How Does Focused Learning Lead to Higher Achievement?

Bill Blynt
Mar 28, 2011

Transforming standards into learning requires teachers (or groups of teachers working collaboratively) to prioritize their state standards, cluster them into topics (or units) and then clarifying the learning by creating a comprehensive Know-Understand-Do Organizer. Before the organizer can be developed, the appropriate set of standards for that grade-level or course should be prioritized. Although all standards have some importance, the reality is that some are more important than others. It is the most important (essential) standards that establish the foundation for each topic. These essential standards are then embellished with those important and compact standards that connect to the particular ‘theme’ of the topic. Prioritizing does not mean eliminating the need to teach some standards but rather is a process that enables you to dedicate an appropriate amount of instructional time to the most important.

Once the standards have been clustered it is time to identify the knowledge and skills embedded in the standards. Discuss the standards to develop a clear understanding of what students need to know and be able to do at the end of the instructional process. Key vocabulary, critical content, specific skills and thinking strategies are identified and clearly articulated on the K-U-D Organizer. This process enables you to organize the learning by identifying concepts found within each topic. In addition, determine the Understanding. This Key Learning provides a central focus to the unit.

Once the K-U-D Organizer has been completed, begin to develop the Student Learning Map. Essential questions are developed that encompass components of the K-U-D Organizer. Each essential question provides the focus for a chunk of content that will be taught during a lesson. Every item on the K-U-D Organizer must be embedded in one of the lessons. The process of prioritizing and analyzing standards and developing a learning map for instruction provides teachers and students with a clear understanding of the most important content. In order for our schools to be successful, we must begin to break the ‘mile wide, inch deep’ (Erickson, 2002) instructional cycle. According to W. James Popham, Professor at UCLA Graduate School of Education (2003), in order for students to be successful on state and national assessments or be competitive in the world market, “teachers need to prioritize a set of content standards so they can identify the content standards at which they will devote powerful, thoroughgoing instruction.”

Learning requires concentrated effort focused on a realistic and challenging content. Frame lessons on the most important content in order for their limited instruction time to be most effective. Prioritizing standards, creating organizers that clarify and frame the learning, and developing lesson activities that utilize the best instructional strategies promotes student learning. According to the research of John Hattie (Visible Learning, 2009) ensuring that students are provided opportunities to learn specific strategies that extended their thinking and “promote deeper understanding in the subject will engage the learner. Such strategies lead to further engagement and the development of problem-solving skills.” Students who are provided well structured lessons that require them to be active learners engaged in challenging activities that require them to employ extending thinking strategies will reach new levels of achievement.

Sources:
Common Formative Assessments, Larry Ainsworth & Donald Vieght (2006)
Visible Learning, John Hattie (2009)