Anybody have some good high school level Core Curriculum math, English or history textbooks to recommend? What books are you using in school, and what do you think of them? Given that the redesigned SAT is closely aligned to the Core Curriculum. good school textbooks are going to be an important resource.
@Plotinus I used the Saxon Algebra 1/2 books when learning algebra (this was a long long time ago), and I think my HS has since changed to a different publisher. They’re a bit different in that the books don’t segregate topics by chapter (e.g. a whole chapter on polynomials, a whole chapter on vectors/complex numbers) but instead the topics are randomly dispersed into 100-something lessons, and future lessons have lots of review problems from earlier lessons.
I can definitely say I got a really solid understanding of HS algebra using those textbooks (plus a bit of outside help), and I would recommend it. I like that it reinforces previous lessons’ material, making it less likely to forget over time. However I can’t say I’d recommend it to everyone, since I’d imagine some students could be off-put by the structure of the book (in terms of the “disjointed” lessons).
Thanks for the suggestion @MITer94. I googled Saxon Algebra 1/2 and found that it is PRE-algebra. Do you mean Saxon Algebra 1? This is not a Common Core Curriculum book, is it? I am looking for some good additional practice in the specific Common Core areas covered by the redesigned SAT, including descriptive statistics. Some of my students don’t study statistics at school, and most don’t study all the parts of statistics covered by Common Core.
@Plotinus whoops, forgot Algebra 1/2 (one-half) existed! Yes, I meant Algebra 1 and 2.
I used those books back in 2005/2006, well before Common Core was implemented. I don’t remember covering much about statistics (I only learned how to compute least squares regressions when I took AP Stats), but it should cover most of the topics. But since the new SAT seems to have a lot more statistics-related questions, a different textbook might be more suitable.
I’d also be curious to know what the best CC-aligned math textbooks are. I’ve seen a couple of them, as well as a few SAT preparation books, and overall haven’t been too impressed by them.
@Plotinus Sorry, I don’t know much about HS level Common Core (CCSS) texts. I work with a K-6 district, and know texts at that level more. We’ve done a Common Core math adoption, but will not be doing an ELA adoption until later this year.
I’ve heard that Singapore Math is similar to Common Core math and that kids who learned with Singapore Math have an easier time transitioning to Common Core.
Our K-5 adoption was Math Learning Center “Bridges”. We chose that over Houghton Mifflin "Math Expressions, Pearson “Investigations/CMP3”, and McGraw-Hill “Everyday Math”
Our 6th grade adoption was College Preparatory Math (CPM), which is developed by a non-profit consortium. We were not as happy with the options for 6th grade math as for K-5. Some of the 6th grade teachers on the committee making the decision were tempted to stick with the open source materials we’d been using from Engage NY and Georgia. I don’t know how high those curricula go.
Of course, our choices were influenced by how well the series could be applied across a broad spectrum of kids and their ease-of-use in a classroom setting. If you are not intending to use text in a classroom or with a mix of kids that includes everything from gifted to English learners and special needs, your textbook choice might be different.
For science, we are quite happy with the Full Option Science System (FOSS) developed through the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. I believe that only goes to 8th grade. We adopted it prior to NGSS, but it has that feel already, and we will update our materials to their fully NGSS-aligned version.
For English, it would be important to learn “close reading” techniques and to read both fiction and non-fiction. I don’t know that at the HS level a single “English” text is commonly used. From what I see, usually there is a list of novels and other readings chosen by the teacher or department.
History is not standardized as far as CCSS goes, though with the new SAT essay prompts, some US/World history knowledge would seem to be required. There are current efforts to come up with a new history standard, but deciding what history is told is a political thing, and getting the red states and the blue states to agree on that is unlikely. (Just like the evolution and climate change parts of NGSS, unfortunately.)
@Ynotgo
Thanks for all of these suggestions.
I have already downloaded all the lesson plans for grades 9-11 from Engage NY and begun to go through the Math material.
These have definitely helped me to understand better the approach and types of skills emphasized by Common Core. I recognize some of the concepts in the new SAT. However, there are very few practice problems that are at all similar to SAT problems. In fact, the whole approach in these lessons seems to me in direct contradiction with standardized, multiple-choice testing. The lessons have the form, “Here is a situation and a task. Break up into small groups and brain-storm with your classmates. How would you carry the task out? What do you think about it?” The questions are very open-ended. The students are supposed to generate their own methods and responses. The teacher does not tell the students how to solve problems, or even provide a selection of possible methods or answers. There are “Exit Ticket” problems at the end of the lessons, which supposedly verify that the students have learned the desired skill. But there are only a couple of exit ticket problems per lesson. What about homework practice to reinforce these skills? No homework? No practice? Are those too old-fashioned?
This Socratic method is very idealistic, and a great idea for great students and great teachers. But Socrates did not administer time-pressured, standardized tests to his students. No PARCC or SAT for Socrates.
To do well on a time-pressured, multiple-choice, standardized test, it is not enough for most students to know how to kick ideas around, think things over, and try out various approaches for the first time. The students need repetitive practice with methods that work for specific problem-types. I didn’t see any of that in the EngageNY lesson plans. The people who wrote them are living in La-La Land.
I also find it really ironic that College Board claims that the new SAT is aligned with what students are studying in school,l when in fact in turns out that many students are NOT studying the Common Core Curriculum in school, and many of those who are studying Common Core Curriculum are studying it badly. The EngageNY lesson plans are written at a very, very high level of conceptual complexity. My high school AP calculus class was easier to follow than some of the lessons for 9th graders. My guess is that any teacher good enough to understand and use these lesson plans would not need or want to use pre-written lesson plans. On the other hand, the teachers who actually could benefit from pre-written lesson plans will not be able to follow these – they are way too complicated. And if there are not even decent textbooks available for the Common Core at the high school level, how are teachers supposed to teach it? No wonder Common Core test results are dismal.