From: Carlie Fisher (fisherc@mail.pvpusd.k12.ca.us)
Date: Thu Jul 10 2003 - 11:09:18 PDT
Message-ID: <3F0DABCE.6EF64EEF@mail.pvpusd.k12.ca.us> Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 11:09:18 -0700 From: Carlie Fisher <fisherc@mail.pvpusd.k12.ca.us> Subject: Essential Standards
Dear Sue,
Our school really got into the Pulliam Group's Essential Standards two years ago. They seem to really be useful for language arts teachers who have a hundred different state standards that seem to be unrelated, as they prioritize, organize, and consolidate the state standards into a more workable amount of information. For science, however, they seem to be less useful; my copy of the essential standards is the same as the California State standards, with about one third of the standards missing (it even lists the information by strand number and letter, so that you can
easily identify which state standards have been eliminated).
While reducing the quantity of information we are required to teach sounds like a good one in theory, the standards they eliminate are pretty important. For example, in the 7th grade strand on cells, they include students knowing "the characteristics that distinguish plant cells from animal cells, including chloroplasts and cell walls," but delete "mitochondria liberate energy for the work that cells do and that chloroplasts capture sunlight energy for photosynthesis." When talking about evolution, they eliminate Charles Darwin's evidence and how extinction occurs. We
decided as a science department that these standards are not as helpful to our discipline as they are to language arts and social studies, so we tend to focus more on the state standards.
Good luck!
Carlie Fisher
Ridgecrest Intermediate School
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Aug 04 2003 - 16:18:14 PDT