Let's Get Chopping!

Unpacking Standards

When we serve up a burger, we don't tend to put a whole tomato on the burger, we slice it so it will fit on the burger and ultimately into our mouth. Not to mention, generally one tomato is enough to share and put on several burgers.

Just like the ingredients on a burger need to be chopped, sliced, and diced, our standards need to be broken down and split apart so they are easier to digest.

Standards are complicated for many reasons, one of which is they are generally created by a team of individuals who all have differing ideas of what language should be included in the standard. The truth is words matter, language matters, and many times standards are trying to boil complex, multi-faceted concepts into one sentence. This one sentence is expected to share what students should learn, how they are supposed to interact with the learning, and what is required to demonstrate the learning.

First things first! Breath in and breath out.

We are not going to chop all the vegetables up at once, we are going to do one ingredient at a time. Each ingredient is going to get prepped before we can use it on our burgers. Also, cooking alone is hard, if at all possible wrangle a few peers or colleagues together and do this work as a group.

Also know that context is everything. While this work has been done with the National Core Art Standards, this can easily be adapted to work with other standards if your state, district, or school have adopted different standards. For example Abi is in Colorado and has adapted these to the Colorado standards as she teaches preservice teachers how to build better burgers as the design tasty lessons for students.

Before we get started, let's make sure we are on the same page, literally.

Here are the four artistic processes and their definitions according to NCAS (p. 13)

Creating: Conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work

Performing/Presenting/Producing: Realizing artistic ideas and work through interpretation and presentation.

Responding: Understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning.

Connecting: Relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context.

Each one of the artistic processes houses core anchor standards.

Fun Fact! Core anchor standards were created with the intention that folks would read them with the words "Students will..." before each anchor standard.

This is the first page of the National Core Visual Art at a Glance standards document. Let's break it down so you know how to read it.

Standard Identifiers. The series of letters and numbers that are listed above a standard is the way a specific standard is identified.

VA:Cr1.1.Ka for instance means Visual Art : Create . Anchor Standard 1 . Discipline Specific Performance Standard 1 . Grade Level Kindergarten a (honestly the a at the end of each standard identifier is weird and I haven't figured out it's purpose in the decade I have been working with these)

Anchor Standard. Anchor standards describe the general knowledge and skill we expect students to be able to demonstrate throughout their education in the arts, across all the disciplines, at every grade.

Anchor Standard 1. Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.

Discipline Specific Performance Standard. Performance standards designed to explain what student learning looks like at each grade level or proficiency level once students are in high school. These performance standards move the broader anchor standard in to specific, measurable learning goals.

VA:Cr1.1.Ka - Engage in exploration and imaginative play with materials.

Enduring Understanding. Enduring understandings sum up the core ideas and processes that are central to the learning, which we hope students will take out of the classroom and into the rest of their lives. (NCAS front matter, p. 14)

Enduring Understanding: Creativity and innovative thinking are essential life skills that can be developed.

Essential Question. Essential questions are ones which should generate more questions and learning, they are open and should require students to bring knowledge from other parts of their life in to help them answer the question.

Essential Question: What conditions, attitudes, and behaviors support creativity and innovative thinking? What factors prevent or encourage people to take creative risks? How does collaboration expand the creative process?

Process Component. Process components are the actions artists do as they complete artistic tasks, these are the actions which give students agency in their learning as they develop these skills. You will find the process component listed running vertically up the left side of the page.

Investigate - Plan - Make

All of that to say...

When we talk about unpacking the standards here, we are talking about unpacking the discipline specific performance standards. The specific, measurable learning goals listed by grade (the parts of the table in the white boxes).

Break out your knives! Things you are going to need for this work:

Your standards
Something to document/write on
A good bloom taxonomy chart or several versions to look through
Optional - a thesaurus or AI to help with synonyms
Ideally someone to bounce ideas off of or double check your thought process

How to unpack a standard:

Read the original standard statement (the discipline specific process standard)
Bold important words and underline key terms or words which could have multiple meanings
Find synonyms for the terms or words, try for a minimum of five but the more the better
Restate the standard by finding a path through the terms that simplifies the standard to the level of the students using it.

Thanks Emily L. for taking great notes in class! - Abi

Let's try it together

Read the original standard statement

VA:Cr1.1.Ka - Engage in exploration and imaginative play with materials.

Bold important words and underline key terms or words which could have multiple meanings

VA:Cr1.1.Ka - Engage in exploration and imaginative play with materials.

Find synonyms for the terms or words, try for a minimum of five but the more the better (I used ChatGPT 4o and specified I wanted synonyms at Kindergarten level)

Engage: participate, join, jump in, get involved, do

Exploration: play, try, use, check out, create

Imaginative play: pretend, create, invent, make-believe, act

Materials: paint, clay, crayons, markers, art things

Restate the standard by finding a path through the terms that simplifies the standard to the level of the students using it (you can do this multiple times).

Join in and play make-believe with art things.

Honestly, you know it works when you can say it to a student and they understand. Also if you add "A student can …" before your unpacked standard.

A student can join in and play make-believe with art things.

Thanks Emily L. for taking great notes in class! - Abi

Want to go deeper? If you want to know more about your standards and have a better understanding of why you have the ones you do, Abi highly encourages you to read all the pages at the beginning of the standards, these are called the front matter and they are there for a reason. Check them out, I bet you learn something new. Here is the front matter to the National Core Art Standards.

Coming Soon : Click here to listen to Abi talk about one of the things she loves the most...standards

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