Thursday, September 18, 2014

Simplifying Standards, Learning Targets and Objectives for Common Core Part I--Creating Student-Centered Learning Targets

Common Core has brought us a change in education nomenclature so that it can often be confusing to parents, teachers and administrators if they aren't familiar with it.

Consider for a moment the translation of education terms you know into those of the Common Core in terms of student and teacher.

What you used to refer to as performance objectives are now called learning targets, more specifically, teacher learning targets.

New to common core is an extension of the old concept of performance standards so that they address students directly.  In order to do so involves a simple task that allows you to convert each standard from a teacher's point of view to a student's. By converting the third person point of view of the standard to the first person point of view for students allows you to directly address them when they are posted in the classroom.

For example, the RI4.1 (Reading Informational Text, Grade 4) standard for informational text (and a very similar one for literature) can be changed to the students' point of view in the following manner:

Third Person directed to teachers/parents/administrators for RL4/RI4.1: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Third Person directed to students for RL4/RI4.1: I can use details and examples to draw inference from a text.

So, there you have it, a conversion of a teacher directed standard to a student-friendly objective directed to students in first person.

Now you can move on to develop students' DOK (Depth of Knowledge) and method of output, the means to which students produce output/product.

Coming Soon: How to Write Learning Targets for Teachers from which to Develop Lesson Plans