Is your School's Instructional Program Ready for Common Core?

1. Is your School's Instructional Program Ready for Common Core? Reach Institute for School Leadership

2. What are some of the big shifts in the Common Core? • Learning progressions across grade levels • Depth rather than breadth • Increase reading of informational text • Building content knowledge through reading of content rich text, both primary and secondary sources, in ELA and Content Courses • Close reading of more complex text • Building well defended arguments (in discussion and in writing) by using text-based evidence • Building academic vocabulary (Tier 2 and Tier 3) • Conceptual understanding of mathematics and articulating that understanding • Articulating mathematical problem solving • Using multiple representations • Applying mathematical understanding to real world situations

3. What factors will you be considering as you integrate the Common Core into the Instructional Program at your school?

4. Defining Instructional Program Coherence

5. Problems • New adoptions don’t fit the professional culture or teachers’ “schema” (Little, 2006) • Fragmentation between multiple programs – Christmas tree innovation • Lack of articulation between subject/grades • Schools where diverse improvement initiatives have no apparent effect on core achievement lack the sustained attention of the majority of staff • Focus becomes so technical as to lose relational connectedness among staff.

6. Distinguish “Curriculum” from “Instructional Program” • The curriculum is all of the planned educative experiences for learners • purpose is to achieve broad [learning] goals and related specific objectives that have been developed within a framework of theory and research. • An instructional program INCLUDES the curriculum, but also • elements of instruction, assessment, professional development, and other school based factors.

7. Reach Effective Schools Prescription:

8. Instructional Program Coherence Curriculum & Assessment Expectations for Student Learning (Outcomes) PD & Professional Community Instruction

9. Instructional Program Coherence • Operational Definition: • Unity of purpose, clear focus, and shared values for student learning. • A common instructional framework guides curriculum, teaching, assessment, and learning climate. • The framework combines specific expectations for student learning, with specific strategies and materials to guide teaching and assessment. • Staff working conditions support implementation of the framework. • The school allocates resources such as funding, materials, time, staff assignments, and professional development to advance the school’s common instructional framework and to avoid diffuse, scattered improvement efforts. Curriculum & Assessment Expectations for Student Learning (Outcomes) PD & Professional Community Instruction

10. Needs Assessment: Where are the system needs? • Using the Reach Instructional Coherence Rubric, reflect on where your school is situated • Why are these elements important in any school or school system? • Why are they the foundation to build upon as you move instructional practices to align with the Common Core?

11. Needs Assessment: Where are the instructional needs? • Using the ACOE Needs Assessment: • What are strengths already in place at your school? • At all grade levels and departments? • Where are the gaps between your current instructional model and the demands of the Common Core?

12. What is the strategic next step for your school? • You can’t do everything at once and do it well. • Looking at the gaps in the two needs assessments: • Where are the gaps the largest? The smallest? • What makes the most sense for your school? • How will you focus your work?

13. Action Plan Transition to Common Core

14. Common Core Strategic Action: What instructional practices do you want to see in place in all your classrooms by the end of the year? • v Professional Development PLCs/Collaboration Coaching Resources Allocating budget and personnel to ensure strategic action is well resourced

15. Plus/Delta