Larry Ainsworth Consulting, LLC
“Timeless Essentials” for Integrating Teaching and Learning
As an education consultant, my motivation is to positively impact the many thousands of students I will never get to meet by helping their teachers and leaders—among them, you!—to learn and apply simple but highly effective methods I’ve created for bringing clarity to standards, instruction, curriculum, and assessments. As these timeless education practices have successfully worked for others, they will also work for you! Thank you for your interest in my education consulting services.
A COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM TO OPTIMIZE INSTRUCTION AND MAXIMIZE STUDENT LEARNING!
Volume One:
Integrating Teaching and Learning: “Timeless Essentials” for Creating Integrated Units of Study is uniquely different from Larry’s previous works. The “timeless essentials" you will read about in this series are indispensable elements educators are successfully using to create new units of study or to enrich existing units that fully integrate their instruction with their students’ learning.
Each chapter of the Integrated Teaching and Learning System© begins with the “what” and “why” of the individual element in focus, illustrated with content-specific, grade-level and/or course-level examples. Relevant research, cited by prominent educational thought leaders, adds support to the practical value of these elements. Educators can experience the step-by-step ITLS design process firsthand by applying it, individually and/or collaboratively with colleagues, to a unit of choice. Through this direct engagement, they can determine for themselves the efficacy of this multi-step process for positively impacting their instruction and resultant students’ learning.
Volume One in this series presents the first set of “timeless essentials” that are fully described and illustrated with educator-created examples and A.I.-generated examples, along with guidance on how best to utilize these essential elements. You will learn straightforward, practical ways to simplify and clarify the often-complex process of identifying and aligning Essential Standards, PK-12, and how to “unwrap” Essential Standards for teacher clarity, write Student Learning Targets and Success Criteria for student clarity, and compose teacher-created and student-worded Big Ideas as the foundations for quality units of study.
BUILDING THE STANDARDS FOUNDATION
CHAPTER 1: Identify the Essential Standards +
You will first learn the “why” and “how of Essential Standards and then (a) see the important relationship between Essential Standards and supporting standards, and (b) understand how teams of educators use established criteria for selecting and vertically aligning Essential Standards, PK-12, to lay a strong foundation for the subsequent creation of standards-aligned units of study.
Prioritizing the standards is a separate series of virtual ITLS workshops available for school systems that recently revised current standards or issued new standards that require prioritizing. These workshops are also relevant for school districts that have not updated their Essential Standards in several years and/or have a significant number of educators and leaders new to their district that may have heard about Essential Standards but are not familiar with the rationale and actual process of prioritizing.
Whether through these publications or through workshops, the step-by-step, “how-to” process for prioritizing the standards in any content area and grade, continues to be followed by school systems across the United States, a dynamic, “timeless” process that is foundational for creating quality units of study.
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ESSENTIAL STANDARDS—FOUNDATION OF THE INTEGRATED TEACHING AND LEARNING SYSTEM©
CHAPTER 2: Align Essential Standards Across the Grades, PK-12 +
After the Essential Standards are selected in each grade for the first strand/domain/section of the content area in focus, the second step is for the four grade-band teams to come together and take a collective look across the PK-12 spectrum to see how to align the selected priorities from one grade to the next. This creates the “vertical flow” of those standards identified as being the most essential for all students to know and be able to do. Chapter Two describes in detail how educators successfully do this.
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ESSENTIAL STANDARDS—FOUNDATION OF THE INTEGRATED TEACHING AND LEARNING SYSTEM©
CHAPTER 3: Involve Everyone in the Process +
To ensure that all district educators have a voice in finalizing the selected and PK-12 aligned Essential Standards, those who were not directly involved in the process from the beginning need to learn the rationale for prioritizing standards and be given the opportunity to review the near-final drafts and offer their feedback so that the published Essential Standards truly reflect a “shared-ownership” of both the process and product. How to achieve this involvement of all “stakeholders” is the focus of Chapter 3, the final two steps in the Essential Standards six-step process.
