College and Career Readiness

Writing an essay for a college application, composing a résumé, filling out a job application, producing a video, designing a web page—these are but a few of the many real-life tasks in which students will find themselves applying language arts skills throughout their lives. As your students work their way through Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature, they will be developing the skills they need to succeed in situations like these. At the same time, they will be growing in awareness of who they are, who they want to become, and how they might reach their goals.

Exceeding the Standards: Special Topics presents extended lessons that tie the rich literature and comprehensive language arts instruction of the Mirrors & Windows program to the topics of personal development, career awareness, and media literacy. These lessons provide students with practical information and experience in applied communication skills. Each lesson also connects the real-world application with a particular aspect of the selections that students are studying in their textbook. For more information go to www.mirrorsandwindows.com and click on Exceeding the Standards.

Mirrors & Windows gives you the tools you need to help your students succeed in the real-world!

Common Core Standards for College and Career Readiness

We’re paying close attention to the Common Core Standards for College and Career Readiness being developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Note that in the Introduction document, the first standard listed for Student Practices in Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening (the underlying premises for the core standards) is that students can demonstrate “independence.”

“Students who are college and career ready exhibit the following capacities in their reading, writing, and speaking and listening:
1. They demonstrate independence as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners. Students can, without significant scaffolding or support, comprehend and evaluate complex text across a range of types and disciplines …”

This premise strongly supports Mirrors & Windows’ unique instructional design that gradually reduces the level of scaffolding or support (applying the gradual release of responsibility model) in each unit to include independent reading selections within the textbook, providing many opportunities for students to demonstrate their independence as readers.
For more information on the Common Core State Standards Initiative visit http://www.corestandards.org/.