Full Description
"This book brings new focus to the rich history of ideas and strategies shown to improve student learning, helping educators at all levels see not only the value of using proven strategies, but the importance of integrating those strategies into purposeful improvement efforts."
—Thomas R. Guskey, Distinguished Service Professor
Georgetown College
"This is a book of action. The author calls for leaders in school communities to be bold, courageous, committed, and aggressive in the actions required to achieve desired increases in student learning."
—Charles Patterson, Educational Consultant
Former President, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Dramatically raise student achievement by engaging educators in collaborative curriculum design and professional development!
Teachers, teacher leaders, principals, and staff developers can build a collaborative culture and improve staff and student performance with this content-focused, step-by-step model that ties curriculum design to teacher growth. Kay Psencik provides a powerful process whereby teachers work together in teams to examine standards, gain a deep understanding of content, create curriculum maps, and design common formative assessments. Professional development leaders can inspire and challenge teachers to:
Confront assumptions about learning and professional development
Clarify and establish complex standards
Embed conversations about the curriculum into daily work
With hands-on tools, templates, and resources, readers can help teachers become more skilled in their instruction, create a school-based curriculum that is tied to standards, and accelerate the learning of both students and staff.
Contents
Foreword by Stephanie Hirsh
Publisher's Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
1. An Overview: Collaborative Curriculum Design as Professional Learning
2. Establishing Assumptions About Student and Staff Learning
3. Determining Complex Curriculum Standards and Concepts
4. Mapping the Curriculum
5. Assessment of Student Learning
6. Designing Instruction
7. Analyzing Student Work and Monitoring Student Learning to Inform Instruction
8. Using Effective Grading and Parent Reporting Practices
9. Leading Schools to Sustain the Effort and Fulfill the Promise
Appendix 1. Our Assumptions About Student and Staff Learning
Appendix 2. The Principles of Professional Learning
Appendix 3. Our Vision of Our School: Iduma Elementary School, Killeen ISD, Killeen, TX
Appendix 4. A Learning Walk
Appendix 5. We are a School Community That Values Learning
Appendix 6. Template for Developing Our Learning Community's Norms
Appendix 7. Quakertown High School Goals
Appendix 8. Sample Letter to Parents
Appendix 9. Critical Attributes of a Performance Task
Appendix 10. Template for Culminating Demonstrations
Appendix 11. Example of a Task Analysis of a Culminating Demonstration
Appendix 12. Example of a Task Analysis of a Culminating Demonstration (Term III)
Appendix 13. Precision in Adverbs
Appendix 14. Middle Ages Scoring Guide
Appendix 15. Culminating Demonstration Rubric for First Grade Students at Heritage Elementary
Appendix 16. Kindergarten Literacy Lesson Plans
References
Index
