How do we DESIGN instruction around opportunities for AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCES?

All too often in education we take the language of the standard in isolation to drive our instruction and our assessment, and all too often we find ourselves developing external methods to influence our students to engage with learning. The Iowa Core Standards are more than the words of the standard, when unwrapped with the appropriate cognitive complexity and combined with other standards, we are at the very precipice of placing students at the center of their own rigorous, authentic experiences. How do we bridge multiple standards and cognitive complexity with student centered experiences? Our method is called a Thinking Progression Tool.

The Thinking Progression Tool facilitates instructional design through placing high value on the expected cognitive outcomes for multiple standards. We utilize the Hess Matrix, Universal Constructs, and our enduring understandings to identify and commit to outcomes with appropriate cognitive complexity. When we have identified the “thinking” outcomes, we look to our Universal Constructs to design an authentic and meaningful student centered experience guided by our enduring understandings and anchor text.

Designing authentic experiences demands that we are engaging in learning and doing that matters. It is the real work that is being done outside of school walls. The experience allows students to choose direction and impact within their learning. As the Thinking Progression Tool is focused on cognitive complexity and meaningful authentic experiences, we must also think through how our students’ cognition will evolve through the experience. This is the progression portion.

Cognitive Progressions represent the range of student thinking that students will encounter throughout this learning experience. In each progression, teachers identify the thinking that will occur in that progression and how the following progression will stretch that cognition further. This scaffolded approach to achieving desired cognitive complexity allows students to have multiple entry points into the experience and the levels of thinking. The content and the “doing” portion is often in a progression as well. The content and doing is interdependent on the desired cognitive complexity. Content and doing is kept separate with their own “look fors” in each progression.

Outcomes in focusing on cognitive complexity allows teachers to design for more student centered learning while embedding Universal Constructs. Students own their learning at a deeper level and become self-motivated to continue learning. We find that our students have increased problem solving, questioning, critical thinking, and social emotional skills after experiencing learning focusing on cognitive complexity and meaningful authentic experiences. The work illustrated in this book is a great example of the design for cognitive complexity and the interdependence of content within a meaningful authentic experience.

C.Welch

6/14/22