FSDB’s Pacing Guide & Curriculum Map Development

1. FSDB’s Pacing Guide & Curriculum Map Development Florida School for the Deaf and Blind St. Augustine, FL. August, 2010 8:00am – 3:30pm

2. Are You On An Escalator? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb7mzUCpTyY

3. Objectives • Create district-wide Pacing Guides for the 2010-2011 school year for each content area • Create district-wide Curriculum Maps for each content area for the 1st nine weeks of the 2010-2011 school year

4. Standards-based Classrooms… …Classrooms where teachers and students have a clear understanding of the expectations (standards). Teachers/students know what they are teaching/learning each day (standards), why the day’s learning is an important thing to know or know how to do (relevance), and how to do it (process). Standards-based learning is a process, not an event.

5. Standards-based Classrooms • Curriculum, Assessment, Instruction, and student learning are explicitly aligned to the standards • All students have access to the standards • Students produce evidence of learning

6. What does alignment to the standards look like? Standards

7. What is Standards-based Evidence of Learning? • Student work directly connected to the standards • Real world, relevant, and task-based work that provides evidence that students are achieving high standards

8. How do teachers ensure that instruction is standards-based? • Come to consensus regarding standards • Analyze and reflect upon instruction • Analyze and reflect upon performance tasks • Accept and provide feedback regarding instruction

9. What will I see in a Standards-Based Classroom?

10. Student work aligned to the standards • Written and oral feedback aligned to the standards • Performance tasks aligned to the standards, including culminating performance tasks • Data driven instructional decisions • On-going, formal and informal assessment for learning • Teaching and scoring rubrics aligned to the standards • Flexible groups of students • Differentiation of instruction • Standards-Based instructional bulletin boards

11. Teachers are the Key “Teachers must be the primary driving force behind change. They are best positioned to understand the problems that students face and to generate possible solutions.” James Stigler and James Hiebert, The Teaching Gap

12. Quality Instruction Makes A Difference • “Good teaching can make a significant difference in student achievement, equal to one effect size (a standard deviation), which is also equivalent to the affect that demographic classifications can have on achievement.” • Paraphrase Dr. Heather Hill, University of Michigan

13. Differences in Instruction “Our research indicates that there is a 15% variability difference in student achievement between teachers within the same schools.” Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Dean of Education, University of Michigan

14. “What Matters Very Much is Which Classroom?” “If a student is in one of the most effective classrooms he or she will learn in 6 months what those in an average classroom will take a year to learn. And if a student is in one of the least effective classrooms in that school, the same amount of learning take 2 years.”

15. Research has indicated that... “teacher quality trumps virtually all other influences on student achievement.” (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 1999; Hamre and Pianta, 2005; Hanushek, Kain, O'Brien and Rivken, 2005; Wright, Horn and Sanders, 1997)

16. Teaching for Conceptual Understanding

17. Conceptual Understanding Learning with understanding is essential to enable students to solve the new kinds of problems they will inevitably face in the future.

18. Conceptual Understanding One of the most robust findings of research is that conceptual understanding is an important component of proficiency, along with factual knowledge and procedural facility. (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 1999)

19. Concept-Based Teaching • Concepts are taught and learned differently from Processes and Facts • Concepts cannot be memorized! Facts about concepts can be memorized. • Concepts must be constructed. • A concept is not fully constructed by a particular grade or age level. Layers  and further  additions to the concepts are (should be) continually added in subsequent grades. • Concepts’ connections and relationships with other concepts must be shown. • Initial concept learning cannot occur in cooperative learning settings • Students should be informed that concept construction is expected so that they don’t try to use inappropriate learning methodology.

20. Teaching for Conceptual Understanding Understanding How to DO, doesn’t mean you know How to Teach http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=119884

21. Teaching for Conceptual Understanding and Depth Of Knowledge (DOK) • Students with conceptual understanding… • know more than isolated facts and methods, • know why a mathematics or science idea is important and the kinds of contexts in which it is useful, • are able to learn new ideas by connecting them to ideas they already know, and • are able to remember or retain ideas….

