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Curriculum Library Alignment and Sharing Project

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Report from December 10, 1998 Meeting
| Introduction| Developing Curriculum Guidelines| Criteria for Lesson Plan Excellence
|Building Our Conceptual Library|

Introduction
    Dear CLASP Participants:

    Hi. Thanks for coming to what was another incredibly inspiring meeting. The quality of discussion at these events is just astounding -- several people in the curriculum guideline discussion group told me that this is the most valuable professional growth experience they've had in the past several years because they simply don't have a chance to talk about these issues at this level of sophistication anywhere else. This, once again, confirms our belief that useful as the software tool is (and because of Kim, it is incredibly useful!) it is the inter-district discussions that provide the most profound insights and help us make the biggest leaps forward.

    We now have about 35 districts participating in CLASP, with almost a dozen more saying they want to join. Since CLASP has a positive network effect - as with a telephone system, the more people who join the more each of us benefits - we are always looking for ways to spread the word. We are willing to give presentations to any multi-district gathering, the larger the better, of Superintendents, Curriculum Directors, Technology Directors, professional associations, etc. Invite us!

    * We had about 50 people at our last meeting. We will soon outgrow the space that MTC is so generously providing. Does anyone know of good alternative space in an accessible location (such as the Rte.495/MassPike area) capable of holding up to 75 people with at least 2 additional break-out rooms?

    This note summarizes the discussion by the group that focused on the Guidelines development process and Criteria for Lesson Plan Excellence.

    !!!!! DRAFT: This note is intended to enrich our discussion, not replace it. If the facts about your district are not accurate, please let us know. If your district is doing something that enriches or enlarges our understanding of the described models, please share that information with the rest of us. If you have thoughts or comments about either the Curriculum Guideline or Lesson Plan Excellence models, write it up and send it to the list. The more we share, the more we all learn !!!!!!

    We have created two CLASP lists:

    • CLASP_cd@massnetworks.org -- this is for general announcements & discussion as well as everything particularly focused on curriculum development. Everyone is included in this list.
    • CLASP_tech@massnetworks.org - this is just for technical issues; people who have been identified as their district's technical support person are on both lists.

    REMEMBER: The next CLASP meeting will be on January 28, 1999 at the MTC campus. We'll send out several reminders in January. If people don't mind, there has been a request to move the starting time up to 9:15 AM.

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Developing Curriculum Guidelines
Draft Notes Compiled by Steve Miller
| Core Group| Staff Inclusion| Number of Disciplines | Carrots and Sticks| Community Involvement | Professional Development| Mobilization Strategy | Peer Review |

    Teachers are rooted in day-to-day classroom reality. They need detailed and concrete ideas for classroom activity, the resources needed to carry out those activities, and an understanding of where this fits into the larger process of K-12 education. On the other hand, the state Curriculum Frameworks provide rather general descriptions of what students are expected to know with only occasional hints about how it should be taught. (The Social Studies Framework goes the furthest in this direction, with the others currently having much less or none.)

    Connecting the two - the Frameworks' Standards and teacher practice - is the job of what we are calling District Curriculum Guidelines. These provide a "scope and sequence" of subject area topics to ensure that everything required by the Framework (and the MCAS) is covered at the appropriate grade level. Within that scope and sequence, District Curriculum Guidelines give a more detailed level of guidance to classroom teachers about (a) what to teach, (b) how to teach it, and (c) how to assess if their student's have learned it.

    District Curriculum Guidelines are still a step more general than Lesson Plans, but they serve as the structure within which Lesson Plans and Courses (which can be seen as a sequence of Lesson Plans) should be created.

    Almost every district in Massachusetts is now creating District Curriculum Guidelines of one kind or another. Through the Curriculum Library Alignment & Sharing Project (CLASP), we have brought several dozen districts together to discuss the processes through which they are creating their Guidelines. While every district has its own nuances, a comparison reveals some important common patterns to the models.
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Core Group
    First, every district has a Core Group that is responsible for doing much of the work for moving the process along. Some districts have a single person who is responsible for leading the Core Group. This person might be the Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, Curriculum Director, or even an outside facilitator. Some districts have a collective leadership, which might be the District Leadership Team, or a Curriculum Council, or the District Professional Development Team, or a Committee composed of people (sometimes teachers) with individual responsibilities for specific disciplines. Collective leadership is more common among smaller districts, whose small central staffs may not have a designated Curriculum Director, but is sometimes found in larger districts as well.
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Staff Inclusion
    Second, most districts extend their Core Group out to include a significant number of teachers. For example, in Lowell and Fall River there are separate Curriculum Study Groups for each discipline which then divide into subgroups by grade span. In the Silver Lake Regional district each of the discipline groups is lead by a subject-area Curriculum Coordinator. Lexington pushes the model down to Building Team Leaders for each discipline who facilitate building-level Teacher Groups.
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Number of Disciplines
    Third, some districts - usually the larger districts - are simultaneously creating Guidelines for multiple disciplines. Smaller districts, with smaller staffs, tend to take the disciplines one or two at a time.

