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.

- 1 -

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

- 2 -

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.

- 3 -

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).

- 4 -

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)

- 5 -

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)

- 6 -

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.

- 7 -

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.”

- 8 -

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.

- 9 -

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

- 10 -

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.

- 11 -

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.

- 12 -

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.

- 13 -

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)

- 14 -

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

- 15 -

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)

- 16 -

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)?