Introduction to the Core Curriculum Content Standards

Since our schools need to produce both excellent thinkers and excellent doers, the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards describe what students should know and be able to do in nine academic areas: visual and performing arts, comprehensive health and physical education, language arts literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, world languages, technological literacy, and career education and consumer, family, and life skills. The last two standards areas replace the cross-content workplace readiness standards, adopted in 1996. Each of the nine content sections in this document begins with an introduction that articulates the vision for the content area and provides information on the revision process. Each content area has numbered standards (e.g., 3.1, 5.2) followed by a descriptive statement. The descriptive statement provides a brief overview of the content and skills enumerated in the standard.

The content standards themselves are concerned with the knowledge students should acquire and the skills they should develop in the course of their PK-12 experience. They are broad outcome statements that provide the framework for strands and cumulative progress indicators (CPIs). Strands are organizational tools that help teachers locate specific content and skills. Under each strand is a number of CPIs at specific benchmark grades. The CPIs provide the specific content or skills to be taught and are cumulative; that is, the progress indicators begin at a foundational or basic level and increase in complexity as the student matures, requiring more complex interaction with the content.

When referring to the NJCCS in curriculum or lesson plans, use the following structure to include the standard, grade level, strand, and CPI.

Standard 3.1.8.H.1

Standard 3.1 is Language Arts Literacy Standard 3.1 (Reading).

Students are expected to meet this standard at Grade 8.

The content is found in Strand H (Inquiry and Research).

The specific learning outcome is CPI 1 (Produce written and oral work that demonstrates comprehension of informational materials).

NOTE: Links provided with the CPI's may not be different.  All CPI's may not have links.  Also, the format may change from standard area to standard area.