Review of Standards, Objectives, and Lesson Plans

This week at Teach-Now has been all about how to take a standard and see it through to a lesson. Now, most people are thinking that this task isn't that difficult. However, there is a lot of thought that is included in every part of creating a lesson or lessons based on a standard. Teachers need to be highly aware of every aspect of their classroom, including what objectives his or her students can accomplish in one lesson.

Speaking of standards, there is one big deal that is happening all over the United States this year... Yep, you guessed it.

It's Common Core!! Now, this blog is definitely not about how great or horrible Common Core is or will be. My blog is about how I have learned to take a standard from the Common Core State Standards and turn it into an objective and eventually into a lesson. There are many techniques and strategies that are available out in the world to accomplish this task. However, we started with learning how to backwards map a standard.

The standards that I chose came from the Common Core State Standards from California for high school mathematics. To start the backwards mapping of a standard, first we defined three possible student performances for the standard that we chose. After we picked possible student performances, we described at least two teaching strategies to help students meet the standards. Then we identified two assessments that would show that the students have met the standard. For example, I chose the standard:
G-GMD- Explain volume formulas and use them to solve problems-3

Use volume formulas for cylinders, pyramids, cones, and spheres to solve problems. 

My possible assessments included:

 Quiz on problems that use the formulas for a cylinder, pyramid, cones and spheres.

Group assignment for students to solve a real world word problem describing the steps in solving the problem. 

Originally, I felt that this assignment was not going to be challenging. However, when sitting down to do the assignment I found that I had to pick out the standard and then stop for a while to think about what the best strategies, performances, and assessments would work best for each of the standards. I know that as a future teacher I will also have to think about what would best fit for the students that I am teaching the standard. This an extremely important lesson for me to learn as a first year teacher, so I am glad that I can make a note of it now for future reference. 

Our next assignment was a group assignment that involved choosing two English Language Arts standards and unpacking the standards. There are many strategies to unpack standards. The strategy that my partner and I chose to use is: First you need to identify the concept or concepts of the standard, the what. Then you look to find what the standard wants you to do with these concepts, the verb or the how. Lastly look to see if the standard gives you a context, the where. There are many strategies when unpacking standards. Some strategies include talking about the standards big idea or ideas. The big idea is the main point or points of a standard. This allows the teacher to glance at their standard and understand where it would fit in their lesson plans.

One of the standards we chose is: Reading Standards for Literature K–5

Standard 2: (Key Ideas and Details) Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text. (“Common Core State Standards”)

This is what it looked like when we unpacked the standard:

At first, I felt that this assignment would be difficult for me because we were unpacking English standards and I am more of a mathematics girl. However, I had a great partner who had great ideas and help me accomplish the task.

The last assignment required that we write objectives for one of the standards that we unpacked. I chose to

stick with the standard that I used above. The objective that I came up with were:

        Students will be able to recount the story of Heracles in Greek mythology, by understanding sequential order.

     Students will be able to distinguish the different genres: fables, folktales and myths.  

     Students will be able to determine the central message, lesson, or moral of the story, by asking “What did the character learn in this story?”.

     Students will be able to explain how the message is being conveyed through key details in the text.

For this assignment, I was unsure that I could be successful at creating objectives. I wish that we could have chosen a standard from our grade level and subject. However, by having to create objectives for a different age group and subject it pushed me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to turn to the internet for some guidance on the assignment. I learned that there are many tools and websites that allow a teacher to help themselves and their students by getting new ideas. I think that other teachers insights are a great tool to help you create the best objectives and environment for your students.