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The standards offer us all a tremendous opportunity to help our students learn what they need to know for success in school and life, but using them requires a lot of something we as teachers have very little of: time. Standards demand that we find more time for students to learn in school—more time to think, practice, collaborate, and reflect. And we have to find more time as teachers to plan and teach, to learn the related language and instructional moves implicit in the standards.

With an all too keen sense of my own limited time, I began to create a version of the Common Core State Standards that better met my needs, one I could keep by my side and reference quickly when planning, writing, or participating in meetings related to the Common Core standards. When teachers saw it, they wanted their own copies, and the result was The Common Core Companion—one for grades 6–8 and another for 9–12, which were both published in 2013.

What’s the big idea behind Your Literacy Standards Companion? It’s inefficient for us all across the nation to spend time deciphering what our specific state standards say and digesting what they mean for teaching and learning, so I wrote the Companion to do that for you. With this book at your side, you can reclaim hours of time to do the most important work: develop your instructional ideas (and the standards themselves) into rich, engaging learning experiences for our students that meet the standards’ higher expectations.

Because I often work with literacy coordinators who are responsible for all students in their district, I wanted these Companion books to be K–12, districtwide, and school-wide tools. That way teachers and administrators could hit the ground running as they implemented the standards and envisioned professional development that would support all teachers. But I had one problem: I was not an elementary school teacher. For teachers in grades 3–5, I thought of Leslie Blauman, an exemplary teacher and guide to teachers around the country.

When it came to someone in grades K–2, I did not have to think long about whom to ask, for in those grades, all roads lead to Sharon Taberski, whose books Comprehension From the Ground Up and On Solid Ground did for K–3 instruction what Julia Child did for French cooking. She’s that good. And she is also a wise, patient, and generous friend and mentor to any who know her.

More important than her landmark books is the fact that Sharon taught in her own classroom for 28 years and still works in classrooms, now in her role as a coach for teachers. She brings to this K–2 volume what I hoped she would: the ability to carefully balance the high demands of the standards with the developmental needs of young children.

So without further ado, and with deepest gratitude for all she has taught me through the process of writing this book, I introduce you to Your Literacy Standards Companion, Grades K–2. If you’re looking for someone to help you understand and, more important, use the state standards in your classroom, you have come to the right place, for with Sharon Taberski, you are in good hands. Trust her to help you create exemplary standards-aligned K–2 literacy instruction that will allow you to be the teacher you have been and are capable of becoming.

Jim Burke