Higher-Order Thinking: Instruction involves students in manipulating information and ideas by synthesizing, generalizing, explaining or arriving at conclusions that produce new meaning and understandings for them. Deep Knowledge: Instruction addresses central ideas of a topic or discipline with enough thoroughness to explore connections and relationships and to produce relatively complex understanding. Substantive Conversation: Students engage in extended conversational exchanges with the teacher and/or peers about subject matter in a way that builds an improved and shared understanding of ideas or topics. Connections to the World Beyond the Classroom: Students make connections between substantive knowledge and either public problems or personal experiences. http://www.ferndaleschools.org/framework/newhtml/contentstandards/teachingandlearning/default.htm When creating lesson plans for students, aside from the standards listed alongside, adding the latest technology into the classroom benefits the students especially in today's world.