Graduated Understandings

The Graduated Understandings promote teacher understanding of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and provide strategies for moving students toward a similar understanding. The Graduated Understandings are comprised of two pieces: the Instructional Families and the Element Cards. These two pieces used together will present educators with the progression of content accross grades and with instructional strategies that include possible supports and scaffolds. They will assist educators in planning instruction for students with a wide range of abilities in multiple grades.

Instructional Families

Instructional Families are visual representation of the areas of curricular emphasis within and accross grade bands, the graphic facilitates perception of related content. The Instructional Families are organized by domain and reference the related CCSS for each Core Content Connector (CCC). The CCCs (grade-specific kknowledge, skills and abilities) are organized into Instructional Families based on the content students are expected to learn.

The Instructional Families are presented in three different views:

• By grade band and domain: table of learning targets for specific domains and grade bands, instructional families color-coded accross the grade bands
• By grade and CCCs: columnar presentation of CCCs by grade and domain, CCCs cross-referenced to related CCSS
• By Instructional Family and CCCs: columnar presendtation of instructional families in a vertical progression accross grades

Element Cards

Element Cards are designed to present multiple perspectives of instruction of the targeted content. Each Element Card contains one or more CCC, Domain, and Learning Progression Framework (LPF) indicator. These are aligned to a CCSS and include Essential Understandings as well as instructional strategies, supports and scaffolds.

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