Accurate Alignment to Standards

About This Course

Educators often struggle with developing units of study with quality standards alignment. Sometimes they:

• Inadvertently put the cart before the horse by aligning a developed unit of study to the standards they think “best fit,” which leads to too many standards being selected.
• Develop a unit of study with thoughtfully pre-selected standards, yet it results in small or large misalignments based on standards’ expectations and the unit’s learning requisites.

There is an art to designing standards-based curriculum, assessments, and instruction. This professional development series will focus on the following:

• First, it is important to have standards literacy to ensure better interpretation of standards expectations.
• Second, it is equally important that the standards-based learning expectations in a unit of study are clearly stated, explicitly taught with current students in mind, and authentically assessed.
• Third, depending on short- and long-range curriculum, instruction, and assessment goals, it may be beneficial to prioritize standards and aligned skills to aid in instructional and assessment choices.