Lens on Learning

Thompson School District Curriculum & Instruction

Posts Tagged ‘curriculum’

Strengthening Our Approach for Science Inquiry

November 5th, 2011

by pmorgan

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During our last Science Design Team gathering, we opened with a wondering question, “If we were to ask teachers in our district what instructional framework we use to teach science, what might they say?“

Inquiry, of course!

Our district has based its foundation for robust science instruction in inquiry for a number of years. However, we have not synthesized the research and developed a concrete, written framework that can be effectively used to describe the components of science inquiry so that all teachers can access this mental model.

In our districtwide science focus year efforts, we have spent last year examining the new state standards and conducting a gap analysis between what we currently have as expectations for student learning and what we need to have as expectations for student learning. We have also been keeping up to date with the ongoing status of the Next Generation Science Standards that are being developed at the national level. Our work has identified potential gap areas that will need to be mitigated with the selection of additional materials and/or repurposing of existing materials.

Before we can make sound curriculum materials selection decisions, we need a comprehensive framework for research-based approaches to science instruction. With limited access to resources, it is critical that we develop strong criteria for our selection decision-making process.

In order to frame our thinking about instructional frameworks, we read and analyzed Arthur H. Camins’ article on Dimensions of Inquiry. Then we reviewed the P-12 Comprehensive Balanced Math, K-2 Comprehensive Balanced Literacy, 3-5 Comprehensive Balanced Literacy, 6-12 Comprehensive Balanced Literacy and Art Instructional Frameworks already used in our district.

Finally, we scanned documents and information related to the Science Inquiry Model as depicted in the literature.

As we strengthen our Thompson Science Instructional Framework, we will use it as a guide to review our perceived needs for materials and resources. Next time we meet on December 2 we will continue to develop our Thompson Instructional Framework for Science and extend our thinking by exploring and select to read as a group:

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Tags: curriculum curriculum improvement instructional framework science

Middle School Math and LA Teachers Map New Standards

July 23rd, 2011

It was the second week after school let out and it was already hot. Thank goodness we were working at Lucille Erwin and they were kind enough to crank up the AC because 87 of our middle school language arts, math, gifted and talented, English language acquisition, special education and media librarian teachers worked three days straight to:

Analyze all the new Common Core math and language arts standards
Create a universal scope and sequence 6-8
Engage in the process of creating standards-based units of practice using the principles of Understanding by Design

The Process

It was hard, messy work and it involved a lot of heavy, cognitive thought. Each morning we began with a mini-lesson to ground our thinking. The first day it focused on the standards themselves, then we addressed the process of creating a scope and sequence, then finally we delved into Understanding by Design principles.

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We separated into content-specific grade level teams. Each team was supported with GT, Resource, ELA and Media teachers. Each team had a TOSA facilitator from the Curriculum & Instruction department. The facilitators were familiar with the process, and because they were on hand, all the teachers could engage as participants throughout the process.

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Each group used Google Docs so we could continue our collaborative efforts throughout the course of the year. We knew that this was our first go at this work. We learned that Google Docs can be temperamental, especially when trying to copy and paste. But, we also learned how great it was to have a document ready to go at the end of each day’s work – that could be shared with other grade levels and teams. We didn’t have to clog up our email accounts sharing documents.

The Products

During the institute, all the work products were linked to the Curriculum & Instruction Wikispace. They became immediately available to all the teachers who were going to continue the curriculum work independently over the summer and into the fall. These documents can be found at the wikispace and form these links individually:

Language Arts
Math

We are very grateful to have been awarded a Recruitment and Retention Teacher Grant from the Colorado Department of Education. These funds were used exclusively to support this work and a few snacks.

The Next Steps

When math and language arts teachers return in the fall, they should be ready to begin working with their units of study. They will use their district Wednesday professional development time to calibrate their thinking relative to the scope and sequence, units of practice, and student evidence of success. My hope is that we use that time to analyze student work samples taken from Stage 2 in their unit plans. Another area for future collaboration is in the construct of scoring rubrics related to the criteria of success. Some groups were able to start working in this area, some will get to it during this fall. Having a strong shared schema across our district for what mastery looks like will be a definite leverage in our standards transformation work.

All the handouts, slides, and resources from the the Mapping Institute can be found on our Curriculum & Instruction Wikispace.

