Back
Title: About the On-line Standards-Based Units
Creator: Carla Williamson: cljwilli@access.k12.wv.us
Big Ideas: What big ideas are worthy of understanding and implied in the established content standards, objectives and performance descriptors? The big idea provides a conceptual lens for prioritizing content and serves as the organizer for connecting important facts, skills and actions. Teachers identify big ideas embedded within the standards and cluster objectives and connect standards around these big ideas. Thus, the big idea for each unit serves as conceptual velcro; the big idea "connects the dots" for students. Big ideas transfer to other contexts and manifest themselves in various ways within disciplines. Examples of transferable big ideas are change, exploration, freedom, power, justice, etc.

Content Standards and Objectives  
Essential Questions: Essential questions are broader questions that act as the foundation for narrower, supporting questions and probing questions. Essential questions reflect the essential learning concepts to be covered and investigated during a unit of study. They become the reason for the learning. Essential questions are open-ended; they have no single, correct answer. They are written to stimulate inquiry, debate and further questions and can be re-examined over time. Good essential questions are thought-provoking to students; they “hook” the students into wanting to learn more about the topic. Every lesson within a unit should be exploring one of the essential questions cited for the unit. When writing essential questions, teachers should ask themselves, “What should my students remember and be able to do, or reflect on, a year from now?”

Student Will KNOW: What key knowledge is targeted in the objectives and needed for effective performance? Examples of factual knowledge would include vocabulary/terminology, definitions, key factual information, critical details, important events and people, sequence/timeline.

Student Will UNDERSTAND: Understanding is a somewhat illusive word to define. However, it is critical that the teacher identify those understandings that will result from active engagement in the learning strategies defined within the unit. Teachers should reflect upon the question, "What is worth understanding?" An important extension to that question would be, "How might we better anticipate and address predictable student misunderstandings?"

Student Will Be Able To DO (Skill): This section identifies basic skills, communication skills, thinking skills and interpersonal or group skills.

Research-Based Instructional Strategies: The developers of the unit design template for this project used the backward design process described in Understanding by Design (Wiggins and McTighe).

The Research-Based Instructional Strategies section of the unit design template lists those research-based strategies the author used within the unit. These research-based strategies are cited in Classroom Strategies that Work (Marzano, Pickering, Pollock), A Framework for Understanding Poverty (Payne), How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms(Tomlinson), and The Differentiated Classroom Responding to the Needs of All Learners, (Tomlinson). The unit design team also participated in two professional development experiences titled Reading As a Tool for Thinking and Learning, and Vocabulary Development in Reading English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and/or Social Studies, developed by the WV Middle Level Education Cadre, prior to writing units of study.


Several resources, such as There’s Room for me Here and Yellow Brick Roads (Janet Allen), Teaching Reading in the Content Area (McREL), Literacy Helping Children Construct Meaning (Cooper), the International Reading Association publications, the National Reading Panel reports, Teaching Vocabulary in All Classrooms (Blachowicz and Fisher) and Literacy Across the Curriculum (SREB), served as the foundation for the literacy model they developed for this project. This model, titled Literacy for Higher Student Achievement, requires teachers to identify strategies that will activate the student’s prior knowledge, as well as vocabulary and active literacy, post literacy and reflection strategies. The Literacy for Higher Student Achievement model serves as the basis for the lesson design template.


For guidance in the effective use of a 90-minute daily instructional period for Reading English Language Arts, the design team looked to the work of Talent Development Corporation.

Materials/Resources/Websites: In this section of the unit design template the author lists all materials and resources needed in order to teach the unit. All teachers using the units in their classrooms should carefully review this listing prior to beginning the unit of study. In this section the reader will also find valuable websites to support student learning and integration of the 21st Century Information and Communication Technology literacy skills into the learning process for all students.


Below you will find several quotes from the resources we used in designing both the unit and the lesson design templates. We believe these quotes illustrate why teachers must focus on what we know about how children learn when designing standards-based units of study for for any content area at any grade level:

A “guaranteed and viable curriculum is the number one school-level factor for impact on student achievement.” Marzano, What Works in Schools.

“Students have to be helped by design to do the subject, not just take in the results of other people’s inquiries…They must learn to uncover understandings, with teacher help, via good design.” Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design.

“Learning with understanding is more likely to promote transfer than simply memorizing information from a text or a lecture.” Bransford, et. Al., How People Learn.

“Reading comprehension is a complex cognitive process that cannot be understood without a clear description of the role that vocabulary development and vocabulary instruction play in the understanding of what is read.” National Reading Panel.

Multiple Assessments/Rubrics: Stage two of the backward design process focuses on the evidence of student learning. To what extent do the assessments provide valid, reliable and sufficient measures of the desired results? Jay McTighe tells us that we cannot call ourselves standards-based until we can agree on the evidence, and he is correct. When we use the backward design process, we design the assessments before we design lessons and learning activities. If we are clear about the evidence of learning we seek, we will sharpen our thinking and our lessons. It is imperative that our teachers know how to design and administer in-class assessments because poorly designed assessments can drive teaching and learning in the wrong direction. Furthermore, different forms of assessment are appropriate for different types of knowledge.


When designing assessments, teachers look to the performance descriptors. The standard tells us what a student should be able to do, but the performance descriptor tells us how well the student should be able to demonstrate that skill, knowledge or understanding. The performance descriptor provides the teacher with a target, a guide and a yardstick. We must determine what type of evidence we will accept that the student is demonstrating the knowledge and skills required by the standard. We must ask ourselves these questions: Are students asked to exhibit their understanding through authentic performance tasks? Are appropriate criterion-based rubrics used to judge student products and performances? Are a variety of appropriate assessment formats employed to gather additional evidence of learning? Are students encouraged to self-assess?


Formative assessments are ongoing assessments that provide information to guide teaching and learning for improving learning and performance. Formative assessments support learning, reflect progress toward mastery of objectives, help teachers diagnose and respond to student needs and adjust instruction based on results, and provide students with descriptive feedback. Examples are selected response, constructed response, extended written response, performance/product, and personal communication in which the teacher finds out what students have learned through interacting with them. The units developed for this website feature authentic performance tasks that cause students to demonstrate the desired understandings. The teachers also design the criteria, or rubric, by which the performance of the understanding, knowledge, processes and skills will be judged..

Files Uploaded
File Name Description
UP1075WS2.doc Unit Design Template
UP1075WS3.doc Lesson Design Template
Date Created: October 12, 2007
Date Modified: October 12, 2007
Unit Plan Outline
(Lesson Plans)


Using the Reading English Language Arts Lesson Design Template

Back