1. Standards- Based Classrooms
Molly Schmidt
Woodland High School

2. Standards-based Classrooms
A classroom where teachers and students have a clear understanding of the expectations (standards). They know what they are teaching/learning each day (standards), why the day’s learning is an important thing to know or know how to do (relevance), and how to do it (process).
Standards-based learning is a process, not an event.

3. What is Standards-based Evidence of Learning?
Student work directly connected to the standards
Real world, relevant, and task-based work that provides evidence that students are achieving high standards

4. How do teachers know that work provides evidence of learning?
Analysis of student work
Ongoing
Collaborative
Consensus-driven
Anchor papers

5. How do teachers ensure that instruction is standards-based?
Come to consensus regarding standards
Analyze and reflect upon instruction
Analyze and reflect upon performance tasks
Accept and provide feedback regarding instruction

6. Attend teacher meetings, study groups and other professional learning opportunities
Ensure that all students receive immediate intervention if they are not meeting standards
Regularly analyze data to plan and revise instruction
Model the characteristics of a lifelong learner
Utilize collaborative planning time to analyze student work based on standards
Utilize collaborative planning time to build consensus regarding standards for each grade level
Utilize collaborative planning time to develop units, lessons and performance tasks that demand rigor and hold high expectations for all students

8. AND ONCE AGAIN…

9. Essential Questions
How do skillful teachers deliver instruction at the level requested in the GPS?
How do you move from a content standard to a well crafted essential question?

10. How do you move from a content standard to a well crafted essential question?
Questions
Identify
Understanding
Standards

11. Begin with NOUNS and VERBS
Decide What Students
Must Know and How They Are to Demonstrate Knowledge

12. Unpacking a standard: Anatomy and Physiology
SAP3
Description: SAP3 Students will assess the integration and coordination of body functions and their dependence on the endocrine and nervous systems to regulate physiological activities.
Elements: a. Interpret interactions among hormones, senses, and nerves which make possible the coordination of functions of the body.
b. Investigate the physiology of electrochemical impulses and neural integration and trace the pathway of an impulse, relating biochemical changes involved in the conduction of the impulse.
c. Describe how the body perceives internal and external stimuli and responds to maintain a stable internal environment, as it relates to biofeedback.

13. SAP3
Description: SAP3 Students will assess the integration and coordination of body functions and their dependence on the endocrine and nervous systems to regulate physiological activities.
Elements: a. Interpret interactions among hormones, senses, and nerves which make possible the coordination of functions of the body.
b. Investigate the physiology of electrochemical impulses and neural integration and trace the pathway of an impulse, relating biochemical changes involved in the conduction of the impulse.
c. Describe how the body perceives internal and external stimuli and responds to maintain a stable internal environment, as it relates to biofeedback.

14. What Is Understanding? Understanding is different than knowledge
Understanding is fluid, transferable to new contexts and transformable into new theory
Mere knowledge can be rote, understanding provides insight

15. Begin with Understandings to get to Essential Questions
Remember understanding should be:
Knowledge that is enduring
Has value beyond the classroom
Understanding is not obvious to students
Most be “uncovered” – inferred, revealed, come to be seen, constructed
Can often be applied to other situations
Should be written as a full sentence statement

16. Essential Questions…
Questions of different scope and purpose are used to “uncover” important ideas and issues in a unit
Are arguable and lead to understandings, rather than “leading” questions that point to facts
Have no simple right answer
Raise other important questions, often across subject boundaries
Are thought provoking

17. Partner Activity Concept Attainment
With a partner, review the questions in the envelope.
Determine if the question is a “yes” example or a “no” example of EQ’s.

18. What are the traits of an essential question?
The question probes a matter of considerable importance.
The question requires movement beyond understanding and studying - some kind of action or resolve - pointing toward the settlement of a challenge, the making of a choice or the forming of a decision.

19. The question may be unanswerable in the ultimate sense.
The question cannot be answered by a quick and simple “yes” or “no” answer.
The question probably endures, shifts and evolves with time and changing conditions - offering a moving target in some respects.
The question may be unanswerable in the ultimate sense.
From “The Question Mark”. Volume I, No. 5, March 2005.

20. 3 Types of Questions Overarching ~ Essential Questions
Point to broad transferable ideas
Transcend a particular unit
Can apply to various subjects or topics
Topical ~ Essential Questions
Frame a particular unit of study
Specific to a particular content topic
Guiding ~ Questions
NOT an Essential Question
More specific than topical
Answers are right or wrong
Can be looked up

21. Essential and Guiding Questions
How does where you live affect how you live?
What landforms and bodies of water are located in _______________?
What are the natural resources in _________________?
What are the vegetation and climate zones in ___________?
Guiding
Questions

22. Elements of Word Walls
A Word Wall is something you and your class should “Do”, not “Have.”
A Word Wall is a work in progress…built over time and referenced frequently.
Add content words as they are taught or encountered in reading.
Word Walls are a source for informal writing activities to demonstrate student understanding.
Assessment tool

23. Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B.F. Skinner

24. Works Cited
Georgia Department of Education. “So, what is a Standards Based Classroom?”. Accessed August 10, 2009 from 1
Ware County Middle School. “Standards Based Classrooms and Differentiated Instruction”. Accessed August 10, 2009 from
GPS Essential Questions and Word Walls. Power Point. Accessed August 18, 2009 from