Educational Content Writers: Unpacking the Standards

During my work as a teacher, I learned that there are a huge number of tasks that educators do every day that are never seen or even indirectly known by outsiders to the profession. Working as a writer, I also saw that much of my research and prewriting might not always be directly observable in my finished work. Of course, most professions require some sort of unobserved background work. Still, that behind-the-scenes work is vastly important to the overall quality of the final product. 

In today’s classrooms, educators must be able to use a variety of techniques and materials to reach their students. It is not enough to solely teach facts from a textbook. Instead, teachers use their assigned standards and knowledge of their students to help children achieve certain levels of understanding and performance. They must decide which resources to use, from those provided in textbooks to those found in the wealth of information on the Internet. They must also be adept at unpacking standards to determine what skills their students must master. When educators unpack standards, they use a process to understand all of the skills and knowledge that go into an expected educational outcome.  

Good writers who produce excellent educational content often understand the work of the classroom teacher from their own experiences. Many of the same skills that educators must use in unpacking standards and identifying relevant resources are also essential to educational content writers. Instead of using these skills to teach particular students, a writer is able to use them to create content or assessments. No matter how skilled and experienced a writer is, to produce effective educational content he or she must also be skilled in interpreting and researching the standards required of the content produced.

Standards are dense phrases that can comprise a year or more of learning in a student, so the first step in creating quality content is to decipher what the student should have learned and how he or she should be able to show it. The verbs used in a standard, such as analyze, interpret, identify, and explain, help the writer to determine appropriate skills that students should demonstrate and also assist in the identification of appropriate DOK or Bloom’s levels. It is important that the educational content require students to demonstrate the appropriate level of understanding of the standard. Simply focusing on factual recall for a standard that specifies analysis will produce content that does not match the standard. Similarly, the nouns used in a standard help the writer focus on the specific content knowledge required. It is essential for the writer to focus on the identified content and not to assess knowledge that is simply tangential to the standard.

Once the writer has identified the essential nouns and verbs of a standard, he or she can combine them to form a list of skills that students should be able to demonstrate upon mastery of the standard. This list of skills may actually be quite long, depending on the details included in a standard. Educational content may focus on a particular skill or the standard as a whole, but it must be carefully aligned to the specific language of the standard and appropriate for the grade level.

These are just the first steps in developing standard-aligned educational content. These steps are sometimes completed in advance for a writer, but a writer must still dig deeply into the standard and its language. Writers must consider the context of the standard within a classroom, entire course, or even from one grade level to the next. This means that a writer must be able to conduct thorough research regarding the pedagogy and factual content of a standard. Research is an individual endeavor that must be tailored to the needs of the writer and based on the standard. Writers, like teachers, have their own specialized knowledge of certain subjects and gaps in others. It is important for writers to recognize the gaps in their own understanding and work to fill them in order to produce high-quality educational content. Even when a writer is very knowledgeable in the subject matter, finding at least three reliable resources to confirm the knowledge is essential. Writers who are less familiar with the subject must locate many more resources and assimilate them into the content produced. 

Just as many outsiders mistakenly believe that teaching is an easy job, they may also not realize the highly complex work that goes into effective educational content writing. Teaching is a skill and talent that educators hone into an art, and so is writing. Writers should never stop learning so that they may continue to hone their skills and produce their very own art form.

(This blog post was written by guest blogger and Director of Science and Mathematics Development at A Pass Educational Group LLC, Lynsey Peterson.)

Review of an Education Site

As a fellow education professional, I began my review of Kelly Cranstoun’s “Education” Pinterest board (http://www.pinterest.com/kelcranstoun/education/) with great interest. A colleague who had seen Ms. Cranstoun, a Pearson humanities specialist, present at the 2013 NCSS Conference in St. Louis had forwarded the board to me. It turned out to be a treasure trove of web resources, from practical classroom solutions and advanced lesson planning to fun activities covering a wide range of grades.

While there is a fair number of linked sites (or “pins”) that feature straightforward, but fascinating, media content, Ms. Cranstoun’s board also contains the most recent technological apps for a plethora of learning activities, from Math Fact Practice for the iPad 5 to “Level It,” an app that lets you scan your book’s ISBN and view the Guided Reading, Grade Level Equivalent, DRA, and Lexile levels for the book.

The board also contains numerous resources for Common Core Standards: Common Core checklists, Common Core implementation recommendations,games that utilize Common Core concepts and standards, iPad apps, and more.

