In this practical, hands-on workshop, participants will learn how collaborative teams in a Professional Learning Community effectively begin to answer the first two critical questions: What do we want our students to learn? and How will we know if they’ve learned it? We’ll explore a process teams can use to choose their essential standards—the standards that create the important foundation for the rest of their work. Learning how to align the standards vertically will lead to an effective guaranteed and viable curriculum. Teams must then unwrap these standards into learning targets and learn together what proficiency for each target will look like for their students. This work will lead to more effective common formative assessments which will, in turn, provide specific information about which students need additional time and support as well as what kind of time and support will be most effective.