core skills mastery (csm)
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Core Skills Mastery (CSM)
Coaching Ideas and Lesson Plans
Lessons and materials to build investment and a sense of community in your CSM class
We’ve created these materials so that you can spend more time doing what
matters most…coaching.
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CONTENTS Classroom Activities Overview ...................................................................................................2
First Week Activities...................................................................................................................3
1. CSM Student Introduction Video ......................................................................................4
2. CSM Course Expectations ................................................................................................5
Building Community and Investment ..........................................................................................6
1. Share group progress ........................................................................................................7
2. Create a Belt Wall ............................................................................................................8
3. Skills Scavenger Hunt Week.............................................................................................9
4. Establish Peer Tutors ...................................................................................................... 10
Improving Learning .................................................................................................................. 11
1. Growth Mindset Discussion ............................................................................................ 12
2. Strategies for navigating CSM Texts .............................................................................. 13
3. Strategy Sharing Wall ..................................................................................................... 14
4. Learning Decisions Discussion ....................................................................................... 15
5. Effort Discussion ............................................................................................................ 16
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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES OVERVIEW
Active coaches are critical to success with CSM. While much of what coaches do in a CSM
classroom is assisting individual students with their learning skills, this document details
classroom activities that can promote student engagement in CSM.
The activities fall into three categories:
First Week Activities. These activities help students with the transition to CSM, and
orient them to the goals of CSM and how to succeed in this new environment
Building community and investment. CSM works best in classes where students feel
they are learning together as a community, and that they aren’t just alone with a
computer. These activities leverage the enthusiasm of the coach and individual students
to pull up the energy level in the classroom.
Improving Learning. Learning with CSM requires making good learning decisions,
reading effectively, and staying focused and on task. These activities are aimed at
improving these important skills.
All of the activities have suggestions for when and how to implement them. In general, use the
first week activities to get students started, perhaps do a community-building activity (like
setting up a Belt Wall), and then let students work on CSM for a while. As students gain more
experience on CSM, they’ll have more to say in class discussions and be able to put the ideas
they generate into better context.
These activities are just suggestions to get you thinking about how to incorporate classroom
activities into CSM. Please let us know if you come up with any other activities, and we would
be excited to incorporate them into future versions of this guide.
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FIRST WEEK ACTIVITIES
Many students have difficult transitions to CSM – they aren’t expecting the high levels of
carefulness and mastery required. CSM is a different type of curriculum and instruction for most
students, and by setting expectations and addressing some issues before they arise, you can make
the first week calmer and easier for both them and you!
The two exercises suggested below can be either done as a group if all of your students are
starting together, or each student can do them individually if you are coaching a rolling
admissions or completely online class.
In addition, CSM instruction incorporates some orientation materials meant to provide students
with the information they need as they need it. For example, students see a short set of
Introduction Pages with easy multiple choice questions that cover the most important points
about how to learn with CSM. They will also see “CSM Firsts” pages when they reach
important milestones in CSM for the first time (such as getting a problem wrong or earning a
belt).
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1. CSM Student Introduction Video
GOAL: Ensure students understand the purpose and structure of Core Skills Mastery, and have
concrete tips for how to best use it.
TIMING: First day of class
DESCRIPTION: Our CEO has created a 30-minute video that explains the big ideas behind
CSM, what students should expect as they work through the curriculum, and why the skills
they’re working on matter in college and the real-world.
You can use the optional “CSM Introduction Video Reflection Form” in many ways:
students can review it on their own after viewing the video
students can choose one or two topics to write on for themselves
you can use the questions to guide class discussion after viewing the video
The Video Reflection Form is an editable Word document form so that you can adjust the
questions to fit your class.
MATERIALS:
Student Introduction Video: this file can be found in the “Coaching Resources” tab of
your Toolkit
Projector with audio (if viewing as a whole class)
Intro Video Reflection Form.docx (Lesson Plan Resource A in Coaching Resources)
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2. CSM Course Expectations
GOAL: Make sure students understand what is expected of them as they work in CSM.
TIMING: First week (and then continuing discussions if needed)
DESCRIPTION: The CSM Expectations document states both the Dos and the Don’ts of
working on CSM (e.g., DO share ways of learning, DON’T make it into a race).
There are many ways of using these sheets including:
Printing a copy for a poster on your wall
Printing copies for your students as handouts
Discussing one expectation per week as a class, including why it’s on the list and how
they personally practice the expectation
The CSM Expectations come in two forms – one more fun, and the other more serious. The
content is the same in both, so you can choose which version is more appropriate for your
students.
