1 Training for the New Georgia Performance Standards Day 2: Unpacking the Standards

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 2 Module Overview: Day Two  Introduction (0:45)  Large Group Demonstration (1:30)  Unpacking a Single Standard (1:30)  Unpacking a Multiple Standards (1:00)  Summary and Follow Up Work (0:30)

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 3 Day Two Objectives 1.Define and describe the rationale for identifying big ideas, enduring understandings, essential questions, and skills and knowledge for a standard. 2.Develop, for a given standard, the big ideas, enduring understandings, essential questions, and skills and knowledge (unpack the standard). 3.Unpack multiple standards to create cohesive units of study.

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 4 Matching Game 1.There are 14 terms and 14 definitions. 2.Work as a team to match each term to its definition. 3.First team to correctly complete the task is the winner.

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 5 GPS Jeopardy

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 6 The Process of Instructional Planning Traditional PracticeStandards-based Practice Select a topic from the curriculum Design instructional activities Design and give an assessment Give grade or feedback Move onto new topic Select standards from among those students need to know Design an assessment through which students will have an opportunity to demonstrate those things Decide what learning opportunities students will need to learn those things and plan appropriate instruction to assure that each student has adequate opportunities to learn Use data from assessment to give feedback, reteach or move to next level

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 7 Standards Based Education Model GPS Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence (Design Balanced Assessments) How will I know if my students know it and/or can do it? (to assess student progress toward desired results) Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence (Design Balanced Assessments) How will I know if my students know it and/or can do it? (to assess student progress toward desired results) Stage 3: Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction What will need to be done to help my students learn the required knowledge and skills? (to support student success on assessments, leading to desired results) Stage 3: Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction What will need to be done to help my students learn the required knowledge and skills? (to support student success on assessments, leading to desired results) Standards Elements All Above, plus Tasks Student Work Teacher Commentary All Above Above, plus Skills and Knowledge

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 8 Standards Based Education Model GPS Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Standards Elements Above, plus Skills and Knowledge

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 9 Essential Question 1  What are the steps in unpacking a standard, and why is each one important?

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 10 The Process of Backward Design big ideas  enduring understandings and essential questions  skills and knowledge  evidence / assessment  Instruction planning

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 11 Why unpack?  Systematic approach  Provides the guide for instruction  Results in measurable goals and objectives  Teaching becomes more precise and efficient  Student performance on assessments will improve

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 12 The Process of Backward Design big ideas  enduring understandings and essential questions  skills and knowledge  evidence / assessment  Instruction planning

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 13 Big Ideas  Manifestations –Concepts –Themes –Issues or debates –Problems or challenges –Processes –Theories –Paradoxes –Assumptions or perspectives From Understanding by Design Workbook, page 71

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 14 Big Ideas  What are the big ideas and core processes at the heart of this standard?  What do I want to concentrate on and emphasize in this unit?

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 15 The Process of Backward Design big ideas  enduring understandings and essential questions  skills and knowledge  evidence / assessment  Instruction planning

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 16 Enduring Understandings  A full sentence declaration or generalization, specifying what we want students to come to understand about the Big Idea.  “Moral of the (unit) story"  Full-sentence generalizations about the resultant learning  Clearly stated and usually can be transferred  "Big Picture" concepts

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 17 Enduring Understandings : Bad to Best “Students will understand the Civil War.” –Bad: what should they understand? “Students will understand the causes of the Civil War.” –Better: narrows the focus but still does not state what insights we want students to leave with. “Students will understand that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights issues more than over the morality of slavery.” –Best: Summarizes intended insight, helps students and teachers realize what types of learning activities are needed to support the understanding.

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 18 Enduring Understandings : Format  NO: “Students will understand principles of persuasive speaking.”  NO: “Students will know how to speak persuasively.”  NO: “Speak persuasively in public.”  YES: “Students will understand that persuasion often involves an emotional appeal to the particular wishes, needs, hopes, and fears of an audience, irrespective of how logical and rational the argument.”

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 19 Enduring Understandings: Overarching and Topical—We Need Both!  Overarching: More abstract and general; relate to many units of study –EX: Students will understand that word meanings can change, sometimes dramatically.  Topical: More specific; related to a single unit –EX: Students will understand that some words have multiple meanings that can vary depending on the context of the sentence.

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 20 The Process of Backward Design big ideas  enduring understandings and essential questions  skills and knowledge  evidence / assessment  Instruction planning

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 21 Developing Essential Questions  Create two to five per unit.  Should be big, open-ended.  Look at how (process) and why (cause and effect).  Consider various levels in Bloom’s taxonomy.  Use language appropriate to students.  Sequence so they lead naturally from one to another.  Use as organizers for the unit, making the “content” answer the questions.  Share with other teachers.

