Missouri Education Watchdog: Unpacking the Standards

Missouri Education Watchdog: Unpacking the Standards:

Unpacking the Standards

by Anngie

Many teachers across the state have just spent hours "unpacking" new standards for their classes this year. This is the process where they take the language in the standard and try, as a coordinated group, to decide what specific skill set it it meant to refer to and how, using the resources they have, they will teach it to their classes. Teachers are used to doing this. Unless a district has adopted a new textbook method, like Everyday Math, unpacking the standards is usually not difficult and may only be a matter of tweaking previous lesson plans or bringing newer teachers on board with how a particular school handles the standards. As elements of Common Core Standards are rolled out, unpacking has become more complex, and in some cases depressing, for teachers.

Let's take a look at an example of a math standard to see what this process looks like,

CCSS Math Standard (Grade 4) 

Find whole-number quotients and remainders with up to four-digit dividends and one-digit divisors, using