Imagine you're looking at your next unit and the standard seems clear: "Provide evidence that plants and animals have traits that help them survive in their environments." Straightforward, right?

But then you start planning actual lessons. Do students understand what counts as "evidence"? Should you focus on physical traits, behavioral traits, or both? What about different environments?

What looked simple suddenly feels packed with complexity.

We've all experienced this—a standard that seemed lesson-ready turns out much bigger than it first appeared. The good news? There's a systematic way to unpack what's embedded in these standards.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Today we'll focus on concepts and skills; next time we'll explore vocabulary and language functions.

Why Standards Aren't Lesson-Ready

Standards aren't written to be daily learning objectives—they're designed to capture the big ideas and essential skills students should master over time. That's why they often feel too broad when we try to teach them directly.

The result? Standards that pack multiple concepts and skills into single statements. What looks like one learning target is actually a collection of building blocks that need to be taught and learned over several lessons.

This is where unpacking comes in. By systematically breaking down what's embedded in a standard, we can identify the specific concepts and skills that become our daily learning objectives.

Two Types of Building Blocks: Concepts and Skills

Every standard contains two essential components that work together:

Concepts are what students need to know—the nouns and noun phrases that represent key ideas and understandings.

Skills are what students need to be able to do—the verbs and verb phrases that describe the cognitive work or actions students will perform.

Both matter, and both need to be clear in our planning. You can't successfully teach a skill without the underlying concepts, and concepts without application through skills often remain superficial.

Unpacking in Action: A Grade 3 Science Standard

Let's work through this process with our Grade 3 science standard: "Provide evidence that plants and animals have traits that help them survive in their environments."

First, look for the stated concepts

Find the nouns and noun phrases—what students need to understand:

• Traits
• Evidence
• Survival
• Environments

Next, look for the stated skills

Find the verbs and verb phrases—what students need to be able to do:

• Provide evidence

Then, dig deeper for hidden concepts

Now here's where it gets interesting. Those four stated concepts assume students understand much more:

• What makes something a trait versus just any characteristic
• The difference between physical traits (thick fur) and behavioral traits (migration)
• How environments create specific survival challenges
• The relationship between traits and environmental needs (adaptation)
• Basic needs that all living things require
• Cause and effect relationships

Finally, unpack the hidden skills

"Provide evidence" sounds like one skill, but it actually requires students to:

• Identify and observe traits in plants and animals
• Recognize what counts as evidence versus opinion
• Select appropriate evidence that supports their point
• Analyze relationships between traits and survival needs
• Explain those connections clearly

Suddenly, our "simple" standard reveals itself as weeks of instruction covering multiple concepts and a complex set of thinking skills.

From Building Blocks to Daily Objectives

This unpacking process gives us the raw materials for crafting daily learning objectives that are appropriately sized and focused. Instead of trying to teach the entire standard in one lesson, we can select specific concepts and skills that make sense for a single class period.

For example, rather than "Students will provide evidence that animals have traits that help them survive," we might create objectives like:

• "Students will be able to identify two physical traits that help polar bears survive in the Arctic."
• "Students will be able to explain how one behavioral trait helps birds find food in winter."
• "Students will be able to select evidence from observations to support claims about animal survival."

Notice how each objective takes one piece of the larger standard—specific concepts combined with focused skills—and makes it achievable in a single lesson.

Why This Matters for Our Planning

When we understand what's really embedded in our standards, several things become clearer:

We can sequence learning logically. Some concepts need to be understood before others make sense. Students might need to understand what traits are before they can analyze how traits help survival.

We can allocate time appropriately. Instead of rushing through a complex standard in a few days, we can plan the multiple lessons it actually requires.

We can choose activities that match the learning.When we know whether we're teaching a concept or developing a skill, we can select activities that actually support that specific learning goal.

We can assess more precisely. Instead of vague assessments that try to capture everything, we can create focused checks that tell us whether students have mastered specific building blocks.

Ready for the Next Layer

Unpacking standards into concepts and skills gives us the foundation for writing learning objectives that are appropriately sized and clearly focused. Instead of wrestling with standards that feel too big, we now have specific building blocks we can arrange into meaningful learning sequences.

But there's another layer: the vocabulary and language functions students need to access and demonstrate these concepts and skills. This language layer is crucial for multilingual learners but benefits all students.

In Part 2, we'll explore how to identify the vocabulary and language functions hidden within standards, and when language itself needs to become a learning objective.

Ready to try this yourself? Pick a standard you'll be teaching soon and use the "look for" process. You might be surprised by what you discover beneath the surface.