Welcome

1. Welcome • Make sure you… • Have signed the roster • Have a binder • Have a name tag • Are ready to go

2. First up… • Introductions • Housekeeping • Registration • Ground rules

3. Next • Why are we here? • History of Seamless work • What are we going to do? • What are the expectation for the three days? • What will the finished product look like? • Other concerns?

4. Assignment • Take a few minutes and ponder what you’ve heard so far… • On the orange piece of paper express your concerns and what it is that you’d like to see come out of this work

5. Career Academy Developing the Algebra 2 curriculum to assure a smooth transition

6. One of our goals is to try to change the way we are currently doing business. • Core Curriculum report… • Rigor and Relevance work later this PM • Status quo…is not good enough anymore. • Status quo…That is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” Ronald Reagan

7. The Challenge to Change…MargeScherer Educational Leadership • Depth…To sustain education reforms, we must focus on learning that matters and that results in measurable achievement. • Endurance…To make change last over time requires that reforms not be linked to one’s person’s bright ideas. If you want continuity, you must distribute leadership to many.

8. Cont. • Breadth…High-performing schools are communities of grownups whose members have real input into conversations about reform. • Diversity…Discovering that a given reform is not a solution for everyone can take the bounce out of the reform. There is no silver bullet! • Resourcefulness…The supply of energy is not bottomless. We need to attract the next generation of school leadership.

9. Cont. • Conservation…Good changes occur when leaders take time to understand the past. • Justice…As part of a system, every school must consider its effects on every other school. • Does your society have more memories than dreams or dreams than memories? • Thomas Friedman…The World is Flat

10. Curriculum…What is it? What’s it good for? Curriculum is the road map that we use to get to a place that we have determined is worth getting to…Too often we wander aimlessly through the book with no purpose other than to “cover” it.

11. Three most important reasons for curriculum work. • Focus • Focus • Focus • Is it the answer to all of our problems? • Unfortunately, NO!

12. The role of the teacher… • In effective classrooms, teachers consistently attend to at least four elements: whom they teach (students), where they teach (learning environment), what they teach (content), and how they teach (instruction). If a teacher loses sight of any one of these elements and cease investing effort in it, the whole fabric of their work is damaged and the quality of learning impaired. -Connecting Kids to Content

13. We still need the highly effective teacher… • Quality curriculum should play a central role in meeting the core needs of students for affirmation, affiliation, accomplishment, and autonomy, but it is the teacher’s job to make the link between the basic human needs of students and the curriculum. – Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design: Connecting Content to Kids

14. There’s more… • In truth, far more students would be successful if we understood it to be our jobs to craft circumstances that lead to success rather than letting circumstances take their course. Even the best curriculum delivered in the take-it-or-leave-it fashion will be taken by few and left by too many. –Connecting Content to Kids

15. By product of curriculum work • Clearer understanding of what is expected from your students • It allows us to give accountability to the student for his/her learning. “To be successful in Algebra 2, this is what you need to know, understand, and be able to do!” • Professional growth opportunity for each of you – addresses the State Teaching Standards as well as the demands of NCLB.

16. NCLB vs Highly Qualified • “Highly qualified” teachers are defined as those who hold at least a bachelor’s degree, are fully licensed or certified by the state in the subjects they teach, and can demonstrate competence in the subjects they teach.

17. Highly qualified doesn’t mean highly effective. Qualities of Effective Teachers • Prerequisites of Effective Teaching • The Teacher as a person • Classroom Management and Organization • Organizing and Orienting for Instruction • Implementing Instruction • Monitoring Student Progress and Potential

18. By the way…Research says… • A student who is forced to spend one year with an ineffective teacher… • …takes three years of highly effective teachers just to get back to where they should be in the educational process.

19. Wasn’t it written by “experts”? Doesn’t it have everything in it? Consider the findings of Robert Marzano and John Kendall (1998) So what’s wrong with teaching the book?

20. So…how do we decide what’s important? • You look at research • You look to National organizations (NCTM – Standards and Benchmarks) • You look at State Standards and Benchmarks – State Assessments • You look at local data and expectations of the community • You look inwardly…what does your experience tell you?

21. Content Standards • Number and Operation • Algebra • Geometry • Measurement • Data Analysis and Probability

22. Process Standards • Problem Solving • Reasoning and Proof • Communication • Connections • Representations

23. Format of Workshop • Look over past work done in Calculus 1, Trigonometry and College Algebra • Identify the units necessary to support this learning • Identify what it is that we want our students to know, understand, or be able to do because of their exposure to this curriculum

24. Cont. • Identify the benchmarks/skills that support these understandings • Create common assessments to be used by all participants to evaluate student understanding • Create “relevant” performance tasks/assessments to be used by all participants to support each unit (at least one per unit…more is better)

25. Finished Product • Identify units that we teach to support these classes • Identify what is that we want our student to know, understand, or be able to do because of his/her exposure to this unit. • Identify Benchmarks/skills that support these understandings.

26. Finally… • When we are done we will have identified 80% of the Algebra 2 curriculum that you will teach. • We will come back together as a group to work on assessments/PBITS/ etc, after we’ve had time to work with the curriculum.

27. Curriculum Questions from McTighe, Wiggins, and DuFour • What is it that we want our kids to know, understand, be able to do be cause of their experience with this curriculum? • How will we know they got it? What will the evidence look like?

28. Cont… • What will we do for the kids who don’t get it? • What will we do for the ones who do?

29. Big Job … • Questions or comments? • Tera and I will try to keep us on track and moving in a good directions.