The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of instructional tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Literacy experts have developed a framework and a set of templates that teachers and other educators can use to develop content area modules focused on high-quality writing tasks closely tied to subject area texts. The Foundation has asked Research for Action (RFA) to study the early adoption of the framework, focusing particularly on teachers' response to and use of the framework. The framework was piloted in urban, rural and suburban school districts in six states and two national networks of schools/teachers during the 2010-11 school year. This booklet is a synthesis of what RFA learned from practitioners over the course of the first pilot year, 2010-11. It highlights how Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) worked in schools, including what to expect when using the framework and promising practices, as well as teachers' early impressions about LDC's impact on their teaching and student learning.