Curriculum Leadership Institute

Pathways to School Improvement

Coronavirus

New Challenges Require District Curriculum Councils to Revisit Curriculum Governance Policies

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America is beginning to change. So are its schools. The reasons are obvious. The COVID 19 Pandemic is one of them.

Other important reasons are associated with social disparities, funding, shifting governmental policy, and the purpose of education in a developing 21st Century.

School boards, curriculum councils, teachers, and administrators are under more pressure than ever. Parents and school patrons demand solutions to nearly unsolvable problems. Most of which involve virtual learning, social distancing, and learning quality.

Meeting agendas often include topics shown below:

  • keeping students engaged using distance education,
  • the role of curriculum and instructional design,
  • the extent to which students are “falling behind,”
  • internet access,
  • availability of electronic tools like computers,
  • budgets that sustain the many changes in learning configuration,
  • family support systems,
  • teacher salaries and morale, and
  • the health of both teachers and students.

These topics have long been areas of concern. They are challenges made worse by the pandemic.

The first three topics in the list should be discussed as priorities by the curriculum council. They need both immediate and long-term attention. Subsequent E-Hints will offer ideas for solving immediate issues. However, now is a good time to ensure long-term policies are still in place and working.

Three are most important:

Ensure your district has a clear policy for academic program development, implementation, maintenance, and evaluation.

If there is a policy in place, is it being adhered to by the board, curriculum council, and administrative staff? If not, how can that problem be addressed?

Make certain your district has a long-range plan of action, a process that systematically upgrades the quality of curriculum, instruction, and assessment of student learning over time.

If a plan of action exists and is up to date, is it being followed according to policy provisions? If not, what can be done to resolve that problem?

Clear intentions for student learning called mastery statements are more essential than ever!

Teachers need mastery statements to guide their planning, instruction, and assessment. Parents and school patrons want to know what is expected of students. Three kinds of mastery statements are essential:

  • a comprehensive description of what students who complete a district’s full curriculum will know or do
  • descriptions of what students who complete each subject area in the district’s curriculum will know or do
  • an accurate statement of what students will know or do after completing each subject at grade level

If those three actions were taken years ago, today’s unique challenges might require a few modifications. We suggest the process start with your curriculum council. Recommendations can then be made to the administrative staff and board of education.

Maintain Learning Expectations No Matter the Setting

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African-American mother supervises her teenaged son as he studies on his computer

The “start of school” has come and gone, and school district officials have made some of the hardest decisions they have ever made. Decisions that require re-evaluation nearly every day. The building preparation, bus preparation, and schedule concerns have all been addressed to the degree that gets the school year going. Now, it’s time to focus on teaching and learning. Ensuring that all students, whether entirely on-site, fully online, in a hybrid setting, or even homeschooled, reach a level of learning such that they are prepared for their future, as unsure as that may be.

Districts have long had curriculum, instruction, and assessment conversations. They have made decisions as a district regarding their local curriculum and expectations for student performance.  Those conversations and decisions are critical within a district to ensure equal opportunity for students and smooth transitions from grade-level-to-grade-level and course-to-course. The professional staff has, in turn, had detailed conversations about the importance of those decisions and any ramifications for instruction and assessment.  Those decisions, though, have probably only been communicated generally to parents. 

In a typical school year or school environment, as a district, you are covered! Let’s get started!  However, there is NOTHING normal about this school year. Students are attending school in a myriad of ways. For the decisions made by professional staff to be implemented for all the varieties of ways that students “attend” school, communication must be carefully planned and executed. Without good communication, unintended results might occur. Those unintended results might include:

  • inequity issues among students,
  • missed building blocks within the learning process,
  • an unclear vision of what is “good enough” for student success,
  • and students may work very hard but misunderstand expectations. Therefore, when they re-enter the in-person setting, they may feel their hard work was wasted.

For the most part, parents are engaged with helping their children succeed as students; investing in their children’s success is a high priority. However, parents have jobs, multiple children, past experiences with school, and rarely do they have professional training or experience as educators. Some of the decisions that the district made will make complete sense to their staff, but not necessarily to the people charged with monitoring and implementing the remote portion of a student’s instruction. 

Often, it isn’t the “what” that non-educators can’t understand, it’s “why?”  Having not been present for discussions among professional staff, decisions are communicated as, “Here’s what we are going to do,” not as, “Here’s what we are going to do, this is why we are doing it, and these are the expectations for your child because of what we’re doing.” In other words, the expectation has been to communicate decisions to stakeholders and parents without necessarily explaining “why” that decision was made.

