State+Seal

State Seal

Question 2 Curriculum is a road map for student learning. What do you want them to be able to do? It is usually TEACHER driven and focused on "coverage" of material. The curriculum should outline what students should know and be able to do at the end of a given time frame. It should be aligned to the cognitive levels of the students. It should be revised annually and address receptive and productive skills. Curriculum is ever-evolving and changing.

The engagement piece - the instructional strategies is more where students often have some input.

Professional development is important to get them to use the curriculum and network and share resources. Mandating will shut the teachers down.

Creating an environment where teachers where teachers are comfortable sharing what their needs are. Teachers must feel comfortable "getting out of the box." Helping teachers see that they are learners themselves. Remembering that we as supervisors must support them to learn and reach their goals.

Becoming more student centered and giving the students the time to speak and learn. Helping teachers learn their new roles as monitors of student centered learning.

Shift in walk-thrus to a focus on student performance vs. teacher performance.

L

Round 4: Assessment - Evidence of Student Learning

Quality & appropriateness of the rubric used in rating of a performance assessment could be just as crucial, if not more crucial, than the task itself. These essential questions loop back to rounds 1-3 in many aspects. Well built, thoughtful, & appropriate common assessments are linchpins to a performance/standards based curriculum. Education of the community in formative assessment is helpful. (Re: grading/not grading) Use rubrics to facilitate student self-evaluation

Round 5 Portfolios with examples of student work demonstrate progress that students may not realize they have made.. Giving students the option to select the artifacts to place in the portfolio gives them ownership. Portfolio assessment lends itself to higher yield teaching strategies. It's important to be sure that the data from the assessment is measuring what you want. Teachers need to check assessments to be sure that they are valid and reflect what was taught, both in content and process. It's important to have teachers reflect on the data and use it to determine the needs of the students. Pacing is important, but teachers have to know how to recycle concepts and identify essential concepts as they analyze data. Students should get very specific feedback that enhances learning. We have to create our own data teams to analyze data. It is part of the responsiblity and focus of the professional learning community to use the data to begin conversations. Use of data allows the conversation to be impersonal and objective rather than focusing on individual teacher performance.