Identify the Knowledge: Determine what students are expected to know (content knowledge). Look for nouns in the standard.

Determine the Skills: Focus on the verbs to understand what students should be able to do (skills or actions). For example, "analyze," "compare," or "evaluate" represent actions students need to perform.

Key Concepts: Separate the main concepts, such as subject matter or themes.

Subskills: Identify any supporting skills or subskills that are embedded within the standard.

Learning Targets: Translate the skills and concepts into student-friendly learning objectives.

Bloom's Taxonomy: Consider the cognitive demand based on Bloom’s Taxonomy (e.g., remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create). This will help you determine the depth of understanding required.

DOK Levels: Use Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels to assess the complexity (recall, skills/concepts, strategic thinking, extended thinking).

Formative Assessments: Design assessments to check for understanding along the way. Make sure your assessment questions match the skills and knowledge required by the TEKS. Exploros provides formative assessments at the end of each experience.

Summative Assessments: Ensure your end-of-unit assessments test students on the full breadth of the TEKS. Exploros provides summative assessments at the completion of each unit.

Scaffold Learning: Create lessons that build from foundational skills to more complex ones.

Differentiation: Plan for varied instructional approaches to meet the needs of diverse learners, especially since TEKS cover a range of skills and complexity. Pro tip: Changing the verb in each standard moves the complexity from simple to complex using Bloom’s Taxonomy (i.e. identify is on the simpler end and create more complex).

Identify Overlaps: Look for connections with other TEKS subjects or skills (e.g., reading and writing across the curriculum or mathematical applications in science). This is crucial with all learners, especially if you teach a secondary subject.

Timeline: Map out a timeline for covering the standard, ensuring there's time for reteaching, review, and deeper exploration.

Knowledge: Civil War causes and effects.

Skills: Analyze (requires breaking down, examining relationships between causes and effects).

Level of Rigor: This aligns with higher-order thinking, as it requires analysis and synthesis, possibly at DOK Level 3 or 4.

Instructional Strategy: You might use primary source documents, debates, and cause/effect graphic organizers.

Assessment Data: Review results from formative and summative assessments to identify areas where students are excelling or struggling. For example, if a student consistently scores low on reading comprehension, the teacher can target that skill in future lessons. Exploros provides formative and summative assessments to provide teachers data to inform instruction. Here is a link to Exploros articles on data and analytics for teachers.

Behavioral Data: Track behavior patterns, attendance, and engagement in class. This data helps identify if non-academic factors are affecting performance.

Group Students: Based on the data, create flexible groups for differentiated instruction. For example, high-performing students might be challenged with more complex tasks, while struggling students receive additional support or scaffolding.

Personalized Learning Paths: Tailor lessons and assignments based on individual student data, providing appropriate resources and activities that match their level of understanding.

Adjust Pacing: Use data to decide if the class needs to spend more time on certain topics or move forward. For instance, if most students are performing well on a concept, you can accelerate. If many are struggling, you might reteach or provide additional practice.

Targeted Curriculum Adjustments: Based on trends in the data, you can modify the curriculum to focus more on areas of need or integrate more challenging concepts.

Data-Driven Goals: Use data to set specific, measurable goals for students. These goals can be academic (e.g., improving math fluency) or behavioral (e.g., increasing participation). Students can also track their progress, making them more accountable and engaged.

Classroom Trends: Analyze the whole class's data to set broader class-wide objectives, such as improving average scores in a particular subject or skill.

Ongoing Feedback: Frequent formative assessments, such as quizzes, exit tickets, or quick polls, provide immediate feedback. This helps the teacher adjust instruction on a daily basis to address misconceptions or gaps in knowledge.

Responsive Teaching: Based on the results, you can modify upcoming lessons in real time. For example, if exit ticket data shows that half the class didn’t understand a lesson on fractions, the next class can focus on reteaching that concept.

Targeted Interventions: Use data to provide interventions for students who are falling behind. This could include extra tutoring, one-on-one support, or assigning specific resources, such as videos or practice activities.

Tiered Support: Implement tiered intervention systems (like Response to Intervention, RTI) where data determines which students need more intensive instruction and additional supports.

Data Meetings: Collaborate with colleagues to discuss student data trends, identify successful strategies, and plan cross-curricular or interdisciplinary approaches. For example, if several students are struggling with reading comprehension in both English and social studies, teachers can collaborate to address this gap.

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): Teachers can work together in PLCs to analyze student data, share best practices, and plan interventions that target common issues seen in the data.

Student Reflection: Share data with students and encourage them to reflect on their progress. Self-assessment helps students take ownership of their learning and set personal goals.

Parent Involvement: Regularly share student data with parents to keep them informed of their child’s progress. This also helps enlist parent support for any needed interventions or strategies at home.

Data-Driven Reflection: Use student performance data to reflect on your teaching effectiveness. If many students are not meeting expectations, it might indicate a need to adjust your teaching methods or instructional materials.

Continuous Improvement: Analyze long-term data trends over time (e.g., over a semester or school year) to make more strategic changes to your instructional approach.

Formative assessments (quizzes, polls, class discussions)

Summative assessments (tests, exams, projects)

Standardized test scores

Attendance and participation data

Behavioral and social-emotional data

Student work samples

Feedback from students (surveys, reflections)