Identifying a Power Standard

Running head: IDENTIFY A POWER STANDARD

This week I began my search for power standards within the many, second grade, overloaded, Georgia Performance Standards. I began by skimming over the second grade portion of the Georgia standards website. So many choices, I wasn't sure where to even begin. The subject I am most passionate about is reading, so I decided to start there.

Once I clicked the appropriate boxes for second grade reading curriculum, I waited for the many expected standards to pop up. I was slightly taken aback when only four choices presented themselves. Although I use standards in my lesson planning, I don't departmentalize or take time to count them. At first glance all of the reading standards appeared to be power standards. That made sense considering reading is a powerful subject matter. For a moment, I even considered changing curriculum areas to math or science. Then I took a closer look at each of the standards and all of the strings that were attached. Each standard had a list of sub-standards. Some seemed to go along well with the initial standard and some seemed like an awfully long stretch from where the standard had begun. While some standards came with four or five sub-standards, another came with seventeen of them that covered a wide range of reading topics. Thinking that sometimes less is more, I began to read each standard and all of its attached "strings." I tried to measure each of these standards against each of the three criteria discussed by Dr. Reeves in the video presentation (Laureate, 2003).