What is Rigor…Really?
A Simply Great Insight
What is Rigor...Really?
One of the most overused words in education: rigor. Ask 10 people what it means, and you’ll get 10 different answers. No wonder teachers feel confused when told to “make the lesson more rigorous.” At great schools, rigor isn’t a buzzword, though. It’s a set of concrete steps teachers get high-quality development to win on.
What are those steps?
Identify the most productive struggle – Where’s the meat in this lesson?
Create an exemplar – What does excellence at the right grade-level bar look like?
Define the criteria for success – What criteria can you name for students so they can produce the exemplar themselves with your feedback?
Anticipate misconceptions – Where are students likely to get tripped up? And what will you do about it?
Plan for accountable thinking – How will you get all students to grapple with the productive struggle, not just the engaged few?
Plan for differentiation – How can you scaffold appropriately without lowering the bar?
When schools break rigor down into steps like these, teachers know exactly what to aim for, leaders know exactly what to coach, and students get exactly what they deserve: the chance to think deeply and produce excellent work every day.
What's Most Important Right Now?
Winning on the Rigor Arc
Teacher Intellectual Prep: Teachers should be able to identify the most productive struggle and have an exemplar and CFS written in student friendly language.
Leader Coaching: The single most important driver of teacher success in the Rigor Arc is the quality of the coaching meeting. Principals should be supporting instructional coaches to plan high-quality coaching meetings with teachers, focused on the quality of the practice teachers are doing in each of those meetings.
Grade Level Bar: Coaches should be observing with a laser-like focus on the quality of verbal and written responses and whether they include evidence, complete, sentences, and discipline-specific vocabulary.
Physical Space: Criteria for success and a word wall should be up in each room so that teachers and students can refer to it to ensure their responses are top quality.
Adult Culture: October is a long month. This is a great time to start a listening tour and see how your people are doing. Meet with 3-4 teachers each week and ask them the questions we wrote about in our September newsletter, also linked here.
A Simply Great Resource
We took the CKLA ELA curriculum for grades 6–8 and created exit tickets for every single lesson — because while the curriculum is strong, it didn’t include a way to check how well students mastered the learning objectives.
Each exit ticket set includes both teacher and student versions:
Teacher versions come with exemplars, answer keys, and tagged standards.
Student versions are ready to print and use right away.
Check out a preview of one of our 7th grade Exit tickets here. Interested in incorporating these exit tickets into your curriculum?
How Can We Work Together?
Leader Curriculum: Our ready-to-use leadership curriculum saves leaders hundreds of planning hours while boosting retention and achievement through 50+ scripted PDs, practice clinics, and coaching tools.
Curriculum Implementation: We partner with schools nationwide to bring math and ELA materials to life, helping teams deliver instruction that drives measurable achievement gains.
1-on-1 Coaching: From superintendents to APs, we coach leaders at every level to run great schools, grow great teachers, and deliver great results for kids.
Keynote Speaking: We’ve inspired and equipped leaders at conferences and PD days with practical, immediately actionable insights that spark motivation and results.
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