MATERIALS:
CSM Expectations – fun.pdf (Lesson Plan Resource B1 in Coaching Resources) OR
CSM Expectations – serious.pdf (Lesson Plan Resource B2 in Coaching Resources)
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BUILDING COMMUNITY AND INVESTMENT
Classes that succeed on CSM usually do so together – enthusiastic coaches and other students
can provide very effective motivation. Although CSM is designed to promote intrinsic
motivation, these types of tools can provide a boost to many students’ progress through CSM.
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1. Share group progress
GOAL: Invest students in their class data. CSM is built in general to encourage intrinsic
motivation, but occasional rewards and competitions for meeting targets can help to keep the
momentum going.
TIMING: Any time
DESCRIPTION: Under the Reports/Statistics tab in your Toolkit, CSM has a “Class Statistics”
report that provides information on cumulative class progress. A sample is shown below:
Number of Students: 11
Today Total Avg. Total Per Student
Hours on CSM 10.4 528.1 48
Problems Answered Correctly 129 4937 448.8
Belts Earned 17 971 88.3
The report provides you with information on the number of hours on CSM, the number of
problems answered correctly, and the number of belts earned (this includes both belts on new
skills, and the earning of higher belts, such as earning a black belt on a skill that the student
previously had a yellow belt on).
You can use this data in two ways:
Celebrating milestones -- e.g., “Hooray for earning 500 belts total!” or “great job
answering 200 questions correctly on CSM today!”
Set class goals – e.g., “Let’s see if we can get to 500 belts earned by the end of this
week!” If you use it to set class goals, you can log in at the end of each class period to
see their progress towards the goal that day.
MATERIALS:
CSM “Class Statistics” Report: Go to the “Reports/Statistics” tab on the left-menu of
your Toolkit. In the top menu, select the class or students you’d like to run the report for,
select the “Class Statistics” Report, and click “Generate Report.”
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2. Create a Belt Wall
GOAL: Allow students to celebrate their accomplishments and gain public recognition for
achievements on CSM.
TIMING: Any time
DESCRIPTION: There are many ways to create a class belt wall. Here are a few ideas to get
you started:
You can have one place to cumulatively track belts earned by the entire class, or you can
create a space where each student can track their belts individually. If you have one
count for the whole class, you can have students either mark their belts anonymously or
with their initials.
Use post-its, stickers, labels, rubber stamps, or student initials to mark each belt earned.
Either have students mark the belt wall during class as they earn belts, or ask them to
keep track and mark their belts at the end of class.
NOTE: You should have students keep track of all belts they earn in any color (including yellow
and red), not just black belts. Earning a yellow or red belt on CSM is just as important as earning
black belts, so be sure to recognize all levels of accomplishment. This will also allow students to
have more chances to be recognized for their progress. (Keep in mind: On CSM, students return
to skills over time to earn higher belt—so they may have multiple belts for a single skill. Thus,
the count on the belt wall will be the total number of belts earned, not the total number of skills
that have been belted.)
MATERIALS:
Belt Board: Create a space in your room
or in the community for posting CSM
accomplishments (cork board, poster, etc.)
CSM Belt Wall Template.pptx (Lesson
Plan Resource C in your Coaching
Resources): If you would like, you can
use this Belt Wall Template to set up a
belt wall where all students contribute to
reaching the goal of 100 Belts. This form
allows students to initial a box each time
they receive a belt. This provides both
whole-class motivation and showcases
individual accomplishment.
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3. Skills Scavenger Hunt Week
GOAL: Have students see the real-life applications of the skills on CSM.
TIMING: Near the end of the semester, when students have seen many CSM skills.
DESCRIPTION: Kick off the week by announcing a CSM Skills Scavenger Hunt Week.
During this week, students should be on the lookout for applications of CSM skills in real life,
and take notes or bring in examples.
At the end of the week, ask students what they found. You can have a class discussion to
showcase the examples, and optionally give the person who found the most skills a small prize.
You can use the CSM Scavenger Hunt form to help structure the Scavenger Hunt – students can
write examples of the skills in the boxes, and there are four empty squares for them to fill with
anything they like. You can also give awards for students who fill in entire rows or columns.
Some examples of CSM Skills they might see (there are lots more!):
Bar charts or line graphs in the newspaper
Hardware sized in centimeters
Meters like speedometers
Timetables like bus schedules
Interest rates on bank accounts or loans
Grammar mistakes like “Apple’s $3/lb” or there/their/they’re confusion
Mental math problems, or situations where they have to estimate numbers
Unit pricing (how much will it cost to buy 3 boxes of cookies at $2.99 each)
MATERIALS:
CSM Scavenger Hunt.pptx (Lesson Plan Resource D in your Coaching Resources):
Handout for students to fill in with examples as they do the Scavenger Hunt. This is
editable, so you can change the skills that students are looking for.
