Drawing on sociocultural perspectives and New Literacies Studies this study uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a tool to closely analyse one way the Common Core State Standards in the United States are being produced, disseminated and consumed. The analysis focuses on a section of the CCSS, a model lesson given by one of the primary architects of the Common Core State Standards, David Coleman, and a group of English teachers' reactions to David Coleman's presentation. Analysing how the CCSS have been produced, disseminated, and consumed demonstrates how policy becomes normalised through discursive events. Coleman's lesson serves as an instantiation of the ideological underpinnings of the CCSS and is illustrative of the ways in which the CCSS is working to position teachers and the teaching of reading in particular ways. Coleman's presentation can be seen as a discursive event in that it shapes what counts as teaching reading. A CDA approach was valuable in that it showed a complex interdiscursivity at play in Coleman's model lesson. Specifically, Coleman's presentation begins by positioning teachers as in conversation with the Common Core, but ultimately condemns and critiques the way teachers approach the teaching of reading. A Critical Discourse Analysis framework can provide a helpful heuristic for both English teachers and English teacher educators to examine the ideological underpinnings of standardisation by considering the production, dissemination and consumption of texts such as the CCSS.