Hi everyone. Welcome to a presentation over standard-based instruction where we're really going to focus on what is a standard and how to really understand how to utilize these standards in the classroom. My name is Jessica Washington and I'm so glad to take you on this journey that we're going to have just really digging deep into what is a standard.
How do we focus on our curriculum, the importance of lesson planning, and just guiding our way all the way through that? So just join me. And if you have anything to take notes with, please, please, please have your items already out and ready. But I'm going to go ahead and get started without any more further ado. So I want you to know in case you want to create your own presentations, I am using Canva as my template and I am really just grateful for that opportunity because they created such a phenomenal layout.
Well, we're starting with the standards and this is actually part one of a three-part series which is all together in this presentation, but we're chunking the information bit by bit. So it's a little bit better to understand and grasp and hold up. Once again, I am Jessica Washington, known as Miss Jessie to all of my team who is tuning in.
Hello. Thank you for joining. And we're going to go ahead and focus on what we're trying to do. So our main goal, our lesson objective is to learn how to understand the standards. And in this case, we're talking about.
curriculum standards. And when we finish by the end of this lesson, you should be able to explain what a standard is and the purpose of a standard in the curriculum. You should also be able to understand how to use the curriculum based standards to plan and modify all of your lessons.
Lastly, you should be able to discuss the use of verbs in your curriculum standard to ensure students are learning at the correct grade level. So that really sets our tone for what we're trying to do. And we're going to hit these three targets.
I just know that we are. So just getting started, we first look at just the word standard. If I were to ask you, what does standard mean?
How would you explain the definition of standard without even looking at the screen? What does standard mean? Most times you'll say, well, it's a level. It's like a standard education or the standard of a goal. And what happens is many times when we're trying to explain what a standard means, we're using the actual terminology of standard.
So let's dig deep real quick. And a simple Google search will let you know that standard actually has two. primary definitions.
And the first is a level of quality or attainment, standard way of living, a standard car. It's a level of quality. It's basically what you want to be able to get to or you want to attain.
And then after that standard attainment, then you have luxury or premium value or those type of things, standard gas. So that's one definition. But in the idea of curriculum design, I really want us to focus on this second definition.
And standard is something that is used as a measure or norm or a model in a comparative evaluation. So our terms are or our sentences are you must meet certain standards to join the team. What kind of standards would that be?
Well, maybe you have to run a 15 minute mile and you have to do 50 pushups. And you have to have at least a level of hand-eye coordination. So what's happening is there's a baseline of what must be done or a measure. And that baseline is a normalcy.
You must be able to be here in order to achieve more. You must at least hit this in order to get. So that's one reason why we say he expects the work to be done to a performance. professional standard.
It must be done at least at this level. So what we're noticing is that a standard, you tell me. You should be telling me that it's at least a level or a baseline, and we'll use that word a lot, or a norm, but it's an expectation. It's something that must happen in order for us to pursue or go further.
So when we talk about our curriculum standards, what do we really mean when we then say curriculum standard? If we're talking about that baseline and we're talking about that norm, and then we're talking about curriculum, which is basically the objectives of a lesson, or I shouldn't say lesson, objectives of a content or an area of knowledge. And it's the individual points in order to say you attain that knowledge.
So a curriculum standard, we're really talking about what a child is expected. to be able to do or understand at that level. So a third grade curriculum standard is a third grade baseline. A grade 10 is a grade 10 baseline. If you're in an algebra course, you have a baseline and those curriculum that's given to us is creating that baseline, that norm, that measurement of what a student should be able to do at the end of that term or that...
I don't want to say curriculum, but at the very end of that learning phase, what they're able to achieve. So when we talk about curriculum standards for the year, we are talking about the skill or the content that a student is supposed to achieve by the end of that term or year. And that is why we have to focus on our scope and sequence, because that scope is everything.
And the sequence is the order it comes into. And it's the outline. the standards.
