Read the verbs first: a fast way to teach a curriculum you were just handed

Someone hands you a curriculum — a new one, a different grade, a subject outside your usual — and the clock is already running. The temptation is to read it front to back. Don't. A curriculum document is a reference, not a novel, and reading it cover to cover is the slowest possible way to find out what you're actually teaching next week.

Here's a faster way in. Read the verbs first.

The verb is the assessment

Open the expectations — the standards, the content descriptions, the learning outcomes, whatever your jurisdiction calls them — and look only at the verb in each one.

The verb is the part that tells you what a student has to do, which means it's also the part that tells you what evidence you're looking for. A statement that asks students to identify is a different lesson, and a different piece of evidence, from one that asks them to explain — which is different again from evaluate, compare, model, or justify.

• Identify wants recognition. The evidence is a correct pick.
• Explain wants reasoning made visible. The evidence is a because.
• Evaluate wants a judgement backed by criteria. The evidence is a defensible call.

Everything else in the expectation — the topic, the context, the noun phrases — tells you what it's about. The verb tells you how deep you have to go and what to collect. When time is short, the verb is the highest-value word on the page.

A 20-minute pass

You can turn an unfamiliar unit into a teachable plan in about twenty minutes, without reading the whole document.

Minutes 0–5: list the verbs. Copy each expectation you're responsible for this cycle, verbatim, and underline the verb. Don't paraphrase yet — a paraphrase is your opinion of the expectation; the wording is the expectation. You'll usually find the list is shorter than you feared: six to fifteen lines for a unit.

Minutes 5–12: group by verb, not by topic. Sort the expectations by what students have to do. All the identify/label/recall verbs cluster into quick checks and starters. The explain/justify/evaluate verbs are where the real lesson time — and the real assessment — has to go. This grouping tells you where your minutes belong before you've planned a single activity.

Minutes 12–20: match evidence to verb. For each higher-order verb, write one sentence naming the evidence you'd accept. "Students explain how energy is transferred in a given system" → a written or spoken account that names the transfer and the reasoning behind it. You now have your assessment before you've built the lesson, which is the right order.

That's it. You haven't read the front matter, the philosophy section, or the appendices — and you don't need to yet. You have the obligation, sorted by depth, with the evidence attached.

Why this beats reading it in order

A curriculum's opening pages describe intent, values, and structure. They matter, but they don't change what you teach Tuesday, and they're written to be persuasive rather than actionable. Starting there costs you an hour and leaves you exactly where you began: unsure what to put in front of students.

Reading the verbs does the opposite. It's fast, it's concrete, and it survives every rewrite and every set of missing materials. When a curriculum changes, the topics and the packaging move around, but the shift that actually changes your teaching is a shift in verbs — from describe to explain, from list to justify. Spot that, and you've spotted the real change. Miss it, and you can teach the right topic to the wrong depth all year.

One honest caveat

Reading the verbs tells you the demand; it doesn't tell you your students. A room full of learners who can't yet decode the task won't show you their reasoning no matter how well you've matched evidence to verb. So use the verb pass to decide what you're teaching and what counts as proof — then leave the pacing, grouping, and scaffolds open until the class gives you evidence. The document sets the target. The classroom tells you the route.

Where to start Monday

Pick the single expectation with the most demanding verb in your next unit. Write the one sentence of evidence it requires. Build one task that produces exactly that evidence, and let it anchor the fortnight around it.

You don't have to understand the whole curriculum to teach the next two weeks of it well. You have to read the verbs first.

Almanack turns an expectation you've already identified — verb and all — into a task, a worked example, or a checkpoint you can edit for your actual room. The reading, and the judgement about depth, stays yours.