Sometimes standards can be a little cumbersome to look through. Complex in language and phrasing, standards take a lot of time to unpack. It is crucial that teachers take the time to unpack these standards, so that they understand what students really need to be able to do to meet standard and pass not only standardized assessments, but district and class assessments. Unpacking standards allow teachers to create aligned, rigorous assessments that show this learning.

Teachers need scaffolding in their professional learning just as much as students do in their learning. In our growing world of technology, Wordle is a great tool to create word clouds. I can help summarize articles, showing the most frequently used words, and more. I have seen many teachers use Wordle in their classrooms to help scaffold learning and create engagement, so why do the same for teachers?

Above, you will see a wordle, for a 5th grade common core math standard. As per the normal setup of standards, the “main” or “power” standard is listed and then many sub standards are located beneath to help show all components of the power standard. From this wordle, we can see the variety of concepts that students need to understand, from being able to “interpret” to understanding “fractions.” This can help teachers not only see connections in the concepts needed, but also unpack into specific targets. Just this simple tool can help teachers unpack standards, providing them with scafolding analyze the standard. Try using it with you staff!