"Let's start from the very beginning, a very good place to start" (lyrics from the Sound of Music).
My work with Standards Based Learning began several years ago when the idea of Know, Understand, and Do (KUD) first arrived at Champlain Valley U.H.S. At that point, I worked with colleagues to develop course-wide KUDs to support our curriculum. The plan was to always come back to those and develop unit based KUDs, but that didn't happen. Last year, however, with the introduction of SBL to the upper level teachers, my Latin colleague, Rachael Birch and I embarked on the SBL journey together. We worked closely to develop unit based KUDs in the Latin 1 classes and she also worked on the Latin 2 level. What a difference that year made in terms of having the power to truly articulate to students where they were with their learning. Conversations around whether they could correctly read/translate a sentence containing a verb in the imperfect tense or some other grammatical concept struck me. Here I was after 14 years of teaching feeling like students had a clear purpose and measurable goals. In the past, it was a matter of whether the student got it or didn't, but it has been valuable for both teacher and student to be able to have a conversation about where specifically the challenges exist.
Having a KUD in place for each unit along with learning targets and scales allows the students to have a clear goal on what they need to "get" and "do" within the unit and for the unit plan to have continuity. I have found it helpful for students to have opportunities to reflect on the learning targets/KUD periodically in the unit. As we work through a target, it is nice for them to look at the bigger picture and see how that target fits in with the rest of the unit. I have also found that the students have more comfort articulating for themselves on areas of weakness and where they would like to receive additional practice. The implementation of KUDs, learning targets and scales has pushed me as a teacher to be clearer with what students need to know and how we are going to get there.
My work with Standards Based Learning began several years ago when the idea of Know, Understand, and Do (KUD) first arrived at Champlain Valley U.H.S. At that point, I worked with colleagues to develop course-wide KUDs to support our curriculum. The plan was to always come back to those and develop unit based KUDs, but that didn't happen. Last year, however, with the introduction of SBL to the upper level teachers, my Latin colleague, Rachael Birch and I embarked on the SBL journey together. We worked closely to develop unit based KUDs in the Latin 1 classes and she also worked on the Latin 2 level. What a difference that year made in terms of having the power to truly articulate to students where they were with their learning. Conversations around whether they could correctly read/translate a sentence containing a verb in the imperfect tense or some other grammatical concept struck me. Here I was after 14 years of teaching feeling like students had a clear purpose and measurable goals. In the past, it was a matter of whether the student got it or didn't, but it has been valuable for both teacher and student to be able to have a conversation about where specifically the challenges exist.
Having a KUD in place for each unit along with learning targets and scales allows the students to have a clear goal on what they need to "get" and "do" within the unit and for the unit plan to have continuity. I have found it helpful for students to have opportunities to reflect on the learning targets/KUD periodically in the unit. As we work through a target, it is nice for them to look at the bigger picture and see how that target fits in with the rest of the unit. I have also found that the students have more comfort articulating for themselves on areas of weakness and where they would like to receive additional practice. The implementation of KUDs, learning targets and scales has pushed me as a teacher to be clearer with what students need to know and how we are going to get there.
KUDs
Targets
Scales