The Hardest Content to Teach

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Which is harder: teaching first graders to read or teaching seniors AP Calculus? Is it more difficult to teach students how to paint in the style of Van Gogh or to understand stoichiometry?

These are trick questions, of course. These are all difficult concepts to teach and for students to learn, but the most difficult content of all to teach is the implicit content in any given standard.

What is the implicit content, you ask? Well, it's the knowledge and skills implied in a standard that students should already have learned...everything they have to already be able to do in order to even begin to learn a new standard.

Let's take a look at an example. Here's a Standard from the Virginia Standards of Learning for English-Language Arts, Grade 2:

2.6 The student will expand vocabulary and use of word meaning.
c) Use knowledge of antonyms and synonyms

• Essential Understanding: All students should understand that knowledge of homophones, prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, and antonyms can be used to read unfamiliar words.
• Essential Knowledge, Skill, and Process: Use knowledge of antonyms when reading; use knowledge of synonyms when reading.

I've underlined what we call the explicit content: it's synonyms and antonyms. That means teachers need to teach the word "synonym" and "antonym" and if they ask for a synonym for "angry," the child can answer "mad," and if they ask for an antonym for "up," the child can answer "down."

Easy enough, right?

Wrong. Think about everything that's implied by this standard. First of all, students aren't just supplying antonyms and synonyms orally when prompted; they're doing this within the context of reading, and the implication here is that the child can already read. What does that mean? It means that they already understand phonics and decoding words and what a sentence is and how to track word-for-word and how to comprehend every other word in a sentence...all in order to decipher the one particular, unfamiliar word.

Here's an example of two sentences where students might have to figure out an unknown word (underlined): "Mr. Bunny was peeved that he did not have a carrot. He would have been happier if he had one."

Then, even if we've taught students what "antonyms" and "synonyms" are, we're counting on them 1) being able to read the sentence; 2) being able to figure out that they don't know the word "peeved," 3) being able to figure out "happier" is the antonym for the unfamiliar word; 4) knowing that "happier" is related to the word "happy;" and 5) knowing at least one antonym for the word "happy."

If any of the above skills are missing, students are going to struggle.

Similarly, think what's implied in this Virginia Physical Education standard:

10.3 The student will demonstrate the ability to apply basic principles of training and scientific concepts and principles to evaluate fitness behaviors and identify strategies needed for health-enhancing fitness for the present and into adulthood.
b) Use a variety of resources, including available technology, to analyze current fitness and activity levels, and to improve physical activity and personal fitness.

Look at all those implied standards! We're assuming that students already know how to use the available technology, which probably includes things like computer or personal-device skills, that they understand what they're currently doing that does or does not apply to their fitness, and that they have an understanding of what they can do to be successful at improving their own physical activity and personal fitness.

I have to admit, some of these are things I'm still struggling with an adult.

When standards come with all this implied content, they often trip teachers up because start to teach the standard, as its written, only to discover that students are lacking tons of the skills needed to even begin.

So, what do we do? How keep the implied content from wreaking havoc with our plans?

One thing we can do is to unpack our standards carefully. Don't just look at what you have to teach, but think about: what else do students have to know in order to be able to actually do this? Unpack standards for the implied content.

Next, pre-assess your students. Pre-assessments are a good idea, but often we only pre-assess on the current level's material to see if students already know it. For instance, if we're teaching Grade 4 mathematics, we might just include problems from the Grade 4 mathematics curriculum.

The problem with this, of course, is that what if students not only don't know how to add and subtract with regrouping...they also don't even have their basic addition and subtraction facts? A pre-assessment should include not only items from the current curriculum, but any previous knowledge or skills that students will need to have to begin learning the current curriculum.