How to Plan Rigorous Instruction

If we want all our students to become better thinkers and learners, we must design rigorous learning experiences that go beyond helping them simply master standards.

In this guide, Robyn R. Jackson takes you step by step through the process of planning rigorous instruction-what great teachers do to ensure students have a learning destination that’s worth working toward and that the path they take to get there will help them pass the big tests and become engaged learners, effective problem solvers, and critical thinkers. Here, you’ll learn how to:

• Create a rigorous unit assessment to guide your instruction and ensure standards mastery.
• Select rigorous learning materials by examining the type of thinking you want students to engage in and the type of understanding you want them to acquire.
• Choose rigorous instructional strategies by looking at ways to help students grasp new content and acquire new skills, apply what they are learning in a meaningful way, use thinking processes to synthesize new understandings, and adapt these understandings to new contexts across disciplines.
• Create a rigorous learning unit, tailored to your standards and classroom content, and to the students you teach.