Unpacking the standards

Florida DOE Summer Institute for K-2 Literacy
Atlantic Coast High School, July, 2013, Jacksonville FL

We last unpacked standards twelve years ago when we rolled out America's Choice's Literacy Standards.  I realize that many of our teachers have never unpacked standards so while this FL DOE workshop seemed so familiar to me, I was thinking how new it might seem to young teachers.  Regardless, it is a good exercise as we begin to plan instruction. 

To start, to confuse us all, Florida has renumbered the Common Core Standards to make them their own.  This really only confuses teachers who look for ideas on the Internet - Pinterest, for example, but it is important to understand.

National standards  RL.1.7  Would mean:  RL= Reading Literature  1=the grade level  7=the number of the standard

Florida standards  RL.1.7  Would mean:  RL= Reading Literature 1= a cluster of standards that are grouped together  7=the number of the standard

This is basically the procedure for unpacking the standard.
Standard: RL

Underline the important nouns from the standard which will help you identify concepts that the students should know:

Circle the verbs which will  tell you what the student should be able to do.

Identify the BIG Ideas:

What is the Essential Question?

What is the Learning Goal?

What is the Learning Scale? A Learning Scale is usually 0-4, much like a rubric or like the big areas of the Florida Writing Rubric. "3" is the standard. "4" would be above the standard and is approaching the next grade level standard. To me the Learning Scale looks a little more holistic than what I think of in a rubric.  On a writing rubric, for instance, we have previously learned that a child might have a different score on each element of the rubric and that by looking to the left, he can tell what his next step might be for that element, but on the learning scales, the numbers seem to be a description of the work at that level.


The idea is to take the standard apart at the beginning of a unit and to write the learning scale and the assessment before you teach the unit - keeping the end in mind.