Related Workshop:
ESSENTIAL STANDARDS—FOUNDATION OF THE INTEGRATED TEACHING AND LEARNING SYSTEM©
BEGINNING THE UNIT STRUCTURE
CHAPTER 4: “Unwrap” the Essential Standards for Teacher Clarity +
“Unwrapping” (deconstructing) the Essential Standards assigned to units of study provides clarity of student learning goals. Educators do this by analyzing the wording of the Essential Standards, underlining the teachable concepts (important nouns and noun phrases) that students need to know, and CAPITALIZING the related skills (verbs) that students need to learn and demonstrate, all of which are then transferred to a graphic organizer that brings into sharp focus those “unwrapped” concepts and skills.
The critical element of this step is to identify the approximate level of cognitive rigor for each skill-concept pair listed on the graphic organizer by using Dr. Karin Hess’ Cognitive Rigor Matrices that include the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK). The essential purpose for identifying the levels of rigor in the “unwrapped” Essential Standards within each unit of study is to make sure that the related end-of-unit assessment questions (that will later be developed) are written at the same level of rigor as the rigor of the standards.
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CHAPTER 5: Write Learning Targets for Student Clarity +
Teacher clarity leads to student clarity. After educators find clarity in the standards (by “unwrapping” them), they can clearly communicate learning expectations to their students in the form of Student Learning Targets. They do this by reviewing the teachable concepts (important nouns and noun phrases) and the related skills (verbs) in each Essential Standard assigned to that unit of study and then deciding how to “translate” that Essential Standard—without losing its rigor—into age-appropriate language their students will understand.
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CHAPTER 6: Align Success Criteria to Student Learning Targets +
Together with Student Learning Targets that communicate to students what they are to learn, Success Criteria show students how they will demonstrate that they have learned it. Success Criteria make clear for learners in specific, objective wording exactly what they need to write, say, and/or do as valid evidence that they have successfully “hit” the Student Learning Target(s). Educators examine both their “unwrapped” Essential Standard(s) and the related Student Learning Target(s) to determine the related Success Criteria.
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CHAPTER 7: Compose the Big Ideas +
“Unwrapped” Essential Standards and Student Learning Targets focus on what students are to learn, and Success Criteria focus on how students will show they have learned it. The reasons why the “unwrapped” concepts and skills in Essential Standards are important for students to understand and be able to express in their own words are known as the Big Ideas. Big Ideas often occur to students during the “Ah-ha!” moments of the learning process, particularly when teachers guide their students to make connections and draw conclusions about what they have been studying.
This chapter describes and illustrates how educators generate Big Ideas from the “unwrapped” Essential Standards and why doing so is one of the most powerful instructional strategies they can use to help students retain what they have been taught—and what they have learned—long after instruction ends.
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VOLUME TWO:
Volume Two in this series presents the second set of “timeless essentials” that are fully described and illustrated with educator-created examples and A.I.-generated examples, along with key points on how to best utilize these essential elements in all grades and content areas. You will first learn how to create Essential Questions that fully engage students to discover and express in their own words the “Big Idea” responses about what they have learned. Next you will see how to improve your assessment literacy to write or select—with the aid of A.I.-generated questions—quality end-of-unit assessments that are a blend of selected-response and constructed-response questions. Then, you will learn a simple, “tried-and-true” format for creating student-friendly Scoring Guides with clearly understood criteria that will expedite the scoring of students’ assessment responses. Finally, you will see how to use guidelines from assessment experts to evaluate the quality of assessment questions before administering them to students.
CREATING THE END-OF-UNIT ASSESSMENT
CHAPTER 8: Create the Essential Questions +
Essential Questions are engaging, open-ended questions that educators use to spark student interest in learning the content of the unit about to commence. Even though plainly worded, they carry with them an underlying rigor. For students to respond to Essential Questions in a way that demonstrates genuine understanding requires more than superficial thought. Along with the “unwrapped” concepts and skills from the Essential Standards, educators use the Essential Questions throughout the unit to sharply focus curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Essential Questions, like their accompanying Big Ideas, are “timeless essentials” to include in the creation of integrated units of study. Together, they characterize this reciprocal relationship between teaching and learning expressed here: Big Ideas are the students’ responses to the teacher’s Essential Questions.
