m5 u1 a3 - Understanding and Applying Standards
m5 u1 a3 - Understanding and Applying Standards
By Yanan Hu
Unpacking a Standard
1. The standards for foreign language learning
Ø The standards for
foreign language learning are correlated with five broad goal areas, referred
to as “The Five C’s.” These five goals describe what a student should know and
be able to do at different levels of proficiency. The standards are:
·
Communication - Communicate effectively in more
than one language in order to function in a variety of situations and for
multiple purposes.
·
Cultures - Interact with cultural competence
and understanding.
·
Connections - Connect with other disciplines
and acquire information and diverse perspectives in order to use the language
to function in academic and career related situations.
·
Comparisons - Develop insight into the nature
of language and culture in order to interact with cultural competence.
·
Communities - Communicate and interact with
cultural competence in order to participate in multilingual communities at home
and around the world.
These standards reflect
an important change in focus for the language teaching profession, from form to
function.
2. The importance of the 5C standards
The 5C standards focus
on how language is used in real-life situations; they assume that students
learn a language so that they can use it. To work within the standards
framework, as a language teacher, I need to keep the following perspective in
mind.
What will the students
gain—by the end of this lesson, this thematic unit, this year—in communication
ability, cultural knowledge, understanding of the nature of language and
culture, and ability to use the language to acquire information and participate
in the communities where it is spoken?
3. How unpacking process help me to understand
and apply the standards?
(1) About unpacking a
standard process
Ø It is a way to
collectively analyze a standard to ensure shared understanding of the learning
goal. It is also a process of deconstruction to clearly identify the skills and
concepts represented in the standard.
Ø I believe that no matter
what course you teach, when you adopt new standards, one of the most common
first steps is to unpack those standards and define in very specific terms
exactly what students should know and be able to do to master a given standard
by the end of the year.
(2) Unpacking process
in Chinese class.
Ø Chinese language as one
of the most difficult languages in the world is hard to learn, so it is
important to make specific plan to teach. The 5C standards play an important
role in guiding me to plan the units and lessons. I need to understand best
practices related to how students build understanding of given topics.
Unpacking a standard can help me to deeply understand the standard, and form an
effective plan through the whole students learning.
Ø The example of how unpacking process help
me to understand and apply the standards.
·
When I understand the particular standard, which
is how to define student mastery of it, and what role it should play in
instruction, I will unpack it into units. In Chinese class, our school use THW
curriculum, so I will start from there, and look at how each standard is
covered throughout the year. In the case of the unit number, by unpacking
standard, I find that the connection Standard covers the unit appropriately. Armed
with this information, it becomes easier for me to plan the lesson. So when I
begin the process of unit planning and design the activities, I try to connect
the Chinese number knowledge with students’ math knowledge.
(3) The advantages of
unpacking process.
Ø Unpacking the standards
allows me to see exactly what students should know and be able to do at the end
of the year to master a given standard, when instruction will be focused on
that standard, and what students will be doing with the standard each time they
work with it. Once standards have been unpacked in this way, planning units of
study and lessons becomes much clearer.
Ø Unpacking the standards
helps me ensure that no standards get lost and are taught well enough that
students will be able to master them by year’s end.
Ø Unpacking the standards
lets me further unpack standards in order to differentiate instruction for
students who need extra time and support to reach mastery. Once a standard has
been unpacked, placed in units, and mastery has been defined for each of the
units, teachers can identify the most critical information and skills for
students to master in each unit and provide additional instruction and support
focused primarily on these essentials.
Ø Unpacking the standards
is also very helpful at the end of the year when we receive assessment data. We
can quickly and easily look at the data, identify skills students have and have
not mastered, then go directly back into the curriculum and determine how often
each standard was taught, when it was taught, and exactly how students
interacted with the standards each time they were taught. This makes the yearly
process of adjusting curriculum much quicker and more effective.
Ø In addition, unpacking
the standards is also good for students. Students have to understand what they
will be expected to know and be able to do. It also gives students the
opportunity to evaluate themselves throughout and at the end of the year to
determine whether they know and can actually do everything the standards call
for them to know and be able to do.
All in all, unpacking
process help me deeply understand the standards, and also give me clear
guideline to prepare my class plan, strategies, and students’ learning
experiences in the following stages.
Backward Mapping
1. About Backward Design process.
Wiggins and McTighe
advocate the strategy of Backward Design as a means for teaching for deeper
understanding of key standards concepts. Curriculum planning using Backward
Design involves determining the unit assessments before deciding upon daily
instructional activities.
2. How the Backward Mapping helped me to understand and apply the
standards?
(1) The example of Backward Design in Chinese
class.
For example, I apply
backward mapping to plan the unit of color.
Step 1: Identify
desired results
Start with a focus on
the “big ideas” in the unit of color. As I begin planning, I need consider what
it is so important for my students to learn. What are the central and
organizing ideas that the students should remember and understand years after
they have completed the unit?
Wiggins and McTighe
named the ideas that students should retain over time and which have lasting
value beyond the classroom “enduring understandings”. These big ideas exert a deep
influence on students’ Chinese language learning.
Step 2: Determine
Acceptable Evidence:
I need consider the
assessments and performance tasks students will complete in order to
demonstrate evidence of understanding and learning. The following two questions
will guide my design:
How will I know if
students have achieved the desired results?
What will I accept as
evidence of student understanding and proficiency?
I can use different
ways to assess students achievements.
Ø Kahoot Quiz.
Ø Free-response
questions.
Ø Homework assignments.
Ø Group projects.
Step 3: Plan Learning
Experiences and Instruction:
In this stage, I need
to have a clearer vision of which strategies would work best to provide
students with the resources and information necessary to attain the goals of
the unit of color, and then I will design different activities to make students
achieve the goal. For example, I will let students write a report about the
color in different countries’ culture.
3. The advantages of backward design.
Backward Design is a
strategy that emphasizes key ideas that affect the way I understand, apply the
standards, and plan the lessons. I will specific the points below.
Ø By starting with the
end in mind I know where I am going before I start the lesson, and I also know what
is needed to get there.
Ø My instruction focuses
change from the daily activities to what students gain from the unit is to be.
Ø Because the assessments
are designed before lesson planning, it much easier for me to make sure I cover
the important points of a unit. I also design my instructions to drives
students toward the essence of what they need to know.
Ø Students won’t be so
immersed in the grammars and factual detail of a unit that they miss the whole
point for studying the topic.
The weakness of Unpacking Standards and Backwards Mapping
In my opinion, those
are very powerful and helpful process for teachers to prepare the course. The biggest
problem for me is that it is hard to find the essays which are related to how
to connect Chinese language teaching with Unpacking a Standard and Backward
Mapping. Hope more and more Chinese teachers are devoted to developing the
theory.
Reference
1. Jay McTighe. 2012. "Common Core Big Idea
3: Standards Must Be Unpacked". Retrieved from
2. Michael Schrimpf. 2016. "Unpacking standards
to improve instruction". Retrieved from
3. Bowen, Ryan.
2017. “Understanding by Design”. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/understanding-by-design/
4. Ainsworth,Larry,
&Viegut,Donald (2006). “Common formative assessments, How to connect
standards-based instruction and assessment”. Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwin.
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