How to Use Standards in the Classroom

How can you bring standards to life and reality in your classroom? This guide is for teachers who seek a model and processes for designing standards-based units of study to use in their classrooms.

The proliferation of standards developed at the national and state levels turns the preparation of a meaningful classroom curriculum into a daunting task. Imagine that your district has recently adopted standards for student learning or your state has just published standards for your subject area. As you open the standards documents, you wonder "How do I make these standards part of my curriculum? How will I know if my students have attained the standards?"

Harris and Carr share their experiences with standards-based learning and offer practical examples of how to develop standards into units of study. The model and processes they describe in this book help readers in choosing and coordinating standards, topics, products and performances, assessment criteria, exemplars, and scoring guides.