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Standards

ACOS

You use the Alabama Course of Study (ACOS) Standards to determine what must be taught in your face-to-face classroom. Whatever subject you teach is guided by these COS Standards.

The same is true for ACCESS courses. We develop our courses to meet all the ACOS of a particular course.

Groupings

Courses of study use content groupings to define themes or big ideas in their subject areas. The groupings define what students should know and be able to do.

Here are some examples:

  • English Language Arts: recurring standards, critical literacy, digital literacy, research literacy, and vocabulary literacy
  • Physical Education: motor skills and movement patters, movement and performance, physical activity and fitness, personal and social behavior, and values physical activity
  • Foreign Languages: communication, cultures, connections, comparison, communities

Take a look at your course's ACOS and see how they are grouped.

Terminology

The standards appear within the groupings and define what students should know and be able to do. The standards are numbered, though the numbers do not imply a mandated or suggested sequence.

The courses of study differ in their terminology for the next level in the hierarchy.

  • The Science COS calls the lettered content associated with a standard related content.
  • The Arts and World Languages courses of study call this content bullets.
  • The Mathematics Course of Study does not have a specific term for this content.

We will use the terms related content and bullets interchangeably. This content is also required.

All courses of study include examples that clarify certain components, content standards, or bullets / related content. Sometimes, the examples are explicitly listed. Other times, they appear inside parentheses. Examples are not required content (except in Social Studies!), though they are strongly suggested.

Unpacking

Content standards are really big, complex understandings of topics. Just as you do in your classrooms, we need to unpack those standards into a sequenced set of smaller competencies.

Unpacking the standards allows us to determine prerequisite skills and knowledge that students will need in order to achieve a deeper understanding.

You have been unpacking the standards throughout your teaching career and it is crucial to our development process.

Objectives

Lesson Objectives

As we said, the standards are really big, complex understandings of topics. Breaking them down, or unpacking them, allows you to write lesson-level objectives.

Lesson-level objectives describe what a student will know and be able to do at the end of each lesson. You will need to author at least one measurable objective for each lesson in your course.

Objective Requirements

How do you write lesson-level objectives? What is required for a good lesson objective?

  • Lesson-level objectives align to standards and must be measurable.
  • Students should easily understand lesson-level objectives.
  • A student who completes all lesson-level objectives should meet course of study standards.

Two great resources for help in writing measurable lesson objectives are:

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes

We will also speak throughout the development process about learning outcomes, performance evidence, assessments, and enabling knowledge.

Learning outcomes describe the knowledge or skills students should acquire by the end of an assignment or course. Knowing the desired learning outcome helps students understand why that knowledge or those skills will be useful to them.

Enabling Knowledge

Enabling knowledge is the set of facts, concepts, and principles that students must know in order to perform. You might think of enabling knowledge as facts taught during class that provide a base for students to complete a task.

Enabling skills are the skills or processes students must master in order to perform more complex tasks.

As an ACCESS SME, you need to be sure all the enabling knowledge or skills needed for the student to be successful on the assessment (or Task) is in the lesson (or Learn) or in previous lessons.

Evidence

For ACCESS purposes, we will use the terms performance evidence and assessment interchangeably to describe the collected evidence of student learning, including traditional tests and quizzes, observations, and performance tasks and projects.

For us, the term assessment is not limited to a summative, multiple choice exam. Assessment is any graded opportunity for formative or summative assessment and feedback for a student.

Quality Standards

Quality Matters

We have spent much of this lesson discussing the ins and outs of content standards. Let's take a second to discuss quality standards.

ACCESS is a member of Quality Matters. Quality Matters is a non-profit organization dedicated to using research as a foundation for a set of K12 course quality standards. We will use the QM K12 Standards for Course Design as guiding principles for our development. We will also use them as the basis for our review to ensure the course is effective.

QM Rubric

As ACCESS Instructional Designers, we are charged with meeting all the standards of the Quality Matters K12 Annotated Rubric.

There are QM standards Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are responsible for meeting. However, meeting these standards should come naturally as the SME writes content.

Let's go over each QM standard an ACCESS SME is responsible for meeting: 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Learning Objectives

QM Standard 2 focuses on learning objectives and competencies.

  • Are the learning objectives measurable?
  • Does the course and lessons align with state standards?
  • Are the learning objectives written for the student audience?

Citation: Quality Matters K12 Rubric

Assessments

QM Standard 3 covers assessments and measurement of the stated learning objectives.

  • How do the assessments measure the listed learning objectives?
  • Are the assessments related to the lesson and activities?
  • Are the grading criteria provided for the students?
  • Are there multiple assessment methods?
  • Are students provided opportunities to reflect on progress toward learning objectives?

Instructional Materials

QM Standard 4 is concerned with instructional materials.

  • Do the instructional materials help students meet the stated objectives?
  • Are the instructional materials integrated into the context of the lessons?
  • Is the reading level appropriate?
  • Are materials cited appropriately?
  • Are instructional materials culturally diverse?

Citation: Quality Matters K12 Rubric

Activities

QM Standard 5 deals with student activities and interaction.

  • Do the activities lead to the attainment of learning objectives?
  • Are active learning opportunities available for learner-to-content interaction?
  • Are there opportunities available for learner-to-learner and learner-to-instructor interaction?

Citation: Quality Matters K12 Rubric

QM Review

As we stated, an ACCESS SME is responsible for writing the content that meets QM standards 2, 3, 4 and 5.

However, most of these will come naturally once the learning objectives are written. For our courses the course of study standards dictates the course-level learning objectives referred to in the QM standards. The module / unit-level objectives referred to in this document are our lesson-level objectives and will be written by you.

Please note how important these lesson-level objectives are. Without them, we cannot determine alignment and we are missing one of the critical quality indicators in our course.