ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to help teachers and future teachers develop the skill needed to develop their own subject matter knowledge for teaching. Standards are concise, written descriptions of what students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage in their education. National and other standards specify benchmarks or points of reference for what students were to have learned by the end of each year of schooling. To unpack a standard means to take benchmark statements and translate those statements into clear, teachable curriculum. Because they are benchmarks, standards may appear as an ambiguous and complex conglomeration of simultaneous goals. Unpacking standards takes teachers on a journey to gaining conceptual understanding, and according to the National Center on Education and the Economy, conceptual understanding is a primary requirement of effective teachers. Academic resources are critical for unpacking standards-based concepts and skills.
