical documents, complex nonfiction texts (including paired texts), related multimedia (videos, audio, and interactive websites, teacher guides, parent guides, text-dependent questions, and discussion questions. A new text view allows students to interact with the text on laptops and other one-to-one devices.(commonlit.org)  
• CommonLit - The best reading passages and tools for the best price: FREE  (commonlit.org) 
• Tween Tribune – This news website by the Smithsonian provides daily news articles for students. Articles are selected by professional journalists working in collaboration with teachers and students. As a Smithsonian resource, it has a plethora of science and history focused articles. There are also articles in Spanish, different lexile levels, technology, a junior version for grades K-4 and more. (tweentribune.com)  
• Literacy in the Digital Age: Five Sites with High Quality Informational Text – by Steve Figurelli and Natalie Franzi, August 19, 2015 posted on Tcher’s Voice, a blog series from Teaching Channel with Student Achievement Partners about digital literacy tools and their effective use by educators: (teachingchannel.org)  
• The Washington Post Newspaper in Education Program allows all teachers to access topical NIE Curriculum Guides on a variety of topics in all subject areas. Common Core Standards aligned to the suggested activities are listed at the end of the most recent curriculum guides.  (nie.washingtonpost.com)
• OpenEd offers Common Core resources in a K-12 educational resource catalog (opened.io)
• Newsela’s SPANISH articles – These articles are available on a wide variety of topics and reading levels, in both Spanish and English.(newsela.com)  
• SELA website provides teachers and students nonfiction articles that are Common Core aligned. Each article offers a choice of five different Lexile levels, making it easy for an entire class to read the same content, but at level that is just right for each student. High interest articles are updated daily on such topics as: War and Peace, Science, Kids, Money, Law, Health and Arts.(newsela.com)
• FYI for Kids is a collection of engaging and high-quality magazine articles designed to enhance the Common Core classroom’s reading repertoire. The objective of this project is to demonstrate a type of text that is essential for increasing students’ engagement in and proficiency with complex texts—short engaging articles that communicate critical information. (textproject.org)

• CCSS Instructional Practice Guide for 6-12 Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects (achievethecore.org)
• Lesson Planning Tool: Content and Structure - Plan with the Common Core in mind. The Lesson Planning Tool (digital version only) guides teachers through a series of prompts about the lesson content, structure, and activities to ensure the Shifts required by the CCSS are central to the lesson. (achievethecore.org)
• “Teachers Interview Scientists: Statistics from the Real-World,” Dorothy Sutton, a teacher, and scientist Jared Schuetter talk about how to prepare students for science in the workplace. (posted on February 26, 2016 on the Ohio Stem Learning Network) 
• Authentic Products Aligned to Common Core Writing Standards – This document focuses specifically on the writing component of final products.  Ideally, these products are created for an authentic audience, one beyond the classroom and the teacher.  (Expeditionary Learning, Plaut and Passchier, January 2015)     
• Common Core Standards and Career Technical Education Classroom Tasks – Achieve and the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education jointly piloted a process where educators evaluated, modified, and/or developed instructional tasks that demonstrate how Career Technical Education (CTE) content can be leveraged throughout high school mathematics.
•  App Building for Everyone—This website offers a complete introduction to app programming concepts and methods for grades 6-12. Common Core-aligned standards are listed. (www.graphite.org/website/appinventororg)
• Resources for Planning and Reflection
• Core Studio platform includes a free, computer science curriculum for K-5 students aligned to Common Core Standards (studio.code.org)
• Video Playlist: Educating Digital Citizens (teachingchannel.org)
• Academic Vocabulary in the Common Core: High School Career and Technical Education (pbslearningmedia.org) 

Video Resources

Video Libraries

• UPDATED Teaching Channel CCSS Video Library offers useful supports for implementing the Common Core State Standards. The site includes 256 videos that are useful for communications opportunities or professional learning and also includes many lesson plans for teachers that include videos of the CCSS instructional shifts in action. (teachingchannel.org)
• Deeper Learning Series:
  • Grades 9-12 Selecting Student Internships (teachingchannel.org)
  • Grades 9-12 Individualized Real-World Learning (teachingchannel.org)
  • Grades 9-12 Mentoring Through Internships (teachingchannel.org)
  • Grades 9-12 Kathleen Cushman on Student Internships (teachingchannel.org)

• Schools That Work: Merging Career Tech with College Prep (edutopia.org)

• iTunes U Courses, Created by Teachers for Teachers - These iTunes U courses were developed by a group of classroom teachers to explain the Shifts in ELA / Literacy and mathematics required by the Common Core. Presented in partnership with The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), they showcase a combination of materials from achievethecore.org as well as additional curated resources and interactive activities. These courses were designed to provide a robust self-learning opportunity for individual teachers and to offer high-quality, credible materials that can be used to support professional learning communities in schools. (achievethecore.org) 
• Professional Development: Introduction to Literacy Shifts in Content Areas—a 1-4 hour module that provides an introduction to the key shifts required by the CCSS for Literacy in the content areas: history / social studies, science, and technical subjects. (achievethecore.org)
• NASDCTEc hosts WEBINARS on a variety of topics and pressing issues of interest to the CTE community and others. These webinars bring NASDCTEc staff together with leading experts from across the nation to share their expertise on issues including policy, research and best practices. Participants can take full advantage of these opportunities by asking questions during the live session, or you can follow up with comments and questions afterwards. (careertech.org)
• 40 Resources and Tools for Deeper Learning: Resources include a video series with supporting materials including rubrics, lesson plans, research, and strategy documents. (teachingchannel.org)