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Annual Report Special Edition 2004 In 2003 Creativity Research Journal published a recently completed study on creativity conducted by John Baer of Rider University. The study examined various creative writing projects and found that, far from being confined to rote memory and "mere facts," 540 students in the Core Knowledge middle schools exhibited as much creativity as their peer control groups. Millard Core Academy has a waiver from compliance with state standards as their district's standards exceed in the Nebraska state standards, but by any standard, Millard Core scores high and continues the dedication to excellence that won it the $25,000 prestigious Milken award last year.
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COMMON KNOWLEDGE™ |
The
Newsletter of the Core Knowledge® Foundation |
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Building Bridges with Words Common Knowledge Goes Electronic/ The Grader Series/ New Teacher Guides to the Core Classics®/ New Parent Brochure/ New Publishing Partnership Being Explored Common Knowledge Goes Electronic
Our flagship project in publications came closer to completion this year with six Teacher Handbooks now in draft form for grades K through 5. This project, which is designed to support classroom teachers with lessons, materials, and background information related to the Sequence, was begun in 2000 with a grant from the Walton Foundation. During 2003 teacher reaction to the first drafts was sought in two venues. Sixty teachers, administrators, and consultants were asked to review a sample draft, answer an in-depth questionnaire, and participate in a focus group discussion at the conference in Phoenix. The same process was repeated in Little Rock in May with a special session held for Arkansas K-5 teachers. Reports generated from these two sessions indicated a very favorable reaction to the Teacher Handbooks. Based on a 1-5 scale, no score for any aspect went below 4. The first volumes in the Handbook series are expected to be available in 2004.
The Spanish translation project was also completed in 2003 and translations of the texts of four books, What Your K through 3rd Grader Should Know, were posted on the website in April. This project, funded in 1999 by the Brown Foundation of Houston, Texas was intended to help non-English speakers in elementary school acquire fluency in English. The translations enable Spanish-speaking parents to read along with their children as the children study the illustrated English versions of the Grader books. New Teacher Guides to the Core Classics® Teacher Guides for six of the Core Classics were also posted on our website this year, after being reviewed by classroom teachers and edited. The response from teachers has been extremely positive. A teacher at St. Joseph's School in Greenville, South Carolina remarked the Guide to Washington Irving was " the best teacher's guide she's ever used." A fifth grade teacher at Angelus Academy in Springfield. Virginia, claimed that encountering the Don Quixote teacher guide on the website convinced her to teach this text for the first time. This year Core Knowledge also produced a brief "Guide to Core Knowledge" for parents. This is presented as a tri-fold brochure that can be downloaded from the website "as is" or in a form that can be customized by each school and used to inform parents about various features of the Core Knowledge curriculum. New Publishing Partnership Being Explored This year we explored the possibility of partnering with Scholastic Books on a number of projects. Meetings with executives of Scholastic's school division were held in Charlottesville and in New York, and a number of common interests were given priority ranking. The highest priority was given to the development of classroom libraries bearing the Core Knowledge endorsement. This would be a package of books, a combination of Core Knowledge publications, Scholastic publications, and titles from other publishers, which would relate to topics recommended in the Sequence. We are excited about the possibility of working with a publisher with such a large marketing arm who would be able to supply many worthwhile classic titles, ours included, to our Core Knowledge classrooms. If this project goes forward next year, we anticipate that the classroom libraries will appeal to schools outside the Core Knowledge network, thus extending our reach. Bridging the Knowledge Gap/ Highlights for 2003/ A Message from The President/ Building Bridges to Schools/ Building Bridges with Words/ Bridging the Content Gap in Teacher Education/ Connecting to Core Knowledge Teachers: 2003 Conference/ A Bridge to Literacy: The Reading Program/ Preschool: Paving the Way to Future Learning/ Bridging the Way to New Alliances/ Financial Status
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In
2003 Core Knowledge transferred some of its attention to web-based
communications and launched an electronic version of 
In
December of 2003, complete revisions for What Your Fourth Grader Needs to
Know were turned over to the Doubleday Publishing Company and the revised
version is scheduled for publication release in August of 2004. Fifth grade has
been scheduled for release in August 2005 and Sixth Grade in 2006.