Teachers Prepping For New School Year

Elementary teachers Jessica Mead and Lindsay Barrett spent some time Friday morning in the Wakelin Room at the Wellesley Free Library doing their homework for the new school year.

Mead, who teaches first grade at Bates Elementary School, and Barrett, who teaches Kindergarten at Sprague School, were working to update lesson plans to prepare for the new literacy curriculum as required in the newly adopted state education standards.

The district regularly updates its curriculum, but on July 21, the Massachusetts State Board of Education adopted the education standards outlined by the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The initiative was led by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

The new standards are intended to set nation-wide guidelines for educators in English Language Arts and Mathematics. The standards are also intended, "to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce," according to the Common Core standards website. "We need college and career ready standards because even in high‐performing states – students are graduating and passing all the required tests and still require remediation in their postsecondary work," the website states.

On Friday, Mead and Barrett were working on lesson plans for realistic fiction - where the fictional tale takes place in a real-world setting. 

On Aug. 4, Superintendent of Schools Bella Wong said the district would assess the new standards to determine what changes needed to be made to bring the district in line with them. All districts in Massachusetts must align their curricula to the standards by the start of the 2012-2013 school year, according to a Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education release.