by Terry Heick
I first encountered the 40/40/40 rule years ago while flipping through one of those giant (and indispensable) 400-page Understanding by Design tomes.
The question was quite simple. Of all the academic standards, you are tasked with “covering” (more on this in a minute), what is important for students to understand over the next 40 days, what is important for them to understand over the next 40 months, and what is important What to understand for the next 40 years?
As you can see, this is a powerful way to think about academic content.
Of course, this leads to discussion of both power standards and enduring understandings, curriculum mapping, and the instructional design tools that teachers use every day.
But it made me think. So I drew a quick pattern of concentric circles (something like the image below) and started thinking about the writing process, tone, symbolism, audience, purpose, structure, word parts, grammar and a thousand other things about ALS.
No (necessarily) energy standards
And it was an enlightening process.
First, keep in mind that this process is a little different than identifying power standards in your curriculum.
Energy standards can be chosen by looking at these standards which can serve to “anchor and incorporate” other content. This idea of “40/40/40” is more about being able to look at a large set of things and immediately spot what is necessary. If your house is on fire and you have 2 minutes to take out only what you can carry, what do you take with you?
In some ways, it can be boiled down to a depth versus breadth argument. Coverage versus dominance. UbD refers to this as the difference between “nice to know,” “important content,” and “lasting understandings.” These labels can be confusing: enduring versus 40/40/40 versus power standards versus big ideas versus essential questions.
That’s why I loved the simplicity of the 40/40/40 rule.
It occurred to me that it was more about contextualizing the child amidst the content, rather than simply unpacking and organizing standards. One of UbD’s framework questions for establishing “big ideas” offers some clarity:
“To what extent does the idea, topic, or process represent a ‘big idea’ that has lasting value beyond the classroom?”
The essence of the 40/40/40 rule seems to be to take an honest look at the content we present to children and contextualize it in their lives. This suggests authenticity, priority, and even the kind of lifelong learning that teachers dare to dream of.
Applying the 40/40/40 rule in your classroom
There is probably no single “right way” to do this, but here are some tips:
1. Start alone
While you’ll soon need to socialize them with team or department members, it’s helpful to clarify what you think about the curriculum before the world joins you. Plus, this approach forces you to look at the standards closely, rather than just being polite and nodding your head a lot.
2. Then socialize
Once you’ve outlined your thinking about the content standards you teach, share it online, in a data team or PLC meeting, or with colleagues an afternoon after school.
3. Keep it simple
Use a simple 3 column chart or concentric circles as shown above and start separating the wheat from the chaff. No need to get complicated with your graphic organizer.
4. Be flexible
You will have a different sense of priority over standards than your colleagues. These are different personal philosophies about life, teaching, your content area, etc. As long as these differences are not drastic, this is normal.
5. Realize that children are not little adults
Of course, everyone needs to spell correctly, but weighing spelling versus extracting implicit nuances or themes (typical English language arts content) is also a matter of realizing that children and adults are fundamentally different. It is rare that a child can examine a variety of media, synthesize themes, and create new experiences for readers without being able to use a verb correctly. It can happen, but therein lies the idea of power standards, big ideas, and, most immediately, the 40/40/40 rule: one day, 40 days. In 40 months, or even 10 years from now, the students in front of you will be gone, adults in the “real world.”
Not everything they can do (or can’t do) in that moment will be because of you, no matter how good the lesson, assessment design, data use, pacing guide, or curriculum map. But if you can accept that, and start backwards from the worst case scenario, “if they don’t learn anything else this year, they’ll know this and that,” then you can work backwards from those priorities.
Those pieces of content that will last 40 years or more.
In your content area, in your curriculum map, pacing guide, or whatever guidance document you use, start filling in that little orange circle first and work backwards from there.
What content is most important? The 40/40/40 rule
