Tag Archives: Content Knowledge

Learning to Use the Common Core

A friend recently asked what teachers are doing to align with the new Common Core curriculum.

She wrote:

As I am working with teachers on the ELA CCSS, some are asking about examples of how the other content areas are using the standards in their curriculum. They are meeting with some resistance re: looking at their curriculums in light of the standards and are “waiting for their content associations” to publish new standards.

Educators being reluctant to put too much energy into the “New Best Thing” isn't surprising, given the speed with which innovations come and go in schools. But the notion of being clearer about what we are teaching and increasing the consistency of what is taught across classrooms, schools, and districts is not new, and is enduring enough that having a “new” curriculum is a good opportunity to be deliberate about getting better at that. (Now, if we could only get as strong and enduring a focus on quality instruction!)

We are working on transparency of teaching and integrating the Common Core in my district, and I shared with my friend what we are doing:

Introducing and Starting to Use the Common Core

In keeping with approaching implementing Customized Learning in phases, we are looking at using the curriculum differently as a phased implementation. I think I would label those phases as something like: Awareness, Models, Practice, Implementation.

Awareness: Have teachers do what they're doing now, but make sure that students know what the learning targets are for their activities that day (regardless of which set of standards teachers are using). At the same time, see if the teacher can identify which Common Core standards the activities they are doing that day are most closely related to. Some of this phase should be devoted to doing a 10,000 ft crosswalk between the curriculum they are used to using and the Common Core, to help identify how they are the same and how they are different.

Models: Have teachers visit (in person, on line, or in print) some examples of folks teaching from the Common Core in ways we might label “high level of implementation.” The goal, of course, is to help teachers find exemplars so they can experience what it looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like, etc. Part of this phase is reflecting on how they might organize their teaching, lessons, or units differently to bring them more in line with the Common Core.

Practice: Teachers use the Common Core to design their teaching, lessons, and units, and try them out. Both feedback from knowledgeable, trusted others, and self reflection guide the revision and improved implementation of that teaching. The goal is to know you won't start out perfect, but that you are working to get better. Teachers here, in Cohort districts, would also be using the curriculum more and more to have students monitor their own progress.

Implementation: Teachers have gotten pretty comfortable with the transition and pretty good at teaching with the Common Core (these teachers don't have to be perfect or outstanding, just competent). Teachers in this phase become both places to visit and coaches (knowledgable, trusted others) for teachers in more novice phases.

Teachers in a builidng don't have to be all at the same phase at the same time. In fact, it's really helpful to have those teachers who are a phase or two ahead and can work with the more novice teachers.

We need to help teachers move from a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset (the ability to learn and adapt as things change and evolve around you), possibly by having them all read the book Mindset. You need to build a common language around Growth Mindset, and talk about it often to keep that idea in the forefront of their minds while struggling through change. Parallel to this is helping teachers know that the new constant is change, and we must learn how to constantly adapt to productively respond to new challenges and requirements.

And lastly, I suspect part of what is giving teachers a hard time is not the Content Knowledge piece, but the focus on higher order thinking and the application of knowledge (changes away from sacred cow units of study aside). I think getting them involved with the Cohort's Complex Reasoning curriculum (essentially Marzano and Pickering' Dimensions of Learning) would give them a concrete way to apply and leverage higher order thinking to their content…

 

Content Knowledge & Curriculum Organization for Customized Learning

The first of the three domains of our Customized Learning curriculum model isn't very sexy, nor interesting, and is what most folks already think of when you say “curriculum”: Content Knowledge. (But there is some interesting stuff a little further down this post!)

Like most states, Maine's education standards are determined by law (we call ours the Maine Learning Results). These standards, as recently updated, identify the knowledge and skills, as the DOE likes to say, “essential for college, career, and citizenship in the 21st century.” As you'd expect, Maine has specific sets of standards for each of eight subject areas:

  • Career and Education Development
  • English Language Arts
  • Health Education and Physical Education
  • Mathematics
  • Science and Technology
  • Social Studies
  • Visual and Performing Arts
  • World Languages

Maine has incorporated the Common Core State Standards for math and English language arts into the Learning Results, and Maine is one of 26 states participating in the development of Next Generation Science Standards.

So, where curriculum gets interesting is in how we organize it to support Customized Learning.

The curriculum from these standards needs to be articulated and organized in a way to facilitate proficiency-based learning. What are the measurement topics within each subject area? What are the learning targets and learning progressions within each measurement topic? What are the scoring guides for each learning target that allow a student to assess their progress and teachers to provide formative feedback?

Educators from districts in the Maine Cohort for Customized Learning have collaborated to organize the curriculum into Marzano's curriculum framework. The framework breaks each content area into a group of Measurement Topics. Each Measurement Topic has a scope, that is a progression of learning targets, and represents the learning required for mastery of that topic. Each level in the scope has a scoring guide, called a scale, that clearly identifies the proficiency target for that level.

In the process of revising how the content knowledge standards are organized and written, some changes have been made. In some cases, what has long been thought of as Content Knowledge, such as scientific reasoning and the experimental process, was moved over to the Complex Reasoning domain because of the nature of the knowledge or skill.

We have also pulled all assessment language from the standards (e.g. ”write a report to demonstrate…”) and left just the pieces that were the actual content knowledge in the standard. Part of Customized Learning is the premise that students should be able to demonstrate mastery in what ever way they choose and deem best (multiple pathways to learning and mastery).

Currently all 8 content areas exist in this framework and are being piloted in classrooms across Maine. Feedback from the pilot classrooms will allow the curriculum teams to revise and update the Content Knowledge curriculum framework. These frameworks will be reviewed and revised annually by the educators who are actually using them.

And all of curriculum frameworks are stored in a learning progress monitoring/management system (Educate) that make it infinitely easier for both students and teachers to know where students are in their learning, what they need to learn next, and to identify a diversity of resources and activities to learn it.