Using State Standards in Instructional Planning
How to Incorporate Measurable Benchmarks Into Daily Lesson Plans
Nov 5, 2009
Instructional planning requires teachers to balance curricular topics with the knowledge and skills mandated in content area standards and related benchmarks. Aligning district curriculum with state standards allows teachers to create meaningful short- and long-term lesson plans, and administrators to collect relevant assessment data. Teachers who begin their planning with the appropriate standards can creatively focus their instruction directly on what will be assessed, without having to "teach to the test."
Connecting Curriculum and Learning Standards
While many school districts have officially aligned their adopted curriculum with mandated content area standards, it is up to the teacher to make those alignments a reality on a daily basis. When planning, consider whether or not the benchmark is one that is being introduced, reinforced, or mastered at this grade level.
Standards or benchmarks may be combined into single lessons if the skills overlap or impact one another. For example, social studies standards related to understanding the purposes of government may be combined with language arts standards on composition, text structure, and mechanics, when the assessment is an essay on the three branches of federal power. Standards and benchmarks are typically written using action verbs that lend themselves well to multiple measurable instructional objectives.
Using Standards to Write Measurable Objectives
Lessons built around measurable objectives are more focused and instructive than those that are simply planned around an activity. Standards and benchmarks serve as the foundation for measurable objectives because they include active verbs that specify discreet skills, which then become the basis for planning teacher instructional input, guided practice activities, and related assessments.
For example, if the curriculum calls for the reading of a particular picture book, related standards may cover skills such as identifying unknown words, predicting, and summarizing. Choose the standard(s) that fit the lesson purpose and rewrite them as measurable instructional objectives, specifying the students, the desired behavior or skill, the conditions under which the behavior will occur, and the degree to which students are expected to perform the behavior.
Focusing Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment
If the objective specifies that "Second graders will summarize the beginning, middle, and end of a fairy tale using a triptych model with complete accuracy", then the resulting instruction becomes clear. During the course of the lesson, teachers will be instructing students on the components of a story typically found in the beginning, middle, and end, and helping them generate sentences that, using that 3-part format, summarize a fairy tale.
The triptych mentioned above is just one idea for a product or artifact, which could be used to assess student learning. Students could summarized using a variety of formats, and teachers should experiment with creative ways to have students demonstrate their learning. As long as the activity or assignment is directly related to the objective and original standard, the assessment will be authentic and provide the information needed to inform the next step in instruction.
The incorporation of instructional standards into everyday planning can seem daunting to teachers, but it doesn't have to be. When starting with the mandated standards and benchmarks, teachers may be sure that their students are getting the practice and reinforcement they need to be successful on both state and district assessments, as well as classroom evaluations.
Further Reading
Carr, Judy F. and Harris, Douglas E. Succeeding With Standards: Linking Curriculum, Assessment, and Action Planning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2001.
Perna, Daniel M. and Davis, James R. Aligning Standards and Curriculum for Classroom Success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006
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