Small prizes (optional): for the student with the most examples, or for students who fill
in entire rows or columns in the Scavenger Hunt Form
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4. Establish Peer Tutors
GOAL: Give successful CSM students a boost in confidence by letting them help their peers and
provide mentorship on successful strategies for working through CSM.
TIMING: Middle to end of CSM course
DESCRIPTION: Identify students to serve as peer tutors. Choose students with exceptional
learning or effort rather than students who have simply finished many skills.
The peer tutors can help their classmates by talking about their strategies, best practices.
Remind tutors that they are helping others with strategies and showing them how to best
use their resources, not just giving answers. You might want to print up the CSM
Expectations sheet to remind them of what they should be emphasizing with their peers (see
Lesson Plan Resources B1 or B2 in the Coaching Resources tab of your account).
MATERIALS:
Student Data in Toolkit: Find students with consistently fantastic effort and /or
learning.
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IMPROVING LEARNING
Learning with CSM is different from most other learning that students are expected to do. On
CSM, they should be learning actively and independently. They must make good decisions
about their own learning and read effectively. The following mini-lessons and class discussions
can be very helpful in guiding and supporting this process.
Most of the lessons in this section work better after students have spent at least a few hours
working on CSM – they will then have more experience to share and discuss, and the lessons
will have more context for them.
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1. Growth Mindset Discussion
GOAL: Encourage students to adopt a “growth mindset” rather than a “fixed mindset”
TIMING: Any time after students have worked for 3-4 hours on CSM.
DESCRIPTION: Research has shown that there are two mindsets about learning:
Fixed mindset: Students with this mindset think of their mental capacities as fixed (they
have some set level of intelligence that is unchangeable). Students with this mindset
attribute failure to their lack of intelligence, and reduce their efforts on subsequent work.
Growth mindset: Students with this mindset think of their mind as a muscle – by
working hard and trying new things, they can get smarter and learn new things. Students
with this mindset attribute failure to their lack of trying, and see it is a sign that they need
to try harder the next time.
Students with a growth mindset do better and are more motivated – they feel empowered to
improve their success. Luckily, research has shown that simply talking about a growth mindset
with students can have a strong positive effect. There are many ways to discuss a growth mindset
with students, including:
“Mind as muscle” – when you start lifting weights, you might not be able to lift the
heaviest right away. But lifting weights makes you stronger, and you’ll get there
eventually. It’s the same thing with math – by working on math, you get better at it, and
someday you’ll be able to do very difficult problems.
“If you don’t try, you automatically fail” – It’s scary to try new things because you might
fail – but if you don’t try, you’ll fail automatically! If you try, you have a chance of
success, and if you don’t get it, you can learn from your mistakes and do better next time.
“Even Michael Jordan wasn’t born knowing how to play basketball” – don’t give up
before you even start. Even people who are really good didn’t start out that way – they
had to practice a lot.
“No one faults babies when they don’t know how to talk” – everyone has things they
can’t do, but they learn by trying and learning from their experience.
Ask students to identify things that they have worked on and gotten better at (music,
cooking, skateboarding, sports, etc), and describe the experience. You could discuss the
hard work and time that it took, and also the feelings of accomplishment that they gained.
MATERIALS:
For a quick summary of the science and research behind growth mindset, visit
http://www.mindsetworks.com/webnav/whatismindset.aspx. You may want to share
some of the research with your more skeptical students.
See more information on growth mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher in the
field, at www.mindsetonline.com.
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2. Strategies for navigating CSM Texts
GOAL: Give students specific strategies for locating information in the different types of CSM
lessons. This is particularly effective for students with low Reading Effectiveness.
TIMING: Preferably after students have worked on CSM for 3-4 hours.
DESCRIPTION: Many times students do not know what features to look for in CSM
lessons. You can print out the sample CSM lesson handout to discuss the following text features
with them:
Headings. CSM lessons have headings that are large, purple, and set off by diamonds.
Advise students to scan for headings, and use the headings to figure out the structure of
the lesson and quickly find what they need help with.
o Sample Lesson: “The Part and Whole as Percents”, and “Another Example” are
headings
Pink pop-ups. Any words that are highlighted in pink in CSM are pop-ups that students
can click on for definitions of words, extra information, or to view longer lessons.
o Sample Lesson: The word “percent” is a pink pop-up.
