Beyond the Grade: Seeing the Full Story of Student Learning with ProgressionsBy Rachel Quill, Richfield Middle School, Holy Hill Area School District How do we ensure our students have mastered a standard? What steps do educators need to take to reach this mastery? Unpacking standards is a great starting point, but creating learning progressions to reach mastery provides a learning pathway that is developmentally appropriate. Essential StandardsThere are so many standards for students to master each year. This is a challenging task for educators, as they can hardly plan instruction that will ensure every student masters over 100 standards. Educators need to analyze content standards and identify the key 8–10 standards that students need to master by the end of the school year. Educators work with their professional learning communities (PLCs) to identify the standards they believe to be most important. Once these standards are identified, educators must then determine the pathway to mastery—specifically, what lessons or activities must students complete, and in what order. This pathway is created through a learning progression. What is a learning progression?A learning progression is a carefully sequenced set of learning activities that students must master to solidify the grade-level standards. Educators plan out a pathway that they believe to be developmentally appropriate, from least to most complex. Creating this progression ahead of time, based on what the teacher knows about students and instruction, will ensure students have the skills necessary to demonstrate mastery. Learning progressions are an effective way to ensure students are learning the skills we think are most important. Throughout this process, it is important to remember that no two people will create the same progression, and that is okay. A crucial part of this process is collaborating within PLCs so the best instructional moves can be made. Some skills directly connect to the learning of the standard, while other skills make learning the standard easier. How these skills will be addressed needs to be planned out carefully. Using Webb’s Depth of Knowledge Levels can aid in determining the complexity of the activities we plan for our students. Learning progressions can be a powerful tool to make sure students are learning at high levels and educators are creating learning experiences where students can find success. To learn more about learning progressions, All Means All: Essential Actions for Leveraging Yes We Can! by Friziellie, Schmidt, and Spiller (2025) or All About Accountability/The Lowdown on Learning Progressions by W. James Popham (2011). These are great resources to ensure educators are planning for all students in mind.
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