Other interesting resources include databases of essential websites every teacher should know, more than 3,000 songs that can be used in the classroom,hosts of picture sites, educational games, tutorials, reading and writing prompts, and other motivators.

The page is rife with practical ideas for the classroom, not only in terms of academic activities, but also in terms of its physical layout, such as storage bins that separate desks to improve the classroom’s flow. Particularly striking (and certainly useful for the teacher who has gone hoarse repeating instructions) were the Talk Points, small reusable modules that can record messages students can listen to for directions at different stations.

My favorite “pin” was a virtual field trip to Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. Students are able to view the rooms of the house and estate from several interior and exterior angles, providing a different perspective on the day-to-day lives of the Founders in the 18th century. Interesting and anecdotal text information accompanies the “tour.”

While perhaps understatedly titled, Ms. Cranstoun’s board provides a wealth of educational ideas, notions, and academic material. This “pin” collection would be a definite boon to any educational professional, especially those working in K-6 grade settings. We are pleased to recommend it.

(This blog post was written by guest blogger and Director of Social Studies Content Development at A Pass Educational Group LLC, Stephen Gibson.) 

Objectives Vs. Outcomes

by: Mona Meyer

Instructional designers and curriculum developers can spend hours arguing about fine distinctions between terms such as “instructional objective,” “learning outcome,” or “skill-based competency.” 

These arguments usually focus on differences in breadth, specificity, measurability, and transfer (from the learning environment to the real world). For example, some learning theorists suggest that “objectives” are broader than “outcomes.” Others promote “competencies” as the best way to measure how well skills are transferred from the training environment to the job situation.

So which of these terms should we rely on when designing instruction? I say, ignore the nomenclature. It simply doesn’t matter. What one content developer calls an objective, another will call an outcome, and yet another will call a competency. No matter what name you choose, what matters is how useful these statements are in providing a good blueprint for the design of instruction, assessment, and evaluation.

The biggest mistake that most instructional designers make is failing to refine these statements (whatever they are called) to the point that they are useful in guiding instructional development. Consider the following statement, for example:

Students will understand figurative language.

OK, any halfway decent instructional designer realizes that this is a terrible objective/outcome/competency/whatever statement. We all learned in ID 101 that you should never use the word “understand” in such a statement because it isn’t measurable. How can we tell if someone “understands” something?

As presented, this statement is far too broad to be useful in any way. So, how do we fix it? Well, most good IDs will tell you that you have to replace “understand” with something that describes the cognitive level at which the student is expected to know the material. This is where a measure of cognitive rigor, such as Bloom’s Taxonomy or Depth of Knowledge (DOK), is useful.

A complete explanation of Bloom’s and DOK is another blog topic altogether. For our purposes here, let’s assume we should choose a measurable verb that suggests the desired cognitive level. If we expect only low-level mastery (e.g., recall), we might refine the outcome to something like:

Students will be able to list and define the types of figurative language.

Most IDs will be satisfied at this point. However, the statement is still problematic in that it does not specify which types of figurative language the student should be able to list and define. Is it OK if students can list and define the terms simile, metaphor, and personification but fail to identify idioms and clichés? Depending on grade level and course content, this distinction is probably important. Therefore, a better, more refined, statement is the following:

Students will be able to identify and define the following types of figurative language: similes, metaphors, personification, idioms, and clichés.

Suppose, on the other hand, our consideration of cognitive level suggests that the statement should be written at a mid level, such as comprehension or application. In this case, we might have constructed a statement such as the following:

Students will be able to recognize the use of figurative language in poetry.

OK, that sounds pretty good, but it could still benefit from refinement. Consider a quote from a poem, such as the following from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18”:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

According to the objective/outcome/competency, a student could demonstrate mastery by saying, “Yes. Figurative language is used in the quote.” This is fine unless what we really wanted was for the student to state that a metaphor is being used to compare the subject of the poem to a day in summer or to suggest what this comparison might mean.

In this case, a more refined statement might be the following:

Students will be able to identify instances of simile, metaphor, personification, idioms, and clichés in poetry and describe their significance.

As I wrote that last statement, I saw even more opportunity for refinement. What do you think? How could it be improved?

As you might imagine, the importance of refinement becomes even more significant at higher levels of cognition. If we say a student should be able to “analyze” something, what—exactly—does that mean? Do we want them to compare and contrast different aspects? Differentiate an item from other like items? If we ask students to “evaluate” an argument, what measures are important? Do we expect them to make an argument and defend it with evidence from a particular source?

