Raise Your Standards

 In Texas, we have not adopted Common Core. Instead, we have the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills). I am sure there are many similarities in both the standards and the critics of those standards. I'm not here to try and convince anyone how great the standards are. I'm not opening a debate.

I'll start by saying, I love my standards. The more I get to know them, through continuous analysis and reflection, the more I am quite impressed by the thoughtful way they were put together. Yes, there are moments when I would love to have a Help Desk line directly to one of the authors to answer and clarify a few things. For the most part, however, I find the better I know my standards the more meaningful my lessons are and the more successful my students are at learning the knowledge and skills.

Credit: http://www.houseofstudy.com/common-core/

I personally think people are upset by the way the standards are interpreted by publishers. It seems that is typically the most common way non-educators interact with the standards, reading worksheets ripped out of district adoptions created by third party publishers. I'll step down from that soapbox for now...

What I've learned over the last 4 years teaching, from various resources, is that we teachers need to know our standards. Not what a publisher says our standards are, not what a veteran teacher says they were 8 years ago, but what we know they are from READING THEM OURSELVES. 

I attended 4 days of training with Margaret Kilgo, and have more recently been using techniques from Dr. John Crain, an independent education consultant in Texas.

Kilgo likes to color code and break it down:

3.4 (B) round to the nearest 10 or 100 or use compatible numbers to estimate solutions to addition and subtraction problems;

1. The students have to Round or Use Compatible Numbers
2. Nearest 10 or 100 (They don't have to round to nearest 1,000 but should be able to round 4 digit numbers to the nearest 10 or 100)
3. This is specific to addition and subtraction
4. The goal is to use these skills to estimate solutions (not just rounding answers or stand alone numbers)

Dr. Crain likes to dive into the TEKS by going through the following exercise:

1. Define the concept
2. List Critical Attributes of the concept
3. Give examples and non-examples of the concept
4. Fun or Interesting facts about concept

After spending some time breaking down my standards into VERBS and CONTENT, I attended training on project based learning and performance based assessments. This really kicked up my analysis to a whole new level.

John McCarthy introduced me to tying the skills to a real world occupation. Forever ending the question "Why do I need to know this?"

Planning Lesson

1. List 5 key skills and concepts taught
2. LIst 3 occupations that use the skills
3. List 1 contribution that those occupations make

Skill & Concepts	Occupations	Contributions
3.5ABCD Matter & Energy: measure, test, and record physical properties of matter describe and classify samples of matter predict, observe, record, changes in state of matter explore and recognize mixture	Conservationist Environmentalist Industrial designers	Find ways to utilize land without harming the environment Works to protect the natural world from pollution or threats Develop concepts for products focusing on user experience

Finally, John Ross pushed my thinking a bit farther and led me to a better understanding of building out essential questions from my standards. This helps to outline the prior knowledge the students need, as well as where they should end up when its all said and done.

From breaking down the standard:

3.6

(A) classify and sort two- and three-dimensional figures, including cones, cylinders, spheres, triangular and rectangular prisms, and cubes, based on attributes using formal geometric language;

Classify Sort

two dimensional figures three dimensional figures attributes formal geometric langauge

Analyze Analyze

To finding key questions:

Essential Questions (Why is this important?)
Overarching	Topical
What is equal? Why is it important to share? How does design make us feel? What’s the best way to share things? What shapes support us in our lives? How do shapes affect us? How do we affect the shape of our world? *How do things come together and come apart?	How does math influence our everyday lives? How can we use math in our everyday lives? How can math help us design a room? How can we use math to give our spaces balance? What’s the best way to divide spaces? (things) How do we use geometric figures in our daily lives? What shapes are common in our world?

To then creating a grading rubric that is specifically standards based:

Learning Outcomes (List TEKS from above plus any other desired outcomes)	Novice DOK 1- Recall	DOK 2-Apply	DOK 3-Strategic Thinking	Expert DOK 4-Extended Thinking
(A) classify and sort two- and three-dimensional figures, including cones, cylinders, spheres, triangular and rectangular prisms, and cubes, based on attributes using formal geometric language;	Student can differentiate between 2 and 3 dimensional figures.	Student can sort figures based on shape.	Student can sort figures and describe attributes in non-mathematic language.	Given a set of 2 and 3 dimensional figures, student can separate like figures and describe them using attributes in formal math language.

All of these perspectives lead you to the same path as an educator. They send the same message. Know your standards. Know them to a depth and breadth that makes learning real for students. Know them in a way that makes your teaching conceptually based. Know them in a way so it sticks.

The first time you go through some of this, it might seems daunting, but you become very quick at it, very soon. Promise :)

Being new to this blog thing, I hope I have given credit where it was due properly. This is all such a small snapshot of the learning curve I've been on for analyzing my standards. This is where it starts. Unless you can really grasp your standards, the limitations, as well as the endless possibilites, the lessons won't change your world or your students'.

Please share anything you've learned on tackling curriculum, I'd love to hear! Feel free to comment with any questions and I'll try and point you in the right direction. If you are not on twitter, get on NOW. John Ross and John McCarthy are both on there, along with many more eduHero types that are just itching to mentor us newbies that have that "I wanna change the world" gleam in their eye.

August is knocking...are you ready?