22. Teaching for Conceptual Understanding and Depth Of Knowledge • Emphasis on BOTH ideas and skills • Problem-based interactive learning • Emphasis on connections

23. Teachers Are the KEY The study of teaching and teachers’ knowledge is as important to educational reform today as it was 40 years ago. As Shulman (1983) noted, teachers are the key ingredient in our educational system. ..the teacher must remain the key. The literature on effective schools is meaningless, debates over educational policy are moot, if the primary agents of instruction are incapable of performing their functions well. No microcomputer will replace them, no television system will clone and distribute them, no scripted lessons will direct and control them, no voucher system will bypass them.

24. Pacing guides put topics in a sensible order, determine what resources to draw on, and develop a good sense of how long different elements will take. Pacing GUides

25. Pacing Guide Research • In pacing the year’s curriculum, teachers have little control over the many variables that affect teaching and learning; however, they do have control over how they allocate time to teach the standards and grade-level objectives that every student must master. Instructional pacing is directly linked to time allocation and must begin the first day of the new school year (McLeod, Fisher, Hoover, 2003).

26. More Research • “Pacing guides generally identify when the teacher will teach specific content standards, which instructional materials are appropriate, and what types of instructional strategies teachers can deploy.” (Fisher, Grant, Frey, Johnson, 2008, p. 64).

27. And… • The use of common pacing guides not only provides teachers with these and other components but they also foster collaborative planning and promote instructional conversations. “Talking with colleagues that teach the same content and see the same data results is foundational to instituting improvements and helps teachers determine which instructional strategies are working, which materials are effective, and which students still need help to master the standards.” (Fisher, et. al. 2008)

28. Big Ideas for Pacing • In our zeal to cover as much as possible, we lose sight of which skills are most critical for all students. • To improve student achievement, we must prioritize and then focus on the most important standards. • To truly have an impact, a prioritized curriculum must clearly communicate what each standard means and how important it is.

29. What Pacing Does • Provides a road map • Gives teachers true picture of students’ long-term experiences • Serves as a communication tool • Shows potential links • Provides timeline for new teachers The above statements are only true if the maps are living documents that people use!

31. Your Turn! In your content specific groups, pace content prioritizing benchmarks that will be assessed on FCAT and EOCs. Science: Math:Language Arts: 6 grade – Earth Space 6, 7, 8 LA 6, 7, 8 7 grade – Life Algebra I, II Intensive Reading 8 grade – Physical Algebra Ia, Ib English 1, 2, 3, 4 Biology Algebra Honors Biology Honors Geometry Environmental Geometry Honors Integrated Anatomy

32. Now That You’ve Completed Your Pacing Guides… Let’s talk about curriculum maps!

33. Curriculum Map • Dates of Instruction • Benchmark and Short Description • Essential Question and Guided Questions • Vocabulary • Assessment Dates and Assessment Types

34. Curriculum Map (School)

35. What’s the Difference? Essential Questions Guiding Questions

36. Essential Question Purpose: • To know the elements of explicit instruction and apply them to our classrooms. Essential Question: • How will our knowledge of explicit instruction raise student achievement in our schools?

37. Essential Questions Essential Questions are written in student friendly language, posted in the classroom, and referred to during every lesson to build connections between activities and learning. Essential questions build connections between activities and learning.

38. Guiding Questions are… Questions which combine to build answers to our Essential Questions

39. Essential Questions Achieve Understanding Guiding Questions Big questions (Essential) spawn families of smaller (Guiding) questions which lead to insight. The more skillful we and our students become at formulating and then categorizing Guiding Questions, the more success we will have constructing new knowledge.

40. Now, it’s time to get started on the creation of a 9-week Curriculum Map for your content area class!