Lesson types. The two main types of lessons on CSM are the Concepts lesson (an often
longer, more theoretical lesson), and the Solving the Problem lesson (the worked out
solution to the question the student just missed). Many students jump straight to Solving
the Problem, which is often not sufficient if the student doesn’t really understand the
question. Compare and contrast the two lesson types with students to help them
understand when they might want to read the different lesson types.
o Sample Lesson: contains extracts from Concepts, and Solving the Problem
Bolded words and phrases
Diagrams / graphs / charts
Another issue many students have with reading effectiveness is not knowing when to read
closely and when to skim or scan. Some students always scan and never slow down to really
read, while others always read every word of a lesson, which can take a long time for slow
readers and make it harder to see the big picture. A good method for students is to scan longer
lessons to determine their structure and identify which sections that they need, followed by a
closer reading of those sections.
MATERIALS:
CSM Sample Lesson.pdf (Lesson Plan Resource E in Coaching Resources)
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3. Strategy Sharing Wall
GOAL: When students reach a moment of success on CSM, give students a chance to reflect on
their learning and share their tips for success with others.
TIMING: After the students’ first few hours on the system, many of them will be developing
good strategies and learning habits that they can share with others.
DESCRIPTION: When students have a break through, or you see on the News Feed that
they’ve made a step forward, have them fill out the Strategy Tip Sheet to reflect on what they
just accomplished and what strategies they used.
Students can put the strategy tips up when they want, OR you can go to students and ask them to
report on something that you discussed together, OR you can give a student a blank Strategy Tip
Sheet after they have done something that you have noticed, and ask them to report what
happened (i.e. they have to think it through on their own).
MATERIALS:
Strategy Wall (or other place for students to post their ideas): Create a place where
students can post their tips for others to read.
Strategy Wall Template.pdf (Lesson Plan Resource F in Coaching Resources): Print
and cut up the Strategy wall templates. A filled-in sample is below:
CSM TipName:
My CSM Strategy:
It helped me to:
Angela
Read Step-by-Step lessons if you get the
question but you think you messed up one little part of it
understand how to fix the percent problem
that I just missed. I pretty much got it, so I didn’t want to
read the long lesson again
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4. Learning Decisions Discussion
GOAL: Have students share ideas about when you might want to read lessons, how you might
make these decisions, and the types of lessons on CSM. This is particularly effective for students
with poor Learning Decisions.
TIMING: Any time after students have worked for 3-4 hours on CSM.
DESCRIPTION: Students might not understand how to think about making good learning
decisions, or the types of lessons available on CSM. Stronger students can share their strategies.
There are many ways to discuss learning decisions with students including:
WHY learning how to learn is important in general: Discuss with students why
learning is itself a skill, and why it is important in various contexts. Stress that in
colleges, you often learn most of the material on your own, through homework and
reading. In the workforce, people often change jobs and even employers, and learning
independently is critical for a successful career.
WHY learning how to learn is important in CSM: Students often don’t want to take
the time to make good learning decisions, or to read lessons – they feel like answering
more questions more quickly will help them make faster progress through CSM. Discuss
with them that they are trying to earn belts, not just answer lots of questions, and that
they will learn best and make best progress if they take time to make good learning
decisions.
WHAT learning decisions are: The key to learning decisions is to be constantly
thinking about your own learning process – asking yourself what you know and don’t
know, and what you steps you can take and resources you can use to learn. CSM guides
students towards this through the questions that it asks when students get a problem
wrong (e.g., “do you know what you did wrong, and how to fix it?”). Discuss with your
students the benefits of pausing to consider these questions and answering them honestly.
Available resources: Students often don’t know what resources are available to them in
CSM. You can discuss the different types of lessons that are available (see handout), and
when students might want to use them. You can also discuss how you might want to
decide which lessons to read – short lessons can be good, but they might not give you
enough information. Scanning lessons can be good, but you might not get out of it all
that you need.
MATERIALS:
CSM Lesson Types.pdf (Lesson Plan Resource G in Coaching Resources)
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5. Effort Discussion
GOAL: Have students share ideas about how they stay focused on CSM, and how they keep
their motivation up. This is particularly effective for students with low Effort (problems with
bad junk and distraction while working on CSM).
TIMING: Any time after students have worked for 3-4 hours on CSM.
DESCRIPTION: Have students discuss specific strategies for staying focused and motivated on
CSM. Discussion topics might include:
What do they do when they’re feeling really frustrated or stuck?
How do they cope with getting stuck on a skill?
How do they figure out that their attention has wandered? How could they catch
themselves faster and get back on track quicker?
Are there any tricks that help them stay focused (e.g., using headphones to block out
noise, setting a timer and working for that amount of time then taking a small break)?
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