Unwrapping the Selected Standards
Reflection action: Think about your grade level standards. Review one content area and determine a priority standard for the grade or course you teach. Why is this standard a priority? What might you share with your colleagues to defend your choice?
Unwrapping—or unpacking a standard—is a way to collectively analyze a standard to ensure shared understanding of the learning goal. It is also a process of deconstruction to clearly identify the skills and concepts represented in the standard (Ainsworth & Viegut, 2006). When unwrapping, a group of teachers will identify the key concepts by underlining them. These key concepts are typically represented by the important nouns or noun phrases in the standard. Then, the teachers will want to identify the skills by circling them or notating them in a different way. The skills are typically represented by the verbs in the standard. Another way of unwrapping includes looking at grade level content expectations of the prior level of the teachers’ content area or grade level and identify what skills need to be mastered at the given point.
In case you need it, here’s an example.
Now that you have selected a topic or unit in Box 1 of your CFA in Practice Activity and selected a standard from Box 2 that fits the Leverage, Readiness, and Endurance criteria for choosing a priority standard, you are ready for the next step. Apply what you have learned from thinking about the knowledge and skills content in the standard. Identify the nouns (knowledge) and the verbs (skills) within the standard.
Record those in Box 3 of your activity sheet. Then complete the additional components: describe what a student would know, understand and be able to do if he/she mastered the standard and write the standard in student-friendly language, such as “I can statements.”
Why is it essential to “unwrap” the standards?
What does unpacking selected standards look like in your classroom?
What are the potential challenges and possible solutions for the challenges associated with this process?
Student-Friendly Learning Targets
Learning Targets convey to students the destination for the lesson—what to learn, how deeply to learn it, and exactly how to demonstrate their new learning in student friendly “I can” statements.
Definition
Clear description of what is to be learned.
Provides a clear vision of the ‘destination’ for student learning.
Characteristics
Measurable & attainable.
Focus on intended learning.
Focus on “chunks” of a standard.
Clear, specific language congruent to standard.
Examples
I can add fractions with unlike denominators.
I can identify characteristics of a linear function and use them to create a graph.
Non-Examples
Adding fractions
Do exercise 3.7 on page 148
Learning Activities/Tasks
Pre-Requisites
Assessments
Clear Target Continuum
The continuum demonstrates that when teachers (adult behaviors) just post an agenda, activity or learning target on the board, the only student behaviors which normally occur are that they will read the target. The bottom of the continuum indicates when teachers involve students in writing clear targets and/or provide models of strong and weak work, students recognize the relevance of the standard, and can identify the critical qualities in their work, which leads to stronger student self-assessment.
Adult Behaviors |
Student Behaviors |
|---|---|
| Post Agenda or Activity | None |
| Post Learning Target | Students Read the Target |
| Write Learning Target on every assignment and activity | Students Read the Target |
| Implement strategies for students to interact with the target | Students recognize the relevance of the objective |
| Involve students in writing clear targets | Students articulate the objective in their own words |
| Provide models of strong and weak work and teach self-assessment strategies | Students can identify the critical qualities in their work and self-assess |