It's the outline of everything should happen for that baseline for that year, for that child to be at least at grade norm. That is the basis of our standard. And that is what we're looking at. So that's one reason why if you really take the opportunity to look at a standard, the vertical alignment is really important. So I actually call it VAM.
Shout out to teaching in Texas. because we had our virtual alignment matrix, which were our curriculum guides that would show us the exact standard and how it progressed from first grade all the way to grade 12. Well, right here, I just took three of our ELA from the Common Core Standards, and I looked at a third grade, fourth grade, and fifth grade. And if you notice here, they all end in an RL something three, and that's because that's the same standard line. So third grade is...
3.3, fourth grade, 4.3, fifth grade, 5.3. So I'm going to be quiet for a moment while you look at them. And I want you to think to yourself, what is the difference between this standard?
Well, third grade. A child has to be able to describe characters in the story and also explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events. But in fourth grade, we asked a little bit more of the child, and that is to describe a character in detail, as well as the setting or events. So in third grade, they only had to do one thing. In fourth grade, we stretched it out a little bit.
added to the piece of drawing on details in the text that deals with thoughts, words, or actions. Well, now we take that moment from fourth grade and go all the way to fifth grade. And we look at compare and contrast two or more characters. So now we've added a different level in there. And then we still have our settings or events.
And we still talk about drawing on specific details in text. But now we've asked... that we've taken that fourth grade student to fifth grade, and they're able to actually embed two or more characters into that same describing.
And they're no longer describing. They're actually comparing and contrasting, which is two different skills. So you can see here from third grade to fourth grade to fifth grade, how it continued to grow and grow and grow. And I guarantee you. You can follow this stem to sixth grade, to seventh grade, to eighth grade, and you'll see the actual vertical alignment.
of how it goes from grade level to grade level to grade level and understanding which means our students are growing, growing, growing. And every year their baseline of what they're supposed to do gets pushed and it gets pushed. So it progresses up to where we say that they should be when they're college and career ready. So real quick. Our brain buzz and the video is actually covering the brain buzz.
Let me see if I can move it to the side. There we go. And in our brain buzz, this is a moment for you to reflect on our learning so far.
So our quick question one, in your own words, how would you explain the purpose of a standard to a colleague? Yes, I'm waiting for you to talk back to me. Think about it. What's the purpose of a standard?
Why is it valuable to an educator? And how would you convince them? Well, we're winding down that question.
And then we're going to go to the second question, which is, how can vertical alignment enhance your teaching practices in the classroom. I'll let you think about that one for a second. Hopefully, you've said some really insightful things, but just knowing the vertical alignment and knowing the standard should really impact your teaching in a multiple or multi-tool, excuse me, different ways. And I'm not going to give you the answer just yet. I'm going to go on with our presentation because hopefully you're going to get a couple more ideas in the next couple of slides or so.
Okay, brain break over. If you need a little bit more time, just hit pause. But if not, we're proceeding on to part two. We're actually going to break down the standard. So in part two, It's time for us to really get into the nitty-gritty and start our surgery.
Yes, did you know that a standard is actually able to be broken down into two separate pieces? So here's a standard right here we just finished talking about, the Literacy RL 5.3, the compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama. Drawing on specific details in the text of how characters interact.
It can be broken down into the verb and the content, or I will say the skill set. So if you look back at the standard, and what I've underlined is the verbs. For every standard, you want to focus in on the verb. The verbs are going to tell you the action, and this is important in a second. And then after you highlight your verbs.
You then focus on the content or the skills. So here your verb is the how. How does the student have to do the standard? What action must they be able to do? How do they work with that material?
Where your content or your skill is the what. What are they responsible for knowing? What must they be able to do?
So in this case, it's the what is that they have to be able to know the two characters or more, the settings or the events, and then the details. That's the what, that's the skill that they have to be able to go into a novel or book or text and find that information out. Well, when they find that information out, how do they use that information? They're going to use that information by comparing and contrasting both. They're also going to use that information to draw on, which means to gather information about specific details in the text.