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 22 From Understandings to Questions  Students will understand that persuasion often involves an emotional appeal to the particular wishes, needs, hopes, and fears of an audience, irrespective of how logical and rational the argument. –Essential Question:  Students will understand that vertical height, not the angle and distance of descent, determines the eventual speed of a falling object. –Essential Question:

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 23 Types of essential questions  Overarching –"In nature, do only the strong survive? What do we mean by ‘strong’?"  Topical –"How strong was President Bush in his address to Congress after the terrorist attack of our country?"

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 24 The Process of Backward Design big ideas  enduring understandings and essential questions  skills and knowledge  evidence / assessment  Instruction planning

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 25 Skills and Knowledge Facts Concepts Generalizations Rules, laws, procedures KNOWLEDGE (declarative) Skills Procedures Processes SKILLS (procedural)

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 26 Levels of Generality of Declarative and Procedural Knowledge Declarative Knowledge Procedural Knowledge Organizing Ideas (general statements for which examples can be provided) - generalizations - principles Details - episode - cause/effect sequence -time sequence, or -fact Vocabulary - terms - phrases General Specific Level of Generality Processes - procedures that involve many component parts that have subcomponents Skills - tactic (general rules governing an overall flow of execution of steps) - algorithm (a single set of steps that must be performed in a specific order)

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 27 Unit questions  Provide subject- and topic-specific doorways to essential questions. Unit questions frame a specific set of lessons; they are designed to point to and uncover essential questions through the lens of particular topics and subjects. For example, Is science fiction great literature? is a unit question that guides inquiry in a specific literature course. Are "good reads" great books? is an essential question that the entire English/Language Arts faculty in a district or school would address.  Have no one obvious "right" answer.Answers to unit questions are not self-evidently true. Unit questions open up and suggest important multiple lines of research and discussion; they uncover rather than cover up the subject's controversies, puzzles, and perspectives. They serve as discussion starters and problem posers, rather than lead toward "the" answer the teacher wants.  Are deliberately framed to provoke and sustain student interest. Unit questions work best when they are designed to be thought provoking to students. Such questions often involve the counterintuitive, the thought provoking, and the controversial as a means of engaging students in sustained inquiries. They should be sufficiently open to accommodate diverse interests and learning styles and allow for unique responses and creative approaches—even ones that the teacher had not considered.

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 28 Sample essential and unit questions  Essential question –Must a story have a moral, heroes, and villains? –Do we always mean what we say and say what we mean?  Unit question –What is the moral of the story of the Holocaust? Is Huck Finn a hero? –What are sarcasm, irony, and satire? How do these genres allow us to communicate without saying what we mean?

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement common design flaws that work against understanding  The design does not prioritize important ideas worthy of understanding. To the students, various activities and textbook topics appear of equal importance.  The design does not foster students' understanding because it does not encourage them to explore essential questions, link key ideas, or rethink their initial ideas or theories.  Students have no clear performance targets. They do not know the purpose of activities and lessons or the expected performance requirements, other than to participate in the activities and pay attention during lectures.  The necessary evidence that understanding has occurred has not been established. Without explicit performance goals or culminating assessments of understanding, teachers do not know which students understand what, and to what level of sophistication. from chapter 2 of UbD book

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 30 Essential Question 1  What are the steps in unpacking a standard, and why is each one important? What squares with my thinking? What’s still rolling around in my mind? What do I need to change ?

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 31 Standards Based Education Model GPS Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Standards Elements Above, plus Skills and Knowledge

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 32 Standards Based Education Model GPS Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Stage 1: Identify Desired Results What do I want my students to know and be able to do? Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence (Design Balanced Assessments) How will I know if my students know it and/or can do it? (to assess student progress toward desired results) Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence (Design Balanced Assessments) How will I know if my students know it and/or can do it? (to assess student progress toward desired results) Standards Elements All Above, plus Tasks Student Work Teacher Commentary Above, plus Skills and Knowledge

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 33 Summary Activity Catalysts 1.Is similar to… 2.Is the opposite of… 3.Is a logical extension of… 4.Is a potential problem for… 5.Is essential for… 6.Must be completed by…

Georgia will lead the nation in improving student achievement. 34 Creating a Graphic Representation  Choose a metaphor to represent the elements in the GPS and in backward design.  Create a graphic organizer, using the following terms (and more as needed)  Standards  Critical Components  Elements  Performance Standards  Student Work  Tasks  Teacher Commentary  Big Ideas  Enduring Understandings  Essential Questions  Skills and Knowledge Statements  Stage 1 in Backward Design  Stage 2 in Backward Design  Stage 3 in Backward Design