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Justin Bittick

Scott Straub

19FA-EDUC-150-001W

10/14/2019

Common Curriculum Website

I chose to research Common Curriculum. I chose this because I had heard of there being

websites that will help you build lesson plans and plan out your classes while aligning them to

the common core for your state. This program just what I was hoping it would. Now over the

past couple of semesters I have found that writing a lesson plan really doesn’t exist in many of

the schools today, especially some of the smaller school districts. I have also found that the

more experienced teachers seem to keep to their format from previous years of when and what

they teach. Although most all the teachers I have observed are more than willing to put new

content in their lessons or try new techniques, it makes me really wonder if they are truly open to

change.

Now this site is still fairly new having been founded in 2012, it does have several years

under their belts with experience and seems to be staying up with the more current times. This

program has been formatted to be fairly easy to use for the basic operator. When playing with

this website at first it seemed a little overwhelming but after some practice, I really liked the

layout and how you could tie in the common core lessons and objectives as well as individualize

the plan for each day. This is an awesome website and I will be continuing to play with it.

I would love to use this program into my classroom because you are able to share lessons

and content with the class and plan a whole week ahead or further if you would like. It could be
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very advantageous for planning ahead like this for a substitute to take a class if I were out sick

one day.

I can see there will be some challenges like when the power might go out or a computer

goes down. I feel that if I was to print the week and have any handouts done ahead of class to be

prepared this would overcome those. It will also be a bit of a challenge to get the lesson plans

aligned with common core and the textbook but when it is done you can use it for future years

and still tweak it as you teach. At this point I have not seen any cost of this program but with all

good websites and software there is usually a cost at some point for some feature that would be

very helpful in planning. It does seem to want to charge you if your district wants the ability to

collaborate amongst teaching staff. Other than that, it is free for the teacher on an individual

basis.

Some videos that show how this website can work and its history are as follows:

https://youtu.be/U0C1UBT8PsA

https://youtu.be/kWwamD96K7k

https://youtu.be/m6nB9l9i5JA

Note: My boy’s teachers have used ClassDojo which is an app and online

communication for the students that allows the parents to track behavior in the school. It can be

used in many ways like keeping parents informed of announcements, to projects and even due

dates. It is up to the teacher how they set it up. I have not played with it on the teacher end but

had great success on the parent end. My boys could track their own behavior as well as myself.