That is the how and that is the what, and that is how the standard is broken down into two pieces. And this is important. You have your skill set and you have your action set.
So I'll be quiet. If you need to rewind, rewind that again. But understand you have what you must do. and what you must be able to do, and then you have to have how you're supposed to do that. Two different things.
Very important. I'm going to the next slide. Follow me. So we're going to focus real quick on the verb side of the standard. And verbs are actions.
They are action words. Those are things that you... do, and in this case, is what the student must be able to do.
So anytime that you're looking at a standard, when you look at the verb, you're looking at what the child is supposed to be able to do at that grade level baseline, at that norm. And then you take your verbs and you align it directly with Bloom's taxonomy. Now we're going to go back to Bloom's taxonomy.
I know we also use depth of knowledge, but for this case, I like to use blooms because of how the verbs are articulated in it. So you see here you have remember. Remember is a verb.
What do you do when you remember? Yes, that's it. You just have to go back and find and remember. You define, you duplicate, you list, you memorize, you repeat, you state.
But when you go to understand. Well, defining and classifying, a little bit different because I can simply sit back and just tell you something, which is a remember, or I can understand that. That means I'm actually taking it and putting it in those different places. Look at those verbs. Classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize.
Those are all things that deal with understanding. So it stands a little bit higher than remember, but not. quite where students are yet doing application and analyzing.
And so we look at that and look at those verbs, execute, implement, solve, use, demonstrate. Well, let's go back to remember. If I asked a child to define, let's say, place value versus I tell them to solve this equation using place value, those are two different. two different hows, those are two different actions, those are two different levels of understanding. And so even though the skill might be the same place value, the action is actually different.
So we look here and you see differentiate, organize, relate, compare, and contrast. So if you think back to that last standard, we were on an analyzation level of Bloom's taxonomy. And if you think very, very... Further back to third grade, we were not at this level with the action. We were kind of down here trying to do those things.
And so this is where you see that growth happening. Of course, the top of Bloom's Taxonomy is your evaluate and create, where you're really digging into the work. You're designing, you're assembling, you're constructing, you're developing, you're defending, you're judging, you're supporting.
But when we see all of these things, you have to understand. again. It's the action. So when we talk about the standards, verb, verb, verb, verb is the word. I said the verb, verb, verb.
The verb is the word. It is all about the activity of the standard that helps build exactly what's supposed to be done. So let's look at this vertical alignment one more time now that we understand a little bit more about it.
the verbs. And yes, I am moving my gadget again. If I can, there we go.
And we look and see how the standards progress through the grade levels. But this time I focused on the verbs and I'm looking at describe and explain. Third grade. Fourth grade, describe and draw.
And this is not your physical drawing. It's drawing on your memory, drawing on your details. recalling the information.
And then fifth grade, we've taken our describe, and now we're moving towards compare and contrast. We still work on drawing on the specific details in the text, but we've changed our rigor level from fourth grade to fifth grade from describe to compare and contrast. Let's look at those two for a second, and I'm going to be quiet. Describe. What must you do?
Well, let's make it very simple. Describe the color red or describe where you would see the color red. That one was kind of OK now.
Compare and contrast the color red and the color pink. I know, but do you see the difference in the mind and the brain cells that's happening right there? And that's why that's important, because you're just changing the depth of action, I guess, in the brain.
And you're asking kids to dig deep and further in order to get there. And that's... is a new norm. So especially for our teachers coming from fourth grade to fifth grade, you have to recognize that children in fourth grade only had to describe fifth grade is asking for a brand new skill to be the norm or a higher rigor level to be the norm.
They never had to compare and contrast a character before, and now they have two or more character settings or events. So you know that's something that in the classroom, you're going to have to build that skill set on. You're going to have to do that practice in order to make that something that's more. So let's look at some other standards. I know ELA always gives their love, but right here I'm talking about the NGSS, where we talk about science a little bit with make observations and measurements to identify materials based upon their properties.