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CHAPTER 9: Improve Assessment Literacy to Create Quality Assessments +
The foundation of assessment literacy is knowing the various types of assessments to determine which assessment type is most appropriate for a particular assessment need. Chapter 9 sets the stage for creating quality end-of-unit assessments. Individual educators and/or collaborative grade- and course-level teams design the end-of-unit assessment to directly align with the “unwrapped” Essential Standards and their corresponding levels of rigor—using questions they create themselves, those they select from district program assessment resources, and/or questions suggested by A.I. platforms or apps. In this way, students’ responses will provide educators with credible evidence as to the degree that students have achieved the full intent and rigor of the Essential Standards.
By blending assessment questions from both the selected-response and constructed-response formats—multiple-choice, short-response, and extended-response questions, respectively, along with the unit Essential Questions that students will respond to with their own Big Ideas—educators will create an assessment “photo album” that will capture all that students have learned during a unit of study.
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CHAPTER 10: Develop Selected-Response Questions with Distracter Analyses +
Selected-Response Questions (multiple-choice; multiple-select) are deliberately matched to the “unwrapped” Essential Standards and their pre-determined levels of rigor. Selected-response questions include these key components: a question stem, the correct or best answer, three or more distractors (incorrect responses), and a distractor analysis for each question that indicates why an incorrectly selected answer choice is incorrect. Writing a distractor analysis for each selected-response question enables educators to determine correctly and quickly, from incorrect student responses, what instructional adjustments they need to make to close student learning gaps.
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CHAPTER 11: Develop Constructed-Response Questions with Elements of Correct Responses +
Constructed-response questions (short and extended) require students to “show what they know” in their written responses. Each short and extended constructed-response question is also directly aligned to an “unwrapped” Essential Standard and its pre-determined level of rigor so that students will need to respond at that same level. When crafting constructed-response assessment questions, educators prepare an accompanying commentary or solution statement that includes the key elements of a correct response. Referring to this solution statement while in the process of scoring assessments will enable them to quickly identify misconceptions in students’ incorrect responses and then determine what follow-up, instructional adjustments they can provide to help students correct those misconceptions.
Related Workshop:
CONSTRUCTED-RESPONSE QUESTIONS WITH ELEMENTS OF CORRECT RESPONSES
CHAPTER 12: Format Simple Scoring Guides to Evaluate Student Responses +
Each constructed-response question is accompanied by a correctly written scoring guide (rubric) so that educators can accurately and quickly score/grade student responses. An objectively worded scoring guide (containing no vague, subjective language that students may interpret differently from the intended wording) will assist students by referring to it as they complete their assessment responses and assist educators in quickly and correctly evaluating student responses. Instructions and guidance for creating this type of objectively worded scoring guide in a simple but highly effective format is a key component of this workshop session.
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CHAPTER 13: Critique Assessment Questions with Quality Control Checks +
Quality control checks from assessment experts describe and illustrate how to evaluate the quality of assessment questions before administering them to students. These quality control checks include validity, reliability, freedom from bias, standards alignment, thinking-skill rigor, academic vocabulary, and formatting. Educators are encouraged to occasionally include in their end-of-unit assessments questions that reflect the formats of state assessments so that students become familiar with, and have ongoing opportunities to demonstrate, their learning in the ways they will be expected to respond on external (state) achievement tests.
Quality control checks pinpoint any needed revisions that educators need to make to their assessment questions prior to administering the assessment to their students. These revisions will ensure that the inferences educators will make about students’ understanding from their assessment responses will be accurate.
