Educators who are striving to address a critical tenet of the new Common Core standards should check out StudySync. The literacy curriculum from BookheadEd Learning addresses the Common Core’s demand for acquisition of high-level reading and writing skills along with handling the challenge of the Common Core’s inclusion of listening and speaking skills as English language arts standards. The web-based solution, www.StudySync.com is helping students acquire all four skills with its recently expanded library of SyncTV episodes, which model study group interactions and analyses of a wide selection of fiction and nonfiction works. Users can now access more than 100 of the short, scripted video lessons. The episodes are one part of a cross-curricular literacy platform for grades 4-12 that includes a diverse library of more than 550 fiction and nonfiction texts, dynamic video and media designed to improve reading, writing, listening and critical thinking skills. The SyncTV episodes cover such diverse titles as The Gettysburg Address, “A Tale of Two Cities,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott” and much more; and it doesn’t just deal with historic works, it also includes non-historic and modern fiction like, “The Outsiders” or “The Giver”. As students explore and practice the interaction and communication techniques modeled in SyncTV video lessons, they are better able to examine, evaluate and discuss the texts they themselves have read. Consequently, the students gain a better understanding of how to read and analyze an author’s work, how to build context for broader understanding, and how to construct meaning from a variety of texts. Check it out.