Curriculum Visioning at Wilson

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Curriculum Visioning at Wilson
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Answering the continuous improvement dilemma

• All of us are immigrants spiritually

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Answering the continuous improvement dilemma

• High stakes testing has caused many of us in the
  education community to believe that someone was
  changing our jobs.

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Wilson School District
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Learning by adults in the school is the key to
student achievement.
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Staff Development Continuum or The Re-culturing
Ladder
Alignment
Behavior
Attitude
Degree of difficulty
Knowledge
Length of time
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Answers to our school districts seemingly
intractable problems reside within us and our
staff but we have to cultivate a learning
environment to get at them.
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Mental Models
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Characteristics of a Learning Organization

• Cultivation culture
• Value for ones ability to learn v. what one
  knows
• Collaborative Teams
• Collective Inquiry
• Coherence-making is a never-ending proposition
  and is everyones responsibility-Michael Fullan
• Primacy of the whole

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The Main Thing is to Make the Main thing, the
Main Thing!
George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky The Power of
Alignment
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Once you re-culture the organization to the need
for continuous improvement and most understand
the meaning of all, how do you go about improving?

• There are six very important concepts to follow
  for staff development to work
• The theoretical underpinnings of this model were
  extracted from the Winter 2001, American
  Educational Research Journal article by Garet,
  Porter, Desimone, Birman, Yoon, What makes
  professional development effective?

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What are the reasons that staff development fails?

• There is no sustainability.
• One size fits all.
• There is a general lack of meaning.
• Never out to actually change teachers behaviors.
• We believe staff development is training and not
  learning.
• Lack of a plan (What do you want to do
  differently?)
• Inputs vs outputs (PD is an input session and no
  outputs are required).
• We violate everything that we know about learning.

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Step one in developing an effective staff
development program to improve student
achievement FORM

• Traditional classes, workshops, and seminars that
  are once-and-done were less effective than
  creating collaborative networks of teachers or
  teacher study groups.
• Technology acquisition, math improvement, writing
  improvement, K-3 push-in program development
  where teacher networks within our school system
  are created. The key is teachers in the same
  grade level or across two or three grade levels
  work collaboratively at certain tasks throughout
  multiple school years.

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Step two in developing an effective staff
development program to improve student
achievement DURATION

• Sustained and intensive professional development
  programs are more likely to make an impact. Move
  away from sage-on-stage professional development.
• This is the first year we will embark on a
  sustained professional development plan centered
  around certain principles of learning. The goal
  for this ongoing professional development
  experience for our teachers is to enhance their
  ability to differentiate instructional strategies
  to accommodate all learning styles and to teach
  ALL children in a standards-based environment.
  Our goal is to continue to increase student
  achievement to reach 100 advanced and proficient
  in the PSSA test.

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Step three in developing an effective staff
development program to improve student
achievement COLLECTIVE PARTICIPATION

• Design activities for teachers who are in the
  same school, even the same grade, teaching the
  same subject. Old-style, large group in-service
  that does not target groups of teachers who work
  together will not improve math scores.
• The key is meeting in a group setting
  specifically for attaining some goal centered
  action plan in math, technology, writing, or
  reading. The formation of small learning
  communities is another major goal we have to
  enhance ongoing adult learning within the
  organization.

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Step four in developing an effective staff
development program to improve student
achievement CONTENT

• Design professional development around both how
  to teach and what to teach to improve student
  achievement is key. Content is just as important
  as pedagogy. Therefore demonstration lessons,
  guiding lessons with standards and objectives,
  using anchor problems within the same grade
  level, expert grading of student work using PSSA
  rubrics, sharing lesson plans, creating a
  systematic way of attacking word problems all
  create better student performance.
• Use of rubrics to assist students in attaining
  standards.
• Providing ways to guide and demonstrate best
  practice strategies
• Accountability for the effort of taking a risk at
  trying something new and innovative in the
  classroom. There is a need to make the teaching
  process less intimate and more collaborative and
  collegial.