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VOLUME THREE
Volume Three in this series presents the third and final set of “timeless essentials” that are fully described and illustrated with numerous educator-created examples and A.I.-generated examples, along with key points on how to best utilize these essential elements in all grades and content areas. You will first learn how to plan Learning Progressions as the instructional “ladder” that educators build and use to teach their students the prerequisite concepts and skills in the “unwrapped” Essential Standards. Next, you will see how to plan Quick Progress Checks to gain valuable feedback that both educators and students can use to make needed instructional and learning adjustments. Finally, you will learn how to design Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks—interactive “hands-on, minds-on” student learning experiences, distributed throughout a unit of study, that progressively develop and reveal students’ understanding of the Essential Standards’ “unwrapped” concepts, skills, and Big Ideas.
PLANNING THE UNIT INSTRUCTION AND LEARNING TASKS
CHAPTER 14: Detail the Learning Progressions: “Building Blocks” of Daily Instruction +
Learning Progressions become the instructional “ladder” that educators will build and then use to teach their students the prerequisite concepts and skills in the “unwrapped” Essential Standards. When educators plan their Learning Progressions, they begin “with the end in mind”, deciding what concepts and skills—from simple to complex—that students must progressively acquire so they can ultimately demonstrate their understanding of the more rigorous concepts and skills on the end-of-unit assessment. The unit’s less rigorous supporting standards often provide the first “rungs” of this instructional ladder. Learning Progressions are arranged in a logical order, or “instructionally defensible sequence” (W. James Popham, 2008), to serve as Lesson-Specific Learning Targets throughout the unit of study.
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LEARNING PROGRESSIONS: THE “BUILDING BLOCKS” OF DAILY INSTRUCTION
CHAPTER 15: Prepare Quick Progress Checks +
After educators identify and scaffold the Learning Progressions for one or more “unwrapped” Essential Standards, the next step in the ITLS unit-creation process is to plan Quick Progress Checks. Quick Progress Checks are short, in-the-moment, formative assessments that students complete at or near the close of daily instruction. When well-constructed, (i.e. intentionally aligned to the rigor of one or more Learning Progressions in focus for a lesson), Quick Progress Checks provide valuable feedback that both educators and students can use to move learning forward. At or near the close of daily instruction based on a Lesson-Specific Learning Target (Learning Progression), educators ask students to respond to a short, formative “check for understanding” to gain authentic feedback of their understanding of that lesson’s Learning Target.
Related Workshop:
QUICK PROGRESS CHECKS AND FEEDBACK TO ADJUST INSTRUCTION AND LEARNING
CHAPTER 16: Use Feedback to Adjust Instruction and Learning +
Chapter 16 describes and illustrates with numerous content-area examples how educators plan to use the insightful feedback from Quick Progress Checks to adjust their follow-up instruction appropriately and “close” any identified student learning gaps. When the results of these Quick Progress Checks are also shared with students, they too can use the feedback to adjust their own learning strategies to achieve the lesson-specific Learning Progressions.
Related Workshop:
QUICK PROGRESS CHECKS AND FEEDBACK TO ADJUST INSTRUCTION AND LEARNING
CHAPTER 17: Design Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks +
The final “timeless essentials” of the Integrated Teaching and Learning System© are Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks, “hands-on, minds-on” learning experiences, distributed throughout a unit of study, that progressively develop and reveal students’ understanding of the Essential Standards’ “unwrapped” concepts, skills, and Big Ideas that form the foundation of each unit of study. These interdisciplinary tasks enable students to simulate and take part in real-life or imaginary situations that both challenge and engage them while developing their critical and creative thinking, communication, collaboration, problem-solving skills, and the other attributes that are so necessary for all students to use daily in the real world.
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CHAPTER 18: Explore Collections of Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks +
Concluding this third volume of the series are four collections of overviews of Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks (often referred to as performance assessments) in English language arts, math, science, and history/social studies. For each of the four content areas, the examples are sequenced by grade levels, from elementary through high school. Each example includes the name of the educators’ school district, the title of the unit of study, the motivational purpose (scenario) educators used to introduce the tasks to students, and the synopses or short descriptions of the related tasks, several with details specific to the set of tasks. Representative of the information and success data about performance assessments presented in Chapter 17, these educator-created collections illustrate why these Standards-Aligned Learning Tasks are truly “timeless” in both their relevancy and their positive impact on student learning.