In the middle, we have a math. standard, which is use trigonometry ratios and the Pythagorean theorem to solve right triangles and apply problems. And then here, just to show you how the standards work, I have an Arabic standard for second language year six, where it says the listener demonstrates a general understanding of narrative and descriptive paragraphs, such as the main idea and some simple details. Now, what do you notice about the standards? One thing I want you to notice is that once you start understanding how to read the standards, it really does apply to any curriculum.
As long as there's a curriculum that's driving an expectation, you'll learn how to read that verb and you'll learn how to read that skill. So it doesn't matter if you're a science teacher, you still will be able to go into an English classroom and at least be able to understand the standard. Same thing anywhere. else because the standards itself is something that is stable. That's the reason why they're there.
That's why they've done it. As well as majority of standards have been created, if you're on an American curriculum, at the state or national level. So it's gone through all of these things and they become state requirements or they become national requirements, common core curriculum. And what you're seeing is that it's basically almost like legislation because they are passed and they have to go through all this rigorous thing. So you're creating those things for you.
A.E. with Arabic as a second language. It's come from the ministry.
So when we talk about curriculum, it's not just arbitrary things that we pulled out. It's really the state or the national guideline of the expectation of the children of that country to be at. this attainment level, period. And it drives all the way up until they're college and career ready. So let's go back and focus on the verb one more time.
And we need to recognize that if we change the verb, we change the rigor. So first, it's important to teach the standard at the level of the verb. You can look at Bloom's Taxonomy to ensure that students are learning at the grade level expectation.
However, when you simply change the verb, you change the actions of the student and you can either increase the rigor level or you can decrease the rigor level. And that is why it's important that we always focus when we talk about teaching the standards, we focus on the verb, not just the skill set. The skill, remember, is what. they do. However, the verb is how they do it.
I knew you was going to catch it. You got it. You got it. So I'm going to pull out this quick one real quick where it says, understand the signs of the numbers in ordered pairs, and then recognize that when two or ordered pairs differ only by signs, the location of the points are related.
Now we're able to pull out the verb. If I change understand to compare and contrast, if I change it to evaluate, if I change it to demonstrate. It changes the rigor level and it increases it just like that.
So when you've gone to all of these trainings on how to make your class more rigorous and what you need to do, rigor doesn't come from working harder. It comes from working smarter. And you can literally change a child's activity right there in the classroom. If you have a child who is a high flyer or who can just get that information.
and they have something like this, change their activity from an understanding activity to a creating activity, to an ordering, which is actually only one level up, but to an evaluative activity. You can turn around and have them do the same thing, but partaking in a different way. Same goes for a child who needs modification or needs help or is just not understanding. Now, understand is a Bloom's Taxonomy level one.
But if a child is not getting that, well, then that means maybe you need to bring it back down to define numbers or signs. Remember and look at those things because you want them to be able to still work within the expectation, but they're just not ready for that action yet. They're not grasping that. So you need to bring the action down so they can get something that they can master, and then you can push it up to that next level. Changing the verb changes the rigor.
Verb, verb, verb. The verb is the word. I said the verb, verb, verb. The verb is the word. Hey, hey.
OK, sorry. So when we look at this in greater detail or you can just look at your own lesson planning, this is a reflective slide to say, is the activity of your lesson aligned to your verb level? So here I have. Once again, your Bloom's taxonomy and some of the popular verbs below it.
And then if you look at the very top, I have activities that can be done in the classroom that directly align with the activity. So if you talk about the idea of sketches to dramatize or explain or produce or sketch, it directly relates. When you talk about... creating projects or problems or case studies.
That is an evaluative tool. And if you're doing remembering, that is where your lecture is. That is where your video, your audio, your visuals are.
And sometimes I think we tend to get stuck over here in the remembering of Bloom's taxonomy when we're actually supposed to be asking our kids how to analyze it. We cannot get lost in the activity of... lecturing or just producing videos and hoping that students are able to do the activities of classification, distinguishing, and pointing out.