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CONTENT

• Example of Technology Strategies that Enhance
  Achievement
• Use technology to present resources to students
  with diverse needsUse technologies to allow
  students to progress at different paces through
  the curriculumUse technologies to design
  simulations that illustrate critical
  conceptsUse technology to deliver basic skills
  and/or remedial instructionUse technology to
  access real world data, news, and
  problem-scenariosUse technology to increase the
  number and currency of effective instructional
  resourcesUse technology to enrich the quality
  and content of instructionUse technology to
  present content, freeing time formerly spent in
  delivery of instruction for other
  purposesProvide assistive technologies to
  students with special needs

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Step five in developing an effective staff
development program to improve student
achievement ACTIVE LEARNING

• This is the show-me-the-money part of the staff
  development program, the real glue. Teachers
  observe each other, are observed by experts, are
  guided in teams, debrief, and receive feedback on
  their work. Classroom implementation is checked
  and reviewed. Student work is analyzed by other
  teachers and by experts. Teachers become lead
  learners here doing presenting and evaluating
  their performance. This action part of PD is
  usually the part missing with the framework of
  traditional approaches.
• We are employing a more inside-in model of
  professional learning at Wilson where in-house
  teachers and administrators are lead learners
  within the organization. We visit every classroom
  to both demonstrate and debrief as we watch
  teachers teach. All lesson plans are reviewed by
  principals and are guided by state standards and
  objectives written into our curriculum, all class
  presentations are guided by standards and
  objectives. Action planning is slowly enhancing
  district improvement.

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Step six in developing an effective staff
development program to improve student
achievement COHERENCE

• Teachers need to perceive professional
  development as part of a coherent program of
  teacher learning and development that support
  other activities at school, like standards
  implementation or textbook adoptions or new
  course creations. Not too much at one time!
• We have tried very hard to bring about program
  coherence to improve student achievement through
  professional developemnt. We have adopted
  standards, driven lessons and student work with
  by standards, monitored teacher usage of
  standards in their daily practice, contracted
  services with universities, created grade level
  assessments driven by the standards, purchased
  texts, provided remedial programs for students at
  the basic and below level, integrated technology,
  and in terms of student achievement, we are
  making excellent strides in our K-8 program to
  improve PSSA scores. Central Junior High reached
  90 advanced and proficient in the 2006 PSSA math
  exam!

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PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONLEADING
FOR LEARNING! GETTING RESULTS!
District Strategic Planning BUILDING BLOCKS
School Improvement Planning
What We KNOW to be important
What We COMMIT to
2. Collective Will
What We WANT for ALL Students
3. Collective Skill

What We DO
1. Collective Outcome
What We ACCOMPLISH
5. Collective Accountability
4. Collective Action
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Planning isnt STRATEGIC unless its
student centered
based upon the best research
future-focused
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Content Performance Standards

• (Content) Standard2.1. Numbers, Number Systems
  and Number Relationships
• 2.1.8 Grade 8 (Performance Standard at grade
  level)
• A. Represent and use numbers in equivalent forms
  (e.g., integers, fractions, decimals, percents,
  exponents, scientific notation, square roots)
• B. Simplify numerical expressions involving
  exponents, scientific notation and using order of
  operations

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Assessment Anchor

• M8.A.1 Demonstrate an understanding of numbers,
  ways of representing numbers, relationships among
  numbers and number systems
• Represent numbers in equivalent forms.
• Eligible Content
• Convert fractions, decimals and/or percents to
  equivalent forms
• Use scientific notation or exponential forms to
  express numbers
• Find the square or cube of a whole number and/or
  the square root of a perfect square (without a
  calculator)

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Learning Goals

• Process information
• Problem solve
• Work independently
• Collaborate with others
• Become more pendent in data
• Adapt to change

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Alignment

• Districts Objective to develop a plan to ensure
  all instructional programs link the written, the
  taught, and the assessed components of the
  curriculum K-12 in all buildings
• Curriculum Review Cycle
• Curriculum mapping K 12
• Elementary
• Secondary

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District Curriculum Goals

• Ensure alignment of all curriculum to PA
  standards and anchors
• Provide a rigorous, relevant and rich curriculum
  for all of Wilson students K 12
• Evaluate curriculum on an ongoing basis
• Provide access to district curriculum via our
  website