This school year, with so many variables for how students are being educated, why is just as important to parents as what. Knowing why a particular decision was made could go a long way toward alleviating unintended consequences. It may also help parents determine appropriate steps to help a struggling student without losing sight of the expectation. The time spent designing this communication might pay big dividends when students come back together in a more “normal” setting. 

Returning to School During COVID-19 (Part Two)

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This E-Hint is the second segment in a two-part series providing suggestions for returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of Part One was on meeting the social-emotional needs of students and planning to instruct the curriculum. Part Two (this segment) delves into onsite and online instructional options and checking for understanding in an online environment. 

Instructional Options

Sadly, uncontrollable factors during the spring last year, caused a loss and possible regression in learning for some students. Although a quarter of onsite contact time was lost in the 19-20 school year, try to avoid reteaching the end of the previous year’s curriculum. Instead, consider these options and use those that work best for your students.

Find a baseline for content and skills. Use questions from your summative assessments to create a pre-assessment aligned to your local curriculum for this school year. Many companies promote standardized tests promising a quick gauge of students’ current abilities. While these cookie-cutter assessments may seem appealing as a fast, easy solution, unfortunately, they do not give accurate information about your local curriculum. Additionally, they are not an accurate diagnostic measure to determine individual student deficiencies. 

Provide a formative pre-lesson check. Ask a few brief questions to get a read on student understanding for each lesson. You’ll need a quick response, so use instructional technology like Quizizz or Google Forms to gather results and guide your next step. Formative checks are for learning, so it is a natural fit. Using this option requires you to have a couple of lesson options ready for the day. If students are prepared to move forward, go with Plan A, but if they are not prepared, go with Plan B.

Implement looping for the upcoming school year to increase tracking and development of individual student skills. Looping is the educational practice of assigning students to the same teacher for two or three consecutive grade levels. There are several advantages to looping students. On the academic side, teachers know their student’s strengths and challenges. By looping, you can save time without having to discover the best learning style of each student.   Instruction can be more focused and efficient, which will translate into higher student success.  Looping also creates social-emotional security for students as they already have relationships with their teachers and peers. Those relationships quickly grow in a familiar setting with familiar routines. Therefore, looping results in higher attendance rates. The sudden end to onsite learning last year robbed students and teachers a sense of closure. So, additional time together could change a negative situation into a positive one.

Use the Instructional Planning Resource (IPR) to plan your instruction. The IPR has been a part of the CLI Model for many years. It has evolved from hard paper copies to static electronic versions to real-time Google Docs. The IPR requires you to align your instruction to the local curriculum, and is often called an “educational toolbox.” Multiple teaching methods, student activities, and supplemental resources are included on the IPR to help you plan your instruction. The academic range of your students may have grown wider, so utilizing the differentiation feature on the IPR provides intervention and enrichment options to meet their needs. While teachers never expected to deliver so much online instruction, they did discover new tools to add to the old ones. Some even work better! Utilize new strategies, activities, and online tools as you move forward in a face-to-face setting. Not only will it give your instruction a fresh feel, but it will also create a sense of familiarity for students before there is a need to return solely to online practices. If you are currently planning for the new school year, create both onsite and online options for teaching the curriculum. Offering choices to your students is never a waste of time, and strategies that you don’t use for full group instruction may fit well with a smaller group who require additional options to reinforce their learning.

Use technology daily to support onsite instruction. Create student groups, establish classroom norms, and guide the use of technology while onsite. This way, you can provide immediate support and save time troubleshooting program features should you need to move to remote learning.

Checking for Understanding – Use Your New Tech Skills!

Solid instruction includes formative checks for learning and requires immediate feedback to the student. But, how can this still be manageable in an online setting? Here are some handy tech tools to help you be creative:

  1. Observe student work using the drawing features on a digital whiteboard. For example, when communicating through ZOOM, the student selects the writing instrument after the teacher assigns a task.  Student responses are written in their handwriting and viewed by the teacher on the student’s whiteboard. This feature works great with math problems, handwriting practice, or original graphic organizers. Teachers can see progress and offer input in real-time.
  2. Some online learning platforms include a polling feature that can be used similarly to the traditional bell ringer. When students enter class, pose them with a question. When submitted, their answer is accessible to you, the meeting host.
  3. Another easy check is to ask all students a question in chat mode. Students can respond directly to you, who can then provide feedback in real-time.
  4. Google Forms are a quick and easy way to gather student feedback.  Individual responses from students are collected, compiled, and organized with charts and graphs, quickly allowing you to determine the next steps for instruction.    
  5. Several standards require collaboration between students.  Google makes this expectation easier by sharing features.  Students can review a piece of work with you or their peers through Slides, Sheets, or Docs and offer suggestions.  Making digital comments is speedier than handwritten feedback!
  6. Finally, frequent emails to your students can keep them on target through personal messages.  You can include parents on your emails to help their kids at home and to keep them accountable.

