Molly Talbot

CHALLENGING COMMON CORE LANGUAGE ARTS LESSONS is a solid resource for trained classroom teachers who work with gifted and talented students in an English Language Arts classroom. Each lesson is built out, step by step, and its articulation with the Common Core Standards is made explicit. In schools where teacher accountability is a top priority, this book could help teachers with planning and reporting. Activities involve extensive metacognition, lessons are organized around cross-curricular learning, and close reading forms the core strategy of language arts learning. This is what is called in education literature a teacher-proof resource.

As someone familiar with gifted education, I was surprised by the book’s assumptions of what a gifted student is and how a gifted student will behave in class. I also perceived a strong social-class bias: even if urban kids from impoverished homes are being identified as gifted and talented, they might struggle within the framework of these lessons simply because of the expectations for certain kinds of prior experiences.

The activities are pitched very high for third-grade students; I’d be surprised if many of them actually elicit the desired objectives. And, although the text encourages collaboration and group work, I can’t see many truly gifted student enjoying all the seatwork and answer sheets these lessons require. Such activities certainly train one kind of thinking, one style of intelligence, but I would argue they stifle creativity and instill conformity.

These lessons communicate the value of one kind of critical thinking, but do so at the cost of conformity and lockstep performance. This is not the best way to teach gifted and talented students, and I hope classroom teachers use resources like this only as inspiration and not as actual lesson plans.… (altro)

This book offers a selection of different lesson plans, broken out into their smaller parts. Each lesson is outlined into the same format, making for easy reading and easier browsing. It includes graphic organizers for each lesson, rubrics, and thoughtful questions that address each level of Bloom's Taxonomy. The first section of each outline addresses common core standards experienced during the lesson, allowing teachers to easily see which standards they have addressed and which ones need addressing. The outlines also include time expectations, however, this is not broken down for the individual parts of the lesson, leaving it up in the air how much time you should devote to each mini-lesson. While this offers "freedom," it's hard to gauge how they reached their timing for the entire lesson without seeing the breakdown (five minutes here and five minutes there can make a unit grow or shrink rather quickly).… (altro)

SUMMARY: "This book provides gifted and advanced learners challenging activities to master and engage with the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts through four mini units. Each mini unit is packed with activities and practice problems that enrich and extend grade-level content for grade 3. Students will be exposed to themes such as choices, culture, beliefs, and perseverance. Each theme was chosen with advanced third-grade students in mind and their emerging need to learn more about themselves, their world, and how to work through adversity to accomplish their goals.

THE GOOD: Each lesson contains worksheets that can be copied for students, student groups or can be projected for whole classroom use. The lessons are user friendly and easy to understand and include grading ruberics as well as answer keys in the back. If you are looking for enrichment activities that will truly stretch your gifted students', the activities in this book will certainly accomplish that. Of all the books I have seen so far in this series, this particular book is quite advanced for 3rd graders.
THE NOT AS GOOD: I felt the topics of this particular workbook were too mature for third grade. Although I can agree with the topics of Choices and Perseverance, these were taught at a very high level. The topics of Beliefs and Culture were extremely abstract for the maturity level of this grade of students (regardless of their intelligence level). I felt these topics would be better suited for 5th grade advanced learners or middle school students.
As a side note, there is quite a bit of required reading for these lessons and teachers would have to acquire classroom sets of these books/texts or find a way to get them into the hands of their students.
Also, for the price the book carries, a sturdier book that would last longer would be nice. Just sitting on my shelf, the plastic has begun to wrinkle and pull away from the cover paper.

NOTE: I received a free copy of this workbook from LibraryThing and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All my reviews are 100% honest and based on preset criteria.… (altro)

Lots of great ideas and activities that align with the Common Core standards for ELA in 3rd grade. With themes such as perseverance, cultural norms and customs, and belief in oneself, Challenging Common Core Language Arts Lessons: Activities and Extensions for Gifted and Advanced Learners in Grade 3 provides suggestions for texts and readings, independent and group work, and worksheets that will engage this type of learner. A valuable asset to any learning community.

Thank you to William & Mary's Center for Gifted Education, Molly Bryan Talbot, and LibraryThing Early Reviewer for this ARC.… (altro)