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Content Statement

Standard: A teacher knows the content area and how to teach it.

As a teacher, knowing and using the standards are an important part of planning

and teaching. Standards ensure that higher-level learning targets occur and can focus

planning, instruction, and assessment. Rose, Meyer, and Gordon (2014) state that, “The

CCSS (Common Core State Standards) presents broad goals and benchmarks and does

not dictate the means by which the standard should be met.” I need to look at the

standards, decide what students need to know and then create my curriculum, lessons and

units.

One way that helps break down the standards and decide what students need to

know is the backwards-planning design set forth my Wiggins and McTighe (1998). In

this model teachers start with essential questions that all students should be able to

answer by the end of the unit. In this unit that I created for my 1st/2nd grade student

teaching class, my essential question was, “how can vowel teams help in reading and

writing?” I then designed assessments to help determine if students were on track for the

learning objectives. Finally, I created individual lessons to help the students answer the

essential question and meet the learning objectives. By using the backwards design I was

able to think about the goals that I wanted for my students throughout the unit and plan

meaningful lessons in order to reach those goals.

In a study published by Rao an Meo (2016) they state that, “By “unwrapping”

academic standards and applying UDL (Universal Design for Learning) during the lesson

planning process, teachers can identify clear goals aligned with an academic standard and

develop flexible methods, assessments, and materials that address the needs and
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preferences of varied learners.” UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning, which is

“a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on

scientific insights into how humans learn” (Cast, 2018). One guideline of the UDL model

is to facilitate managing information and resources. During my unit I provided the

students with a vowel teams chart that they added onto each time we learned a new vowel

team. Together ass a class we wrote the vowel team, an example word and then a picture

to go with the example. I feel this is an example of giving the students options to manage

information. They kept the chart in their desk and could refer back to the chart if they

needed help determining the sound of vowel team when reading or writing.

One aspect of this unit that was not written into my original unit plan, but after

reflecting on the unit after having taught it was that I should have included doing running

records as a formative assessment. During individual reading time, I often practiced

taking Running Records (Clay, 2017) while reading with the students. They made me

aware of how effective the unit was and how individual students were doing with the

concepts in the unit. Students would point out “vowel teams” that we had talked about

and they would be able to decode the word based on some of the rules they had learned.

By using both the UDL guidelines, the backwards planning design, and

appropriate assessments throughout the unit I am able to make an effective lesson plans

and units with both the standards and students needs in mind.
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References

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from

http://udlguidelines.cast.org

Clay, M. M. (2017). Running records: For classroom teachers. Auckland, New Zealand:

The Marie Clay Literacy Trust.

Rao, K., & Meo, G. (2016). Using Universal Design for Learning to Design Standards-

Based Lessons. SAGE Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016680688

Rose, D. H., Meyer, A., & Gordon, D. (2014). Reflections: Universal design for learning

and the common core. The Special EDge, 27(2), 3-5.

Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA:

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.