The best approach for an uncertain future is to prepare with options.  Create a plan and provide structure for students and parents, provide opportunities for interaction and feedback, and address the social-emotional needs of your students.  Flexibility is a common characteristic of educators, so take a deep breath, do your best, and remember that you’re only human. You’re going to need to remain flexible, especially through the upcoming school year.

Returning to School During COVID-19 (Part One)

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Chalk board saying Time for Planning

When the school year began last fall, no one could have imagined the events that transpired to change our educational setting for the foreseeable future. While it is easier to focus on the negative aspects of the situation, there were several opportunities for personal and professional growth. Perspective can turn those challenges into learning experiences so that the new school year can start on a positive note. As you prepare for the possibility of more uncertainty, use those recent lessons to provide the best learning environment for your students. In this two-part E-hint, you will receive suggestions to address the social-emotional needs of your students, plan to teach the curriculum, utilize various options for instruction, and check for student learning. One size does not fit all, so select those that work best for your district and student population.

Meet the social-emotional needs of your students.

Many students experienced anxiety throughout COVID-19. With the abrupt switch to online instruction, schools made their best attempt to provide support virtually. When students gather back in person, whether full-time or part-time, procedures and logistics will be new to them. Some students may feel like they are attending school for the very first time, so thoroughly explaining and modeling expectations will help to ease stress. Fulfill your students’ social-emotional needs first. Doing so may require you to use some of the time initially designated for instructional purposes.

Keep in mind, “Students have to Maslow before they can Bloom.” The meaning behind this common saying is that children’s basic needs, identified by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy, must be met before they can embrace academics as outlined in Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy. Students must feel safe, connected, and heard. Set aside time to talk before time to learn. If teachers feel short on time, incorporating students’ thoughts and feelings into a lesson through an art project or writing activity is one way of blending needs and academics.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Develop a plan to teach the curriculum, and be ready to adjust.

Curriculum Leadership Institute recommends that teachers develop a curriculum pacing guide and update it at the beginning of each school year.  Last year, planning was based on delivering the curriculum through onsite instruction.  We now know that this may not be possible for the upcoming year. Therefore, everyone needs to be prepared to teach online to some degree.

The first step in creating a pacing guide for instruction is to prioritize the curriculum at each grade-level and in each subject area.  Some targets are critical for sequential learning, but to keep students on grade-level, teachers will need to let go of some targets of lesser importance.   Facilitate collaborative conversations between teachers of adjacent grades to make sure there are no preventable gaps in skills or content when prioritizing.

Next, identify any parts of your curriculum that didn’t get taught during the stay-at-home order. This should also be discussed during those grade-band conversations.  If essential pieces are missing from the previous grade, students need those gaps filled before they can be successful in learning the essential grade-level material.  A natural solution is to teach them consecutively.  For example, consider the second-grade math outcome that was omitted last spring. It reads: Students will determine the attributes of two-dimensional shapes. Students must learn this concept before they can be successful in the third-grade outcome: Students will use the attributes of two-dimensional shapes to classify and calculate perimeter.  On your pacing guide, block a few weeks for teaching attributes of shapes and plan to instruct the second and third-grade outcomes consecutively as illustrated below.

If your school implements a hybrid schedule to include both onsite and online learning, encourage teachers to teach the critical pieces of their curriculum onsite. Then, online instruction can be used to review previous essentials through guided practice and real-life application.  A hybrid approach to learning will require frequent updating of pacing guides. Flexibility is critical when moving between onsite and online learning.

One last note for planning is to use time during an onsite parent night or open house to share important details relating to instruction.  The learning targets provided to parents should include the essentials recently determined by the grade-level teams.  Also, take a moment to give parents a little online instruction regarding the features of the Learning Management System (LMS) you plan to use throughout the year.  Many parents became “substitute” teachers last spring and will appreciate the opportunity to receive a little advance training if they are required to step in for instructional support.

The next segment of our two-part E-hint will focus on instructional options and checking for understanding.  Stay tuned for its release to help you continue your preparation for the new year.