Remember verb is an action word so in order for students to be able to do it they must be actively doing it in the lesson. Action, activity, movement, happening, all of that together. But if they're being stagnant or they're just listening, they're not going to be able to master the work that's going to take for them to learn at the rigor level that's being asked. Give you a second to look at this and then we're going to move forward.
Okay. Brain buzz once again. We just finished part two. So we're going to go ahead and look a little bit at some questions just to reflect on our learning.
Question one. In what ways does the verb of a standard impact the content or skill of that standard? Trust me, I hear you. I like what you're saying. Remember that the verb is the.
action. And it's also the how. There you go.
The how of what they're supposed to do. So you always have your skill, but now it's how do they engage with this skill. Question two, how could you use the standard to create opportunities for modification?
I hope that you're talking once again about utilizing the verb of the standard and bringing it down to a different rigor level in order for our students to be able to grasp the concept. Okay, in our question three, I have a standard that requires students to distinguish between two objects. In my lesson plan, I have designed a PowerPoint and vocabulary. Can you evaluate if my lesson is aligned to the standard?
Hopefully, you're giving me positive feedback to say that I might need to do a different activity. Because if I have a standard that's requiring students to distinguish, but I'm designing a PowerPoint and vocabulary, I'm keeping them at a lecture level or a telling level where they will only be able to remember and define. I haven't yet put in my lesson plan something that's going to make them distinguish between two objects, which is your analyzation level.
Yeah, I heard it. Good job. I love it.
Part three, let's go. Standards-based instruction. Now we can get into the meat of what we were talking about. I wanted to talk to you about standards-based instruction, but you have to understand a standard first, right?
So let's look at this. So far, what have we learned? And I'm going to be quiet again and give you a little bit of time to just read over this slide because this is our recap.
Hopefully this is what you're walking away understanding. Awesome. We have the standard as the baseline expectation. Standards are vertically aligned to show our progression, how standards should be taught upon using the verb, spell check, as well as the verb directly aligns to Bloom taxonomy. Your activities and instructional methods should align as well.
So when we learn all of this information, we talk about it. We talk about the summary and we talk about the impact. How does this impact our classrooms? That's the question that we're looking at and that's the question that we're dealing with. How does this impact our classrooms?
Well, let's look here. So you see this young student in the midst of what is this moment? Discovery. We must plan with the outcome in mind. And that face is a beautiful face to try to go for because we're looking for the discovery and self-realization of what is attainable or achievable.
When we focus our standards-based instruction, we focus on making sure we hit targets of the standard or we're able to push it beyond. So we must look at the standard as our outcome. This is where we're trying to get our kids to go to or beyond. Our lessons must simply be stepping stones that achieve this desired result. That means activities that focus more on analyzation and application.
And those lessons should drive the learning. That is what should be happening in order to get our kids to understand and grow and go. They have to do the work.
They have to be part of the action. They have to be doing the verbs. Spending too much time at the lower level of blooms can cause us to lose valuable time in our pacing guide and chart. And you're going to turn around and make some mistakes like this one right here because you get stuck in the wrong places, right?
So we always have to plan with the... end in mind. And that is our goal of what we're trying to achieve.
You have to plan with the end in mind so you can backwards plan and step and figure out how to start so we can get our kids to make sure that we're hitting at the rigor level that they need to be at. And they're engaged with activities the way that they should be. Also, now gives us a different chance for us to say in our lessons, what does modification look like? like.
Modification should always start with the verb and I hope that you said that. We have to remember that when we modify the learning we're still responsible for the skill. We're still responsible for the standard. However, the activity or the action of the verb can be lowered to help our students have a better understanding.
I think many times we feel like modification means the elimination. work and that is not what modification is. Modification is the ability to bring it down to a level where our students can understand it and attain there.
They still are supposed to hit mastery with that skill but maybe just not as at a harder level or harder action than others. Modification comes from the verb first. It's just the changing of a verb.
