This weekend I finished reading The Core Six - Essential Strategies for Achieving Excellence with the Common Core.  It was an easy read (less than 100 pages) and had very practical and easy to implement suggestion for the core six:
1.   Reading for Meaning
2.  Compare and Contrast
3.  Inductive Learning
4.  Circle of Knowledge
5.  Write to Learn
6.   Vocabulary's CODE.
The book helped me develop learning activities to help my students become better readers, writers and discussion participants.

I'm giving the book back to James tomorrow.   You can ask him to borrow it.