Unpacking a standard

What do they want taught?

Teachers in the United States and most international schools are expected to help students meet standards that have been created by a school, state, or national entity. Schools in other countries may have identified standards, goals, or a curriculum framework to outline the content to be taught to students at different grade levels. A process used by educators to translate standards into lessons is called unpacking standards. It is a fairly sophisticated concept, but it assists teachers in planning lessons and teaching strategies that address all parts of a standard. It requires teachers to identify (1) what students need to know and (2) what they need to do to demonstrate they are meeting the standard. To unpack a standard, one should attend to the verbs in the standard such as explain, compare, or construct. These verbs help you identify what students need to do to meet the standard. The nouns in the standard help you identify the content that students should be learning.

I will be using the following Common Core standard in an upcoming pilot project to provide English language education and BAC prep for disadvantaged students.

ELD.PII.1.3b.Em (English Language Development)

Standard Identifier: ELD.PII.1.3b.Em

Content Area: English Language Development

Grade: 1

Critical Principle: Part II: Learning About How English Works

Cluster: B. Expanding and Enriching Ideas

Proficiency Level: Emerging

Content Strand: Using verbs and verb phrases

Standard: Use simple verb tenses appropriate for the text type and discipline to convey time (e.g., simple past for recounting an experience) in shared language activities guided by the teacher and sometimes independently.

This is what I pulled out:

Skills

• use

• convey

Concepts

• simple verb tenses appropriate for the text type

• time

Big ideas

• differentiate between simple past and simple future

Essential questions

• What is happening now?

• What happened yesterday?

Pre-requisites

• simple past

• concept of events following each other in time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-tq6ZpUgfI

We are still operating under Covid-19 precautions and unable to do in person training, so I made a casual Coffee Talk video to take my teachers through the process of unpacking a standard and using a standard to design a lesson.

Transcript:

Good afternoon! Welcome to today's episode. Today we are going to work on unpacking a common core standard. This particular standard we are looking at today comes from the California Department of Education. This is standard ELD.PII.1.3b.Em English Language Development. This is for first grade students. Proficiency level is for emerging. The content strand is using verbs and verb phrases. The standard as written says:

Use simple verb tenses appropriate for the text type and discipline to convey time (e.g., simple past for recounting an experience) in shared language activities guided by the teacher and sometimes independently.

To translate this into English, "the standard is to use simple verb tenses appropriate for the text type to convey time and shared language activities guided by the teacher and sometimes individually. The students will focus on using simple verb tenses that are appropriate to the situation in a fashion so that they can convey time to convey when something happens and the sequence of events.

The big idea they're supposed to come away with is to differentiate between simple past, simple present, and simple future and they will do this by addressing the questions 1) what is happening now and 2) what happened yesterday. Now, to do this, they first must have the prerequisite skills and understanding of the simple present and the concept of events following each other in time. For my class, students should already have learned the simple present from a previous class but sometimes this gets glossed over or their understanding isn't as deep or thorough as it should be. So, before starting the simple past, I lead the class through a review of the simple present. I elicit sentences from students and write them on the board to test their understanding. If their understanding is lacking, then we'll do a quick grammar review of the simple present and go over some model sentences.

Next, I present the grammar for the simple past. After going over the grammar, I elicit examples from the students on how to use the simple past. After a couple of those, I bring out a ball for an activity that I call a daisy chain. Now for this activity, the students are going to say a sentence in the simple past and then they will pass the ball to the next student and that student says a sentence in the simple past then passes the ball to another student.

The next activity we do is the Pronunciation of the -ed suffix. This is a collaborative-competitive activity for the students. I divide the class into two or three groups depending upon the number of students we have, and the number of different colored markers I have. I then put on the TV a list of verbs and I do a listen/repeat activity with the students. I say the verb, I have them repeat, we go through the entire list like this. The next step is on the board. There is a table that's divided by how you pronounce the -ed suffix: whether you pronounce it as "d" or whether you pronounce it as "t" or pronounce it as "ed" For the students, one student from each group is allowed at the board at a time. They can either add a word that's not already on the board to one of the columns based on how the -ed suffix sounds or, if a word is written in the wrong column, they can erase that word and write it under the correct column. The students have to work together to complete the table with no duplicates and they're also competing against each other to earn points. The group that has the most correct words under the correct column wins the activity. After the students do this, we then do a review of the pronunciation rules.

The next activity we do is another daisy chain but this time we're doing it for the simple present and the simple past. The first student will have the ball. They'll say a sentence in the simple present and give the ball to the next student. That student will then repeat the first student's sentence except they'll change it into the simple past. Then they will say their own sentence in the simple present and give the ball to the next student. That student will do the same thing and we'll continue around the circle. After this, if there's time, we'll do a variation that helps keep the students on their toes and and thinking more quickly. We'll do a quick review of the difference between "throwing to" and "throwing at" and this time, the first student will say a sentence in the simple present, then throw the ball to another student in the classroom, not necessarily a student next to them, and that student will repeat the first student's sentence but change it to the simple past. They'll say a sentence in the simple present and they then they will throw the ball to another student.

The next activity is the homework assignment. Now, my students meet once a week, so they'll have an entire week to work on this including the weekend. I'll tell my students they're going to be making a Tick Tock video and then I'll have them break into groups of any size they want. If a group decides to be too large, like say half the class, I'll require the students to breakup into smaller groups. In their groups, I'll have the students discuss and write down what makes a good tick tock video and then they'll share the results with the class and I'll write the responses on the board. I'll then give the students the details for their assignment: each group will be making a Tick Tock video or a similar short video which will be shared on the class website or LMS feed. Each video is going to be five minutes per person in the group, so if there's three people in the group the video has to be 15 minutes long. For each person in the group, they have to use the simple past five times and the simple present five times in the video. Some students are more advanced in English or more ambitious or they want an extra challenge, so while students are working together in class to prepare for their video (deciding what the topic will be, making outlines, any other prep work), I'll introduce the simple past continuous to them. This grammar won't formally be introduced until the next level. For each group that decides to include the simple past continuous in their assignment, they'll get an extra sticker for each use of the simple past continuous in their project. So, if they use it five times they'll get five stickers for the group, they use it ten times they'll get ten stickers for the group.

This was a presentation on a common core learning standard, the unpacking of it, and a lesson designed and built around the common core standard. I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope to see you again next time.