Select one set of national curriculum standards in a content area that you will use for the rest of the assignments in this course, including the Differentiated Curriculum Unit Plan. The standards should be in a content area that most interests you or aligns most closely with the work you plan to be doing after completing this program. The four choices of content standards are:
The Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts (Includes the Literacy Standards for History, Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects) http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/
The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards https://www.socialstudies.org/c3
The National Core Arts Standards https://www.nationalartsstandards.org/
Part 1. Analyze the Standards
Analyze the standards to determine the benefits to the students. How can they be implemented to best serve students? How can they be differentiated for students who have different levels of readiness?
Part 2. Differentiate the Standards
According to the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), grade level content standards should be differentiated for advanced and gifted and talented students: “Although the new content standards are considered to be more rigorous than most current state standards, they fall short in meeting the specific needs of gifted learners, and if held strictly to the standard, could actually limit learning.” (https://www.nagc.org/common-core-state-standards-national-science-standards-and-gifted-education).
Select one content standard from those you analyzed that is in grade band and domain of interest. (The standards have different domains; for example, the ELA has reading, speaking, writing, listening, the CCSS for mathematics has domains such as algebra and geometry, etc.) Using the list of ten curriculum design principles defined in Stephens & Karnes (Chapter 3), explain how you could modify the standard to expand learning for gifted and talented students. Choose four different principles and give specific examples of how they could be applied to differentiate the standard.