It does not matter if one uses “learning objective,” “learning outcome,” or “competency.” What does matter is that individuals developing high-quality lessons refine these statements to the point that they can directly and unequivocally drive instruction and evaluation. Don't be satisfied once you’ve replaced “understand” with a measurable verb. Think about all of the different ways the statement might be interpreted, and try to refine it to the point that it reflects the real intent of the instruction.

(This blog post was written by guest blogger and Senior Manager for Instructional Design at A Pass Educational Group LLC, Mona Meyer.) 

Critical Thinking Vs. Rote Memorization

Is critical thinking in the classroom more important than rote memorization?

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, almost all information can be gleaned from the Internet, so long as you ask the right questions on Google. So is there any point in having students memorize facts? Instead, students could spend their time learning to ask the right questions, which requires critical thinking skills.

The American educational arena is certainly stressing the importance of teaching critical thinking skills. Common Core standards emphasize the importance of critical thinking. Students must be able to read text, grapple with the meaning of the text, challenge and verify or refute its accuracy, and use the information in meaningful ways.

In discussions with teachers, I often hear that they are very concerned with their students’ abilities to make distinctions between fact and fiction when searching the Internet, which is essential to knowledge acquisition. We would not want students to think that Dallas is the capital of Texas just because someone decided to be funny on Wikipedia. The ability to distinguish between fact and fiction requires both critical reading and critical thinking skills.

In addition to developing the skills to use the Internet effectively, students must develop the skills to adapt. Today’s kindergarten students will graduate from college in 2029. We do not know the knowledge and skills that students will need to possess in order to succeed in this future world. Therefore, teachers cannot successfully impart 2029 knowledge and skills to students in today’s classrooms. Instead, the best that we can do is help students adapt to different kinds of environments. 

Adaptation requires critical thinking skills.

It’s clear that an argument can be made for the importance of teaching critical thinking skills in schools. However, what is the argument in favor of teaching knowledge and skills that do not require critical thinking?

Consider the numerous subjects that today’s adults learned in school that did not require critical thinking skills. For example, learning multiplication tables involves rote memorization. Learning geography may involve simple recall. Quick. What’s the capital of your state? Students can obviously learn to answer this question very simply. They might even spend hours memorizing the capitals of every state and country. This is engaging, but it represents low-level thinking. As another example, learning to spell does not require critical thinking in most situations.

When I was in graduate school, my friends nicknamed me E.D. Hirsch, Jr. You may recall Hirsch’s book series on what common knowledge students should possess at every grade level. Most of the members of my graduate school cohort emphasized the importance of critical thinking. I certainly did not disparage its importance. However, I think I would lack something as an individual if I did not know that Austin is the capital of Texas, as I wait in the Austin airport for a flight. I hope that there are no spelling mistakes in this post, though I know spell-check cannot always catch the difference between there and their. 

Rote memorization can be essential to successful participation in social, business, and civic life. A well-known American broadcaster once said that if she were trying to get a job today she would try to learn as much about as many things as possible. The best job candidates know as much about as many topics as they can learn. The reason for this is simple: one never knows what topic an interviewer is going to want to discuss. People should be prepared with as much information about sports, history, music, dining, and everything else as possible. Schools can promote this kind of knowledge by exposing students to a wide array of different topics. Simple exposure, however, does not require critical thinking.

Within science, there are certain pieces of information that all students should know. Can you imagine how lost an individual would be if he/she did not know how to identify the different parts of the body? People who know sophisticated terms for various bodily functions will feel much better when speaking to polite audiences in certain situations. (This situation is particularly meaningful to me this week as I was in the emergency room last week passing a kidney stone.) These words must be learned and memorized. Nobody is going to Google synonyms in the middle of conversations just so that they do not have to use slang terms.

Of course, the challenge is in determining which facts and ideas people must know. E.D. Hirsch tried to do this for himself. I would argue that communities must come up with these lists for themselves. A single author cannot impose a body of knowledge on anybody else.

Unfortunately, the school year is only about 1,100 hours long. Consequently, students cannot spend an unlimited amount of time learning simple information and how to think and read critically. However, I do not believe that learning to think critically necessarily precludes the opportunity to learn simple information. The best curricula scaffold learning so that students have something meaningful to think about. Students can read facts, in engaging text, and then be challenged to think about them in critical ways. I think that the best curricula include both rote learning and critical thinking.

What do you think?