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Skills Alignment -- Decision Literacy

This document helps educators understand where the Decision Literacy curriculum fits within common learning frameworks. It is not an official certification or endorsement. Educators should verify alignment against their own district, state, or program requirements.

Purpose of This Document​

To help parents, teachers, homeschool educators, and program coordinators understand what skills the curriculum builds and how it connects to broader learning goals.

Core Learner Skills​

  • Probabilistic thinking and uncertainty estimation
  • Identifying and naming cognitive biases
  • Calculating and applying expected value
  • Distinguishing process quality from outcome quality
  • Recognizing opportunity costs and tradeoffs
  • Understanding cooperative vs. competitive dynamics (game theory)
  • Root cause analysis (5 Whys)
  • Iterative protocol design and testing
  • Reflective writing and decision journaling
  • Metacognition (thinking about how you think)
  • Mathematics: Probability, expected value, data interpretation, statistics
  • ELA: Argumentation, evidence evaluation, reflective writing, discussion
  • Social Studies: Civic decision-making, collective action problems
  • Science: Experimental design, hypothesis testing, iteration

Possible Standards Connections​

The following are possible connections. These are not official alignments.

Common Core Math Practices (may connect to):

  • MP1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
  • MP3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
  • MP6 Attend to precision
  • MP8 Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Common Core ELA Speaking and Listening (may connect to):

  • Comprehension and Collaboration standards for collaborative discussion
  • Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

ISTE Standards for Students (may connect to):

  • Empowered Learner (1)
  • Innovative Designer (4) -- iterative design in the capstone
  • Computational Thinker (5) -- protocol design and data collection

CASEL SEL Competencies (may connect to):

  • Self-awareness
  • Responsible decision-making

Transferable Learner Outcomes​

By the end of this curriculum, a student who has engaged fully should be able to:

  1. Distinguish a good decision process from a lucky outcome
  2. Name and recognize at least three cognitive biases
  3. Describe how cognitive biases show up in advertising and daily life
  4. Apply basic probability thinking to estimate likelihood
  5. Explain what opportunity cost means with a real example
  6. Describe the Prisoner's Dilemma and when cooperation is rational
  7. Apply root cause analysis (5 Whys) to a recurring personal problem
  8. Design, test, and iterate a behavioral protocol

Evidence of Understanding​

Facilitators can use these as informal measures:

  • Can the student explain today's concept in their own words?
  • Can the student produce a real-life example that actually fits?
  • Decision Journal entries that show reasoning before outcome
  • Capstone protocol (Weeks 15-18): quality of design, testing, and iteration

Local Standards Mapping Notes​

To map this curriculum to your local standards:

  1. The probability and expected value content (Weeks 1-3, 9) maps to math standards for data and probability
  2. The cognitive bias content (Weeks 5-8) maps to critical thinking and media literacy standards
  3. The discussion and argumentation format maps to ELA speaking/listening and collaborative inquiry standards
  4. The capstone project (Weeks 15-18) maps to project-based learning outcomes

Disclaimer​

Literacy for Kids does not claim official alignment with, endorsement by, or certification from any standards body. Facilitators should verify alignment against their own district, state, or program requirements before using this document for formal reporting purposes.