Understanding and Applying Standards

Over the course of the last week, I have devoted much of my time and consideration to understanding and applying standards. Specifically, I have focused my efforts on two Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts at the sixth grade level. Through three exercises in particular—unpacking standards, backwards mapping and writing SMART objectives-- I have developed a deeper grasp of how to apply CCSS in developing engaging lesson plans for sixth grade students.

Unpacking Standards

Unpacking standards involves getting to the heart of what a standard actually means. Often the language of the standards is complicated and involves many parts. Unpacking the standard means to break it down into individual parts by identifying what the students need to know and what they need to do to show that they are meeting the standard. It is imperative that you focus on the verbs within the standard to identify what the students need to do meet the standard and the level of higher order thinking needed to master the content within the standard.

One standard that I chose to unpack was CCSS-ELA.Literacy.RL.6.2 which states, “Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.” As you can see, this particular standard as many parts. First, a student needs to know what a theme is in order to be able to identify it. Once the theme is identified, the student must be able to cite with specific examples how it is woven and reinforced through the text. The third part of this standard requires that students be able to summarize a text without bias. They must be able to make word and syntax choice that do not convey personal opinions or judgments when relaying the details of the text. All in all, I find that this method of unpacking standards is quite useful in ensuring that every part of the standard is met.

Backwards Mapping

Another useful method for planning lessons using CCSS is backwards mapping, which was developed by educational experts Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, who believe that the best approach to designing curriculum and lesson plans is to start with the end product-- what students should know and be able to do a the end of the lesson or unit. Because CCSS gives very specific standards for what a student should know and be able to do in English Language Arts, backwards mapping is a great method to use for working towards that goal. Teachers begin with the standard, then they decide what assessments are needed to prove that that the standards have been satisfied, and finally, they plan the learning experiences that will help students meet the standards.

For this method, I chose CCSS-ELA.Literacy.RL.6.9 which states, “Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.” First I determined that students would again need to first know about theme, literary devices and genres before they would be able to compare and contrast several selected texts. The end result is that students would be able to compare and contrast, but this would take several lessons to accomplish and would unfold over a unit. I chose to design a unit on immigrating to the United States, and I selected several texts from various genres that students would be required to read, study and discuss as a class and in small groups. Then I decided what assessments I would need in order to verify that the standards had been met. One assessment would be that students would be required to create an infographic that artistically displayed the use of theme in the selected texts using specific examples from the reading. Students would be graded on a rubric. Finally I planned out the learning experiences that would be needed in order for the students to understand the use of theme and other literary devices and how they are used in the different genres of the same topic. For this, I decided that students would keep a chart of similarities and differences among texts as they read independently and discussed as a class and in small groups.

SMART Objectives

The key to understanding SMART objectives is all in the acronym. SMART—Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and targeted to the learner. All the elements must be met in order for an objective to be SMART. Using the same standard as before (CCSS-ELA.Literacy.RL.6.9), I wrote several SMART objectives, which can be seen in the infographic below.