Aligning Curriculum to Power Standards in Education

 
In this post, I share how I work with teacher teams to align curriculum to power standards using question stems from standardized testing materials. We use power standards to focus our teaching in order to better prepare students for testing. This is a great strategy to use as an instructional coach!

What to look for in this post:

• Aligning curriculum to power standards
• Using question stems to align curriculum to power standards
• What are power standards?

If you prefer to hear me talk through this, here are two videos featuring all of this content:

Aligning Curriculum to Power Standards

Recently, I have started working with teams to make sure we are aligning our curriculum to the power standards. We chose these power standards based on previously released state test items and practice test items. In addition, we have access to some benchmark testing from a platform that our school has purchased.

Using Question Stems to Align Curriculum to Power Standards

I went through each of those power standards and listed question stems for each. I then went through and made a list of questions and tasks that those teachers were using in their classes (English, in this case) that had to do with those power standards. We compared them to see if the questions we were asking and the tasks we were requiring from our students aligned to the standards.

Overall, we found that they weren’t aligned. So we have been doing a lot of work aligning the curriculum to our standards based on those question stems. They are the gift that keeps on giving because we can use them for creating assessments as well.

What are Power Standards?

Power standards are so important - they’re one of my favorite things to use as an instructional coach. I am in Tennessee, and the state gives a blueprint for their end-of-course tests. This blueprint breaks down how much of the test is based on different clusters of standards. Furthermore, the state provides a standards analysis on the previous year’s assessment. This breakdown allows us to see how many points were based on each standard.

As an instructional coach, I look at this data with teachers. For math and English, I have consistently found that up to around 60% of the end-of-the-year test is typically based on just a handful of standards.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t teach other standards. What it does mean, however, is that we focus instruction on those standards that are most represented on the test and we spiral back to them over and over throughout the year.

Check out these related posts:
Types of Feedback for Instructional Coaching: Bless
Types of Feedback for Instructional Coaching: Address
Types of Feedback for Instructional Coaching: Press
Instructional Coaching in 5 Words
4 Tips for a New Instructional Coach

Check out these related YouTube videos:
Knoster's Model for Lasting Change
Coaching Feedback for Teachers: Part 1: Bless
Coaching Feedback for Teachers: Part 2: Address
Coaching Feedback for Teachers: Part 3: Press