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Since this original posting, new material has been released from CPM. I highly recommend that our math teachers become familiar with these documents in order to support their teaching of the new state math standards. We will be discussing our approach to using our scope and sequence and the supplementary materials as a district, but I expect that schools will be having these conversations as well. It is important that we are well informed, prepared, and confident in our transition to the new common core.

CPM Website - How to Supplement Current CPM Texts

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Tags: common core curriculum language arts math standards

Elementary Standards Alignment Team Gets the Job Done!

May 26th, 2011

2 days, 3 layers of clothing, 4 pounds of chocolate, 55 educators deeply engaged in curriculum analysis and the Thompson School District are now the proud owners of powerful Scope and Sequence documents in the areas of

Social Studies
Math, and
Language Arts

The Work

After setting the stage for the work ahead, these educators got right to work in grade level teams of approximately 8-10 elementary educators. Thompson Curriculum & Instruction TOSAs helped facilitate the conversations, ideas, and determinations while typing the leveled scope and sequence into Google Docs which allowed easy access to other grade level groups, evening review by the participants, and ongoing edits and revisions throughout the process – and beyond.

The teachers grounded themselves in the literature of the Rigorous Curriculum Design process and the elements of the Understanding by Design frameworks which became the foundation for the structure of their collaborative work. Within each scope and sequence, teachers created Overarching Course Big Ideas, Topics, Essential Questions, Big Ideas, and Aligned Evidence Outcomes, which included the Priority and Supporting Learnings. Themes were not used or created by our teachers, as the thought was that schools would be better able to incorporate their own themes at the site level, especially supporting our schools with a focus like Science and Nature, Health and Wellness, Integrated Arts, etc.

They were given the parameters of chunking the Grade Level Expectations and Evidence Outcomes in each content area into 6 chunks that span across the year. The number six was chosen because we have evidence of success in our district using this number of units to chunk across the year and we anticipate that six chunks may correlate well with the potential of our elementary schools moving away from a quarter system to a trimester system with our ensuing standards-based gradebook work.

Providing standardization of six chunks in all content areas in all grades P-5 also allows our district to engage in vertical alignment – within each grade, so that content can be integrated into trans-disciplinary units, and across grades, so that learning can be articulated and supported within a school system. Note the following articulation sequences by topic:

Next Steps

Several school teams will be using these scope and sequence documents during summer TIC credit classes to develop common assessments and/or plan units of study. Other teachers may individually decide to use these scope and sequence documents to use to organize their planning of instruction for the upcoming year. Besides this blog post, we intend to share our work with teachers when we return to school either during TENS week or Building/District Wednesdays and use our professional development time through the course of the 2011-2012 school year to build our background knowledge in the areas of assessment literacy and unit design.

Big Ideas We Learned Through the Process

In the words of our teachers, here are the Big Ideas we are taking away from participating in this process:

a number of changes exist in the Social studies content
we are making progress on the START process
there needs to be alignment with materials, especially investigations
this was hard work
collaboration makes it better
natural integration opportunities exist because of this process
standards/evidence outcomes are used multiple times within topics across the sequence
our understanding of the standards has grown tremendously
our ability to take this work back to our buildings
vertical alignment of topics/Units of Study
coming up with overarching big ideas was tough
we need time to collaborate
we would like to have time with the grade above – especially if teaching in a combo
need vertical conversations before we write units
we have a lot to teach all year long – we are wondering how we support brand new teachers
we really hit the most salient points with our essential questions and big ideas
we can trust what we did – lots of agreement
would like to ensure smooth transition with verbage, etc vertically
would like to see Steamboat examples, other models
this isn’t set in stone…lots of revision and revisiting will be needed – plan, do , check, adjust
so much more to know and do…
change in mind set and practices
this product will help us be more organized and intentional
this product will help us be more meaningful
this work was exciting
there will be a direct connection between all grades and concept/skills

I would like to thank all the educators who participated in this process. The process was deeply engaging, powerfully introspective, and systemically rewarding. Their work on part of our district sets the stage for attaining our Vision 20/20 goals.

