Blog #2

 1.    On a personal level how do I feel about standards?

    At first I thought the standards were quite intimidating, there are a lot of them, and some of them are just jam packed with content. Once we learned how to unpack them and I realized that they are end of the year goals meant to be learned over many smaller lessons, I felt a lot less intimidated. I think that it is necessary to have standards, I also think that it's important for them to be nationwide, everyone deserves an education and an equitable one at that. National standards mean that everyone will at least receive that basic level of education and so far what I see looks great. I am excited to dig deeper and learn more. 

2.  As a future teacher, how do I view content learning standards?

    As a future teacher I view content learning standards as the basic goals that we as teachers need to accomplish with our lesson plans, they are the minimum knowledge that our students need to attain by the end of the school year. I view them as a great tool to build our lessons around along with our districts curriculum. I like guidance, I don't want to "fly blind" as the article stated. For me personally it is reassuring to know exactly what direction I am to take my students in. 

3.  What did I learn about deconstructing standards and how confident am I about being able to do so?

    I learned that there is a verb or multiple verbs, in every standard and that is the process we want to teach; analyze, predict, compare, contrast, demonstrate, model, and so on. We don't want them to simply "understand," or "learn." We need to actually see that they can understand, a measurable way for them to demonstrate that understanding. I learned that standards aren't just taught in one lesson, we deconstruct them so we can make multiple lessons because they often contain many things a student is required to understand before they can actually meet that standard. I also learned that we have to deconstruct the standards because there is implied knowledge in there as well. In order for the students to identify plot and setting, they first need to know what those words mean. For students to demonstrate knowledge of decimals, they first need to understand place value. This week helped me become much more confident in deconstructing standards, though I know I still need some work!