The other place where it really impacts what we do in the classroom is creating our assessments. And yes, I am going to have a whole separate presentation on just assessments and standard-based assessments. But right now, just understanding that once you understand the importance of the grade level standard and the rigor level of the verb, you now have to ensure that you're assessing students at that level.
For those who take state testing, map testing, any kind of national exam. They will always create their assessments based upon the standard, which means they're always going to create their questions based upon the verb level and expectation of that grade level. Just like we talked about grade five, they have to compare and contrast.
Those are two different hows right there within a skill set. And the skill set set characters. settings, and events. So that's almost, is that five?
That's one, two, three, four, five, six, six, six different things that a student has to be able to do right there in that one standard. And that is what's important because when we talk about assessment, if students are not actively engaged with it in the classroom with you in a safe environment, they're not going to turn around and be successful when it's a... testing environment. We have to create assessments.
We have to create do-nows or word problems or questioning strategies or discussions that ensure that students are at that level. And so it's also important for us to evaluate and get our data at that same level. Our assessments must be aligned to the standard, which means students should be evaluated for understanding at or above the action of the verb.
How do we ensure this happens? That comes from you, right? So one of the things that we can do when we talk about assessment, and we're just going to talk about this briefly, is building question stems based upon the verbs, upon Bloom's taxonomy. And these are question stems that are for everyone.
And if you notice real quick, your who, what, when, where, how, why, our go-to questions are at the remember level. So we have to start finding ways to kind of move away from that and move towards questions that are on our assessments that look more like apply and analyze. Because that's where we're trying to build our kids.
Rigor level, that's where we're trying to build higher order thinking skills, comprehension, and all of those different techniques. So utilizing question stems, what is the motive of the character versus saying, oh. who was the character or why did the character do that? What was the motive?
Same question, different techniques utilizing to answer. So the question stems are very vital in order building this understanding for our students, for the things that's happening in the classroom and all of these different points. And the best thing to do is to add these questions stems very slowly in our students'learning.
So they can start getting used to them once again in a safe environment where they can discuss, talk about it, ask questions instead of just seeing it once again in exams or different places like that. So real quick, here's just the same standard. Compare and contrast to a more character setting or events in a story or drama.
However, now I've decided to create a lesson activity that is directly aligned to my standard. I am going to do student discussion task cards. I'm going to also do those discussion task cards from a character's point of view, peeling and picking different characters from the text that we're reading.
And so I would do a partner activity, a turn and talk, but just discussion task cards where the students are doing all of the work. all of the learning and I am monitoring and facilitating to ensure that it's happening. Well, then I can also now create an assessment question. And I'm going to go with how did the motive between the antagonist and protagonist differ? And then was there any element of their motives that were aligned?
And this directly draws right back to that standard. And that is how you see a standard-based instruction happening, standard-based to standard, to the lesson, to the assessment question. and it works in that cycle. So it's really just a way of thinking and presenting information and pulling it all together. So one more brain buzz.
We're almost there. In your own words now, how would you describe what standard-based instruction looks like in the classroom? Yes.
I'm still listening. See, because this is one of those evaluate or create type rigor questions. So I know you had a lot to say.
Our last question is, what are your own next steps in the classroom or in your planning routine after this training? What's your next step? What is your go-to?
What do you want to reevaluate? Where do you want to spend a little bit more time? If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know.
I'm so, so gracious that you had this time to spend with me. I appreciate your time and support. I look forward to seeing what you're going to do in your classroom, wherever you are.
And if you have any questions, just comment below. I will definitely get in touch with you and help you in any way possible. Until then, I just thank you for being part of this. journey, part of this conversation, part of this topic where we can just come together and discuss standard-based learning and what works in the classroom and how to do best for our kids.
Until I see you again, thank you very much for joining me. My name is Jessica Washington, Miss Jessie to all of my teammates, and I can't wait to see what you're going to do. Verb, verb, verb.
The verb is the word. Hey, hey. Verb, verb, verb.
The verb is the word.