“How to Plan Rigorous Instruction”
through the lens of Common Core
BOOK BY
ROBYN R. JACKSON
“TELL ME AND I’LL FORGET;
SHOW ME AND I MAY REMEMBER;
INVOLVE ME AND I WILL UNDERSTAND.”
~CHINESE PROVERB
HTTP://MINDSTEPSINC.COM/RIGOR/
What Does Rigorous Instruction Look Like?
 Rigor goes beyond what student will know and be
able to do! (basic memorization and skill proficiency)
 Rigorous instruction ask students to…
 Create their own meaning
 Integrate skills into actual processes
 Use what they learn to solve real world problems
 Goes beyond surface understanding
 Becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable
 Learning the correct answer is not always clear, and that is
okay
 Fosters students ability to think and learn for themselves
THINK ABOUT THIS…
HOW MIGHT PLANNING
WITH RIGOR IN MIND,
CHANGE THE WAY YOU PLAN
OR THE WAY YOU THINK
WHEN PLANNING?
MYTHS ABOUT RIGOR
 Rigor…
 Mean
more work
 Work is harder
 If standards are rigorous, you have rigor
 Younger students cannot participate in rigorous
learning
 Is only possible after students have mastered the
basics
 Is only for gifted students
“BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND”
Common Core Team Planning –
We are going to practice using a rigorous
summative assessment to plan backwards

This will help us…Create Focus, Direction, and Clarity
 Steps to achieve this…
 Clarify learning goals (standards, unpacking docs)
 Decide what we want students to learn (goal)
 Create clear guidelines as to what mastery looks like
 Monitor and support student progress toward
mastery
RIGOROUS ASSESSMENT
 Measures thinking skills rather than recalling facts
 Elaborate
 Make inferences
 Analyze and construct relationships
 Defend their judgment
 Lets students demonstrate their thinking process
 Think about and use what they learned, answer the
how and why
 Apply what they have learned to real-world or
unpredictable situations
EXAMPLE
On the show “Iron Chef”
They are given ingredients and
have to build a meal.
They are not following a recipe,
they have to know how to cook.
They have to know how apply their knowledge
and adapt to new situations.
EXAMPLE - Social Studies Unit
How is food grown, packages, and
delivered to the grocery store.
 Traditional Assessment – Create a diagram of the
food supply chain
 Rigorous Assessment – Create a poster that traces a
food item (ex. chicken egg) from the farm all the way
to the market, then present poster to the class
ASSESSMENT
“In Traditional Assessment
students demonstrate mastery.
In Rigorous Assessment,
students need to know how to think.”
THINK ABOUT THIS
 Springing surprises on students during an
assessment is unfair, IF we don’t properly prepare
them
 But if we provide rigorous instruction involving
unpredictable situations all along, then they will be
prepared for that rigorous assessment
 It’s all about getting students to think in a different
way, to challenge themselves with the teacher just
acting as a tour guide on the road to mastery
STEPS WE NEED TO TAKE
 Step 1 - Think about the kind of thinking you want
the student to do
 Step 2 - Select a summative task that requires
students to demonstrate that thinking

project, multi-media presentation, create a model, ad campaign,
portfolio, speech, debate
 Step 3 - Determine what you consider mastery
(make sure to consider top level and the baseline)
 Step 4 - Determine how you will grade the
assessment (point system, rubric–share ahead of time)
ONE WAY TO DETERMINE ASSESSMENT
Go back to your essential question and
look at how a student might answer it.
Example – Essential Question
“How can we find themes across multiple texts?”



Ask students to read 3 poems, identify the themes, and write about how
the themes were different for each poem.
Give students a theme and a variety of texts (poems, essays, short
stories). Have them write about where/how they see this theme is each
text and defend their answer.
Create an assessment that requires students to use what they learned
and apply it to a visual representation like a cartoon, advertisement, or
work of art.
TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
 “Best Answer” Multiple Choice
 Different than traditional m/c
 Student must select best answer among several options that
are “technically” or “almost” right
 Persuasive Writing
 Analyze an issue, Take a position, and Defend it
 Must know the facts, organize them, use them to make a case
 Invention Tasks
 Take what they learn and create something
 Ex. Force and Motion, design way to protect egg being dropped
TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
 Decision Making
 Analyze several options and come up with conclusion
 Ex. Fables – Determine the best example of a fable from
stories they have read and defend their choice
 Explain Your Answer
 Complete a task and then explain their answer or process
 Ex. Explain answer to math problem using ‘non-calculator’
reasons
 Error Analysis
 Given problems and answers, some correct and some incorrect
 Must identify answers as correct or incorrect and explain why
TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
 Learning Portfolios





Track progress over time and analyze growth
Explain/Model criteria for mastery
Students select a few examples of their work that they think show
mastery, have them write about why these examples show 1 – how
their understanding has grown, 2 – how they have developed the skill
They explain any challenges and how they overcame, and explain
where they are now in terms of understanding
They suggest and justify the grade they deserve
 Capstone Experiences


Project based assessment
Ex. Unit of study on Family Structure – Create their own family tree
and explain how their family fits into one or more of the family
structures they studied
WHAT ABOUT FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT?
After determining how you will assess students at the end of
the unit, then you can work on formative assessments.
 Can use some of the same types of assessments
 Track students progress towards the goal, and
intervene/provide support as needed
 Use these assessments as your guide
 Just remember that formative assessment is
measuring in-progress learning, not mastery!
 Use these assessments along with summative to plan
your instruction
Evaluation Checklist for a Rigorous Unit
Evaluative Checklist for a Rigorous Unit.pdf
DPI Wikispace
http://maccss.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/Home
My Wikispace
http://emilyquinn.wikispaces.com/
UNPACKING REVISIONS
 Kindergarten
NCDPI Unpacking Revisions - K Math.doc
 1st Grade
NCDPI Math Unpacking Docs Revisions - 1st.docx
 2nd Grade
NCDPI Math Unpacking Docs Revisions - 2nd.docx
THINK ABOUT IT
Think about the concept of “Change”
What might a rigorous assessment
on ‘Change’ look like?
JIGSAW
Discuss how a rigorous assessment may look
different in Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade.