Everyone is talking about RIGOR. The Common Core Standards call for a more rigorous curriculum, instructon and assessment. Rigor is the kind and level of thinking required of students to successfully engage with and solve a task. Rigor is not about difficulty, it's about complexity of understanding.
What does rigor look like in a classroom? Two widely accepted measures of cognitive rigor are Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge Levels. Bloom's Taxonomy focuses on the verbs and indicate the level of performance or the level of higher-level questions. Depth of Knowledge focuses of complexity of content standards to successfully complete an assessment or a task. When you unpack the standards, first look at the verb and align it with Bloom's levels for the level of performance. Then look beyond the verb to determine the level of understanding required to meet the standard.
Karen Hess created a Cognitive Rigor Matrix that integrates Bloom's Taxonomy with Webb's Depth of Knowledge for analyzing teacher lesson planning and assessments. In my district, we have been "mapping" out the learning events in our UbD units to ensure a balance of lessons and assessments across all levels from simple to complex. Teachers are seeing that they can "tweak" some of their lessons and assessments to make them more rigorous. For example,
DOK 1 Describe three characteristics of metamorphic rocks.
DOK 2 Describe the difference between metamorphic and igneous rocks.
DOK 3 Describe a model you might use to represent the relationships that exist in the rock cycle
All three tasks begin with the word describe but each task is at a different depth of knowledge. Check out what comes after the verb! What comes after the verb is more important than the verb itself.
Karen Hess has a Cognitive Rigor Matrix for ELA, Math/Science, Social Studies and the Arts. and they can easily be found on the internet. You can also find beautiful Bloom's Taxonomy posters for the elementary grades from Wake County Public School System.
Grab my free Depth of Knowledge DOK flipchart on TPT:
Enjoy!
