The 2025-2026 school year is approaching fast, and English teachers are finally getting to use and implement the new Georgia Standards of Excellence to design curriculum and prepare students. Since 2023, we’ve known about the standards, and the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) has been slowly rolling them out. But now, it’s go-time! We’re talking about designing curriculum and getting our students ready for those end-of-course and end-of-grade exams—what we affectionately call the Milestones.

Now, I don’t know about you, but my head’s been spinning with questions like: What exactly are these new standards? How do they stack up against the old ones? What do they really mean for us in the classroom? Where can we find them? And, perhaps most importantly, where can we get some solid support and resources to help us craft lesson and unit plans?

And how do we tackle this proverbial elephant in the room without spooking ourselves? (Because, let’s be honest, who needs a startled pachyderm in their lesson planning?)

Like many of you, I’ve been asking these very same questions. And while I’ve managed to snag a few answers here and there, I’m still trying to figure out how to manage and apply this firehose of knowledge and resources that the GaDOE and my district have been pumping out. And honestly, it’s about as overwhelming as it sounds. It truly feels like trying to drink from a firehose, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with more on your face than in your belly! (Consider this my official petition for a more controlled “knowledge faucet.”)

So, over the course of the next few blog posts, sprinkled in amongst some of my other ramblings, I’m going to be slowly but surely chiseling away at these questions. I’m hoping to unpack what each of these standards means for me before the school bell rings. My hope is that by taking an overview and then a deeper dive into the two main grade levels I’ll be teaching next year (as far as I know right now), it’ll not only help me, but my dear colleagues and anyone else who happens to wander onto my little corner of the internet looking for some guidance.

Now, here are just a few of the basics I’ve managed to gather so far. Stay tuned, because we’re just getting started on this important journey!

Here’s What I’ve Found So Far:

Where Do We Find Them?

The new standards can be found on the DOE’s learning website called Inspire. Inspire is a webpage created by the Georgia Department of Education to help support teachers, parents, and students as they matriculate and work towards graduation. According to the website, “Inspire is the Georgia Department of Education’s dynamic platform for accessing curriculum content, academic standards, and instructional resources. It is designed to empower Georgia’s public school K-12 educators with high-quality materials while providing public users with valuable insights into state-supported educational resources.”

What to Keep in Mind Before Looking at the “New Standards”:

Standards is just an educational term used to refer to the “mastery level” of a skill. So, students should be able to or will be able to do ________ at a level of proficiency (a passing grade of 70%) or have mastered (70 – 100%) the skill. This is still the same, but we now have the standard and something called “expectations.”

Here is a direct link to the new English standards: https://inspire.gadoe.org/collection/C00029/7053

Here is a direct link to the Resources page on Inspire: https://inspire.gadoe.org/collection/C00029/6883

Where to Start?

Looking over the website, which is very well organized and color-coded (which, let me tell you, I was smiling ear to ear about because I do love a good color-coding system!), this is the mouth of the firehose for sure! There’s a ton of information, PDFs, and other breakdowns to help support your understanding.

I found that the best place to start was with the Big Picture as designed on the Inspire Resource documents page.

Looking from a satellite view of the standards, where does it all fit together? If you are like me, then the best place for you to start is the “Structure and Alignment document” found at https://lor2.gadoe.org/gadoe/file/e1f5ae00-add2-4940-a41d-39bf91095463/1/GaDOE-ELA-Standards-Structure-Alignment.pdf

What This Document Shows and Tells Us?

1. The standards are now organized into an upside-down pyramid hierarchical structure. The top is the biggest “bucket” with the domains, and all the remaining areas nestled inside like Russian nesting dolls. And at the heart is the expectation.

2. Domains have two “lenses” for understanding, then four different “buckets” that guide the organization of the standards, just as mathematics has, so there’s an easy way to chat with your cross-collaborative peers. The “buckets,” as I like to call them, are the “domains“—there are four of them. All four apply to K-5 grade levels since they include foundations as a domain. But only three (Language, Practice, and Texts) apply to 6-12 since the assumption is that by 6th grade students have acquired the foundational skills they need to be successful in the higher grades.

3. Big Ideas are sets of “Russian nesting dolls” that are inside each of the domain “buckets” that the students need to know and be able to master. So, think of it this way, using this analogy: If a student needs to “build their sandcastle on the beach,” they would have 4 buckets if they are a K-5 student and only 3 if they are a 6-12 student.

4. Big Ideas though tends to contain multiple nesting dolls. So, it becomes more of one large nesting doll with a specific number of “standards” nesting dolls inside the “big ideas” doll. (See image below. I know it’s weird, but this is the analogy that came to mind, and I’m running with it!).

5. Standards are filled with a bunch of expectations, depending on what the standard calls for. This is a lot like the “elements” found in the old Performance standards from 15+ years ago before the one year of Common Core standards Georgia adopted and then the shift over to the current Georgia Standards of Excellence. So, this should feel a little familiar. So picture a bunch of smaller expectations inside of each of the standards that are inside of the big ideas that are all inside of the domain “buckets.” Yeah, that makes sense right?

“Sometimes the weird image, makes sense in some weird way and it makes the tougher ‘pills’ easier to consume.”

What Do They Really Mean for Us in the Classroom?

It means that we have to look at what we’re doing now and adjust to these new expectations. On the surface, because of the new color-coding and hierarchical format, it seems like these standards are a HUGE change. But the truth is, this seems to be a little more specific and clear than we’ve had in the past. We have clearer expectations of what students should be able to do by the time they leave your classroom at the end of the school year or semester. It’s just a matter of knowing how the puzzle pieces, or Russian nesting dolls that are more like storage containers and buckets, fit together. Which, when written out, seems weird to say but kind of makes sense? At least I hope it does!

The reality is that the new standards are here, and they’re here to stay. So, getting familiar with the resources site on Inspire is your best bet at getting comfortable with them.

As I attempt to unpack the resources and try my best to bring some sort of weird clarity to it all, I’ll post more in the hopes that it at least helps a little.

So, be on the lookout for more breakdowns and weird AI-generated photos of the way I picture this firehose of information. Until next time, be well.