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Tags: common core curriculum curriculum improvement language arts math social studies standards

Developing a Needs-Based Mindset for Curriculum Funding

April 1st, 2011

Twisted by Li-So

Mindset – the ideas and attitudes in which a person approaches a situation, especially when these are seen as being difficult to alter. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mind-set)

The Way We Were…

For the last don’t-know-how-many-years, curriculum adoptions in our district have been pretty cut and dry. Each year, there has been about the same funding earmarked for new materials. Every 8 years a content area like science or social studies would have funding allocated for materials refurbishment. The division of the funds was based on a formula on the percentage of students involved in the course and the length and depth of the course itself. Typically, more funding was set aside for math, literacy, science and social studies. Less funding was set aside for art, music, physical education, languages, and career & technical education. Our mental mindset to curriculum adoption was pretty much set. There were some pretty clear expectations as to the funds that were available. The organization maintained a sense of stability since the funds that were available were pretty much the same funds that were available in the past. Until the last several years.

Early Stages of Shifting Mindset

The first signs of pressure on our system stemmed from increased costs of materials as offered by publishers and vendors. Coupled with flat funding, this meant that a typical adoption would provide fewer resources. In many cases, this meant instead of buying a text for each student, a classroom text was purchased instead. This pressure was pesky and bothersome, but it didn’t cause us to shift our adoption mindset. We just bought less and grumbled more and tried to figure out why weren’t getting any more money to buy what we thought we needed.

Additional elements of pressure began when the nature of materials began to shift from paper to digital formats, thus impacting the types of curriculum materials needed. Pre-engineering labs, graphics labs, streamed content, internet or server-based interventions. All these required curriculum dollars be spent on hardware and software and technical support. The mindset shifted; the types of materials a district could purchase with what was essentially considered previously a textbook adoption cycle. With more and more resources flowing to non-textbook purchases, flexibility in thinking about how to use the available funds increased. However, some of the purchases made for specific content areas required yearly allocations for content subscriptions. This was troublesome for the existing curriculum adoption system. As annual commitments to certain programs increased, the number of dollars for new cycle purchases decreased. These annual commitments began to impact the total amount of funding available for each subsequent adoption.

At the present, we are facing some of our greatest challenges. Decreased state revenue has in turn decreased school district funding allocations. Last year our district switched from an incremental budget to a zero-based budget. Instead of being presented with a total amount of funds that could be spent on the upcoming adoption, we were asked to present our materials needs in advance of the budget being funded. The 2010-2011 year was the social studies adoption year. A curriculum gap analysis found that the greatest need was in the 6th and 7th grades where the new state standards were vastly different from our current curriculum. A plan was drafted to meet the needs in these courses and funding was allocated to a greater degree for these grades than other grades. We took a giant step towards a needs-based mindset. But, we still grumble a bit because it just doesn’t seem fair.

The Way We Need to Be…

As we enter our 2011-2012 school year we look to our adoption cycle that was set over eight years ago. According to this document, it is now science, physical education, and career and technical education’s “turn” to refurbish materials. With more cuts likely, it seems unlikely that we will be able to fund these content areas with dollars equal to the previous adoption cycle. Many district’s like ours have put their entire adoption cycle on hold until funding streams get back to normal. I’m not so certain we will ever get back to normal. Normal funding or normal adoptions.

The New Normal

A needs-based curriculum adoption is inherently different from an incremental based adoption cycle. It necessitates that systems and structures are in place to effectively analyze the needs based on learning in the 21st century. They understand the current state of curriculum materials that include Open Education Resources (OER), hardware, software, subscription-based content and paper-based materials. The supporting materials must align with the student learning outcomes that elevate problem-solving, information literacy, global connectivity, productivity, and inquiry learning. These are areas of reflection for our P-12 Content Councils and our overarching Curriculum Improvement Council as much as they are for our entire district and the community we serve.

Moving forward into the 2011-2012 school year, we have identified our greatest curriculum gap in science. This means that we will likely not fund adoptions for physical education, health and career and technical education this coming year. We may have some funding to sustain programs in these content areas, but we will use greater amounts of funds to address the gaps that are present in science.

We will explore the current research related to science learning and science education. We will look to our colleagues in higher education, business, and the field. We will reach out to those in our community to help us reflect upon our current state of science instruction and materials and we will identify needs with a critical eye knowing that we will have to make difficult decisions with the resources available to us.

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Tags: adoption curriculum materials OER