“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.

Related Workshop:

“UNWRAP” THE ESSENTIAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHER CLARITY