Standards Prioritization Template
As Renton School District in Washington transitioned abruptly to remote learning in response to the pandemic, the district brought teachers together to collaboratively prioritize standards.
April 28, 2021
Tag: Learning Materials & Tools
“Blue Crew” Curriculum Blueprint Teams
To create curriculum blueprints for teachers to use for their remote instruction during the pandemic, Austin ISD’s academics team restructured their coaching model. By integrating coaches across subject-areas, they were able to more effectively and efficiently create blueprints for teachers of content focused on prioritizing standards. The team formed micro-teams called “Blue Crews” to organize creating the blueprints.
April 27, 2021
Curriculum Blueprint Designer Best Practices
To support the roll-out and adoption of Austin ISD’s curriculum blueprints, the academic team created a simple one-page internal guide for designing the blueprints. This guide played a pivotal role in ensuring a baseline of quality as well as consistency across subject areas and grade levels, contributing to wide adoption of the blueprints by teachers during remote learning.
April 27, 2021
Online Tools for Secondary Math Demonstrations
This slide deck shows examples of ways that different online tools can be used for secondary students to show their work and demonstrate their knowledge of math skills.
April 13, 2021
Phoenix Charter Academy: Getting Inspired by Competency-Based Teacher Professional Development
In their redesign work, Phoenix Charter Academy began by exploring how to better equip their teachers to implement their unique model, which supports disconnected youth through competency-based learning and significant social-emotional supports. Phoenix knew that this would require attention to both staff skills and staff mindsets, and that different teachers came to the work with different strengths and needs.
As a result, Phoenix explored how districts have built teacher professional development models that are competency-based. This would enable Phoenix not only to flex and adapt its support to different teachers, but it would also involve teachers in a learning model akin to what their students experience in this competency-based school.
February 4, 2021
Mastery Charter Schools: Getting Inspired by Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Pedagogy
Mastery Charter Schools has a clear commitment to equity – its vision is to be a model anti-racist school district. To live out this commitment, Mastery seeks to provide affirming, engaging, and culturally relevant learning experiences for all students. Mastery’s design team researched other districts that have implemented culturally relevant and sustaining practices. This research supplemented the work they were already doing internally to define those practices for their unique community context.
February 4, 2021
Mastery Charter Schools: Getting Inspired by Blended Learning and Digital Literacy
Mastery Charter Schools envisions a future of confident, independent learners supported by personalized, blended, and culturally responsive teaching and authentic relationships with adults. To achieve this vision, Mastery knew it would have to design an approach to digital learning and use of technology that would advance the network’s equity goals.
The team researched approaches to embedding blended learning in every classroom as a way to personalize learning to student needs, close the digital divide, and prepare students for life after graduation. ISTE technology standards for students – which provide clarity about how to use technology in a way that empowers students – became an important resource for Mastery’s design work; the team even contacted other districts that had implemented ISTE technology standards so as to learn from their experiences.
February 4, 2021
Cedar Rapids: Getting Inspired by Real-World Relevance in Learning
Cedar Rapids Community School District has a well-defined Profile of a Graduate, or clear depiction of what a graduate of the district should know, feel, think, or believe; the profile focuses on ensuring that all Cedar Rapids graduates are ready for their chosen future path. One concern the team heard from students, however, was about the difficulty in drawing connections between subjects taught in class and the bigger, real-world meaning of that learning.
As a result, Cedar Rapids sought to more deeply embed connections to the real world and students’ futures in the day-to-day learning experience. The team researched examples of other communities that have had success in providing relevant, real-world learning experiences for students. From this research, the team sought to include multiple dimensions of relevance in learning – personal, academic, real-world, and cultural – in their designs for the future. Such an approach helps teachers adapt the learning to different students’ needs, identities, and interests.
February 4, 2021
Cedar Rapids: Getting Inspired by Standards-Based Grading
Cedar Rapids Community School District has a well-defined strategy for implementing competency-based learning. Amid implementation, however, they ran into challenges getting standards-based grading (a key part of their model) to really “stick” in the district.
Cedar Rapids researched other communities that have demonstrated success in building a system and culture for standards-based grading. From this research, the team learned new approaches to track individual students’ mastery of standards over time (versus having grades that reflect mastery at a singular, stagnant point in time); these approaches struck the team as potentially powerful ways to close persistent achievement gaps in the district – which, in turn, would be a compelling message to bring to students, families, and staff in attempt to get the work to “stick.”
February 4, 2021
Token Board Template
This template can be edited to support all grade levels by offering different prizes, illustrations, and other incentives for positive student behaviors.
December 2, 2020