Understanding and Applying Standards

A reflection on this week's activities.

How long have you been teaching? This is a question I have to answer a lot, especially to new parents at my school, and the answer seems fairly simple: almost 4 years. However, this week's unit on Standards made me reevaluate my answer. I might have been teaching for almost 4 years now, but I realized I have never truly been a "real" teacher.

You learn a lot (and fast) when you start teaching in Korea. My first time ever teaching, I was given a book and just asked to teach a story and finish it in 3 weeks. No lesson planning, no curriculum explanation...nothing. So, I taught myself how to be a teacher, but I have always struggled with lesson planning and being a planner by heart, this bothered me a lot. I love being prepared for my classes and the whole school year. This unit helped me think differently on the process of planning and understanding the meaning and importance of standards. We learned about unpacking standards, backwards mapping and how to create learning objectives using the SMART guide and Bloom's taxonomy.

Unpacking a Standard

When I first started teaching, I taught English as a foreign language to Koreans at a hagwon. There, the school did not inform me of the standards (and being unqualified, I did not really ask). Then after 2 years, I started teaching preschool at an International Kindergarten, they were talking about how the report worked. Although they did not have standards, for the first time I had something to work towards with my students. I knew what they needed to know when the finished the school year.

Unpacking a standard was quite a challenging activity, however while I was attempting to do it, I found my thoughts starting to flow and really think about the meaning and importance of standards. This process includes taking a standard and adding detail to it by looking at the verbs and nouns and breaking it up so it is simplified.

I chose the common core ELA standard RL.2.4 to use for a Grade 2 Literacy class in a Poetry unit:

Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.

This standard stood out for me; not only because I studied poetry at university, but also because it made me think of the poor literacy level of kids these days. Technology have taken away books from kids and the literacy level, especially in my motherland South Africa, is very low. I have my parents and teachers to thank for my interest in literature, because they made it fun and engaging. So I thought, maybe if I make a poetry class fun and engaging, it will help students understand language and literature and maybe encourage them to read more. 

After unpacking it, it looked like this:

After really looking at the standard, I realized that I can elaborate on what the students need to be able to do if they want to achieve this standard.

Have a look at my Prezi on unpacking standards here.

Backwards mapping

In the second activity, we had to use the backwards mapping design in order to plan what I as a teacher will need to help my students reach this standard. The name already explains what you will do: start at the end and work backwards. So first the teacher looks at what the desired result is (the goals the students need to achieve). Secondly, the teacher should think of assessments that will determine how the students will reach this goal. Thirdly, the teacher should look at the learning experiences and activities (or what they will be doing in class).

As I used the example standard for a Poetry class I will be teaching for 2nd graders, I focused on working towards them writing poetry themselves. If they can write a poem, it will show me that they understand the poetic form and features.

Have a look at my previous blog post on Backwards mapping for examples of the 3 steps.

Without knowing it, I have been doing this to plan my preschool lessons. We have a new theme every 6 weeks and before a new theme starts, I would sit and plan out activities related to that theme and what activities I will keep in their files in order to assess them. This backwards mapping activity helped me to understand why I am planning this way and gave me a step-by-step scaffolding plan in a more detailed way to use when I have to plan another 6 weeks theme again.

Learning Objectives

This was another challenge, because I have never been asked to do this at the schools I have worked at. I found this activity easier than the other two activities, probably because the previous activities helped my though processes go wild, so by the time I got to the third activity, I have mapped out the standard in so much detail already that I already knew what I wanted the students to be able to do.

We used the SMART guide, which is a very easy way to remember how to incorporate it into your objectives.

Together with the SMART guide, it is good to use Bloom's taxonomy as well to accommodate higher levels of thinking instead of just remembering facts.




Here is my infographic on the Learning Objectives of the standard I chose.








Overall, this week started out to be very difficult and challenging, but it was worth it. Now I have a much better understanding of what standards are and how to incorporate it into lesson planning. This week's unit opened my eyes and broaden my knowledge about planning my lessons in accordance with standards. It showed me very good guides to use and taught me how to think as a teacher. Finally, I know how to plan my whole year around subjects and standards I will teach and I cannot wait to use this when I finish my studies next year.