Common Core Standards Curriculum?

Having put a few feelers out about my last blog post, I heard from English teachers that my reasoning is logical and would lead students toward the conclusion I want them to make... if those students are college freshman. In an effort to take this project in the direction I want, I'm reviewing the Common Core Standards and figuring out what students "can" do at various grade levels. When I have a more solid understanding of the skills I can expect students to have at various levels, I can do more to target my questions. I'm thinking high school freshman would be a good place to start--they're impressionable enough that ideas will stick, and hopefully if I lay this out for them correctly it'll be a way of thinking they'll carry into future classes.

I intend to spent the next day or two reviewing these standards for freshmen and picking out skills they should have. I can target those skills in my questions while integrating a queer theoretical perspective.

I also intend to look more closely at Bloom's taxonomy, an articulation of levels of thinking (see an image here: http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670).

Specifically, I want to pick out application and analysis. If I can alert students to the presence of a simile for example, I hope I can take them up another level and force them to analyze why an author would choose a particular simile, what cultural or social proclivities might have prompted that choice, and how we can question why those choices might influence perspectives.

I'll have a more extensive list of skills I want to tap into after I've read the standards (for interested readers looking for more info, it can be found here: http://www.corestandards.org/).