District PLC/Curriculum Team 2009-2010

1. District PLC/Curriculum Team2009-2010

2. PLC/Curriculum Team Vision • To provide a liaison between the PLC teams and the Admin SIPPLC team • Revise and align K-12 curriculum to established standards and local essential learnings • Receive training and support on PLC concepts

3. PLC Goals 2009-2010 • Essential Learnings & K-12 Curriculum • SMART Goals

4. Commendation • Strong district-wide effort to implement Professional Learning Communities as a vehicle for improving schools and increasing communication between teachers at each grade level and content area.

5. Recommendations • Develop and utilize a comprehensive K-12 curriculum and assessment system that provides consistent data to monitor progress at the student, building, and district level • Establishing common language • Continued development of essential learnings

6. Recommendations, cont. • Examine curricular content and articulation between grade levels and schools to ensure that instructional practices are systematically implemented • Articulate curriculum and clarify connections among the essential learnings K-12 • They cannot be developed in isolation at the building level only or content area

7. Recommendations, cont. • Provide a schematic of the Beatrice PLC for teachers. Provide a systemic communication system to keep teachers informed of new and developing initiatives emerging from the PLC process. • Establish district terminology to be used in PLC conversations about curriculum, assessment, data, and school improvement • Provide oversight and support to building PLCs to ensure collaboration and continuous improvement • Common focus that can drive curriculum, assessment and school improvement

8. Highly Effective Schools • Written Curriculum Aligned to Standards, Assessments, and Instructional Materials • Instructional Practices that Challenge and Support All Students • Assessments that Improve Student Learning • Leadership for Learning • Planning for Learning • Professional Development that Addresses Student Learning • District Supports Student Learning

9. Essential Learnings--BPS • The critical skills, knowledge, and dispositions each student must acquire as a result of each course, grade level, and unit of instruction.

10. Clarifying What Students Must Learn… • Collaborative study of essential learning promotes clarity. • Collaborative study of essential learning promotes consistent priorities. • Collaborative study of essential learning is crucial to the common pacing required for formative assessments. • Collaborative study of essential learning can help establish a curriculum that is viable. • Collaborative study of essential learning creates ownership of the curriculum among those who are called upon to teach it.

11. What is Essential? • Given the limited time you have with students…you can’t do it all…you must choose the essential. • What knowledge and skills must I impart to my students this year so that they will enter next year’s class with confidence and a readiness for success? • This helps establish prior skills/knowledge

12. Saving Time “In addition to providing time for instruction and effective collaboration, leaders must also conserve the time of classroom teachers by helping them focus on those academic content standards that are most important.” Doug Reeves,2006 p.105

13. All standards must be taught… Which ones are crucial for student success? Which other ones can be given less emphasis – taught and assessed as they relate to the concepts and skills within other essential learnings? • One way to think about essential learnings--a prioritized subset of state standards. PLC - Essential Learnings - 18th Gen. 08

14. Criteria for Identifying Essential Learnings Separating essential from the peripheral • Endurance – are students expected to retain the skills/knowledge long after the text/task is completed? • Leverage – is this skill/knowledge applicable to many academic disciplines? • Readiness/Prerequisite – is this skill / knowledge preparing the student for success in the next grade/course?

15. Determining what is most essential… Worth being familiar with Important to know and do “Enduring” understanding

16. Deconstructing Essential Learnings • What are the prerequisite knowledge and skills students need to have in order to demonstrate successful learning? (Prior skills needed) • What are the knowledge and reasoning skills students need to have in order to demonstrate successful learning of the essential learning? (Content & Skills/Example of Rigor) • Are students able to articulate the desired learner objective? (Assessment & Example of Rigor)

18. What should we use??? • Local, state, and national standards • Recommended standards from professional organizations • Current district curriculum guides • “wish lists” of essential learnings from teachers at the next grade • Data from district, state, and national assessments • Textbooks • Standards and recommendations on 21st century learning

19. “Common pacing is a prerequisite for common formative assessments, which are some of the most powerful tools for improvement available to a school.” DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many. 2006

20. Mapping Units of Study • Determine essential learnings for your students, by the end of unit/course/grade. • Current local standards; state/national standards; and other resources • Habits and attitude • Explore broad units of study. • Prerequisite knowledge and skills needed to achieve goals • Develop a ‘working’ curriculum map. • Specific skills/content • Assessments that measure progress/mastery • Monthly goals/quarterly goals

21. Next Steps Curriculum Alignment • Review current essential learnings in your PLC team • Review local/state/national standards for your areas that apply to your grade level/course—Let Summer know by September 9thif you need help obtaining these • Edit/Revise essential learnings for each course • Choose at least one course for which your PLC will begin to build the curriculum guide during 09-10 (see example) • By September 30th, send Summer copy of each of the reviewed/revised essential learnings for every course—send via email in a Word document listing only the essential learnings. • Summer will pull these together in a matrix and return for use in your October PLC. During your October PLC, please review the K-12 alignment matrix and create questions that can be reviewed in small groups of K-12 staff at the October 22nd PLC/Curriculum Committee meeting.

22. Next Steps Common Assessments • Review current common assessments in relationship to student performance and essential learnings/proficiency and edit/revise as needed • Make sure teachers have the up-to-date assessments (Elementary—send copies to Student Programs) (MS/HS—for district assessments, send copies to Student Programs) • Determine assessments that need to be developed to measure essential learning proficiency

23. Next Steps Data Analysis & SMART Goals • During PLC work, determine what assessment data team currently has, what data can be obtained from Student Programs or other sources, and what data do we not currently collect but should (and suggestions on how we best do this). • During October PLC, work with data collected to create/modify SMART goals set by team