    (It is important to remember that just because a district is developing Guidelines for multiple disciplines does not mean that they will implement all of them at the same time. Some districts intend to roll them out in a sequential manner so as to not overwhelm their teaching staff. But the implementation process is still in the future for most districts so we will learn more about this as time goes on.)
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Carrots and Sticks
    Fourth, most districts are finding ways to provide stipends to Core Group members. The stipends aren't always very large, but they are real. Some districts are using budget funds, some are using the state professional development grants, some are using other grants - Bellingham is using a Technology Integration grant and using that approach to drive the whole process. A few districts are finding it useful to combine these "carrots" with various "sticks" such as not allowing the purchase of new textbooks, computers & software, and other resources until subject-area faculty come up with Guidelines that can be used to set the criteria for what to buy. It has been suggested that Districts include a request for funds to work with CLASP on Guideline and Lesson Plan development as part of their MCAS Remediation Grant application.
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Community Involvement
    Fifth, about half the districts are involving parents and other community members in one or two ways: either as members of the Guideline development groups or as part of a Citizen's Review process. The CLASP group strongly urged districts to include community members as a way of gaining understanding and support for the improvement process, especially in light of the MCAS results. (Lowell is also drawing on the U.Mass Ed. School faculty - a valuable resource for any district with a nearby college.)
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Professional Development
    Sixth, many districts see the Guideline development process, along with the Lesson Plan development process (see below) as the central focus of their district's current professional development activity. Seeing it in this light allows access to resources - especially time - that would otherwise be hard to draw upon.
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Mobilization Strategy
    Seventh, while some smaller districts, such as Oxford and North Attleboro, bring their entire faculty into the Core Group, most districts are looking for ways to include as many people as possible while retaining the focus and efficiency of a dedicated core group. Participants in the CLASP discussions have developed a "back and forth" model to combine the two arms of the process as well as the role of both formal and informal Authorizing Groups:

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Peer Review
    (Teachers are encouraged to submit their draft lesson plans to a peer review process - this will not be part of their official evaluation or connected in anyway with decisions on their salary or retention status. The goal is to promote discussions, within the teaching staff, of the "Criteria for Lesson Plan Excellence" as a way to promote Broader understanding of the district's Mission, Philosophy, and Guidelines. Lesson Plans that the Peer Review Process finds to be exemplars of the Criteria for Lesson Plan Excellence are then used as models for further professional development and also submitted to CLASP to represent the district in CLASP's lesson plan database.)
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Criteria for Lesson Plan Excellence
Draft Notes Compiled by Steve Miller
| An Excellent Lesson Plan Will...| What to Teach| How to Teach |
|How to Assess Learning|

    A district's Criteria For Lesson Plan Excellence should start by drawing upon the district's Mission or Philosophy or Goal statements and similar "fundamental" documents. In turn, these should probably reflect the approach described in the DOE "Common Core of Learning." If the district doesn't have any of its own statements, the Common Core can be used as a starting point. The Criteria should explicitly state that an Excellent Lesson plan is aligned with District Guidelines and State (or national) standards.

    Beyond these high level statements that will be somewhat different for each district, the CLASP group developed a number of other more universal criteria that can be used to guide the writing of three major components of a lesson plan: the sections that describe (a) what to teach, (b) how to teach it, and (c) how to assess if students have learned it.
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An Excellent Lesson Plan Will Include...

What to Teach (Content)

  • Articulate goals and outcomes including the Level of Understanding (i.e. introduction, practice, mastery) for student learning.
  • Describe the concepts, the processes (such as the scientific method, Bloom's Taxonomy of analyze/synthesize/apply, or others), and the skills (physical, mental, social, task-oriented, etc.) that the students will learn. Concepts are formed by the facts and principles being taught; processes are enacted through the exercise of the skills being taught.
  • Be multi-disciplinary and effectively relate learning in one subject area to learning in others.
  • Effectively relate current learning objectives and content to past and future learning in context of District Guidelines and state standards.
  • Be factually accurate.

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How to Teach (Instructional Strategies)

  • Have effective engagement strategies to "hook" students' interest.
  • Include activities that include authentic tasks which lead to understanding of concepts, facts, and principles which are used in the world outside the classroom.
  • Include activities that incorporate authentic tasks which lead to understanding of concepts, facts, and principles which are used in the world outside the classroom.
  • Use a variety of modes, embodying varying "kinds of intelligences" to present the core ideas to students.
  • Allow students to actively construct knowledge and meaning.
  • Include the use of educationally useful resources of various kinds.
  • Include planned social interactions that are developmentally appropriate, with particular emphasis on developing skills for organizing effective group processes.
  • Allow space for individual variation of individuals' initial knowledge and skills, learning style, and learning speed.
  • Integrate technology in various ways.
  • Include time for review and reflection to summarize what has been learned, reinforce relationship between learning activities and concepts, and how the lesson fits into the topic, course, year, and District Guidelines.

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How to Assess If Students Have Learned It

  • Allow a variety of modes, embodying varying "kinds of intelligences" for students to demonstrate their understanding and competence.
  • Have several "checkpoints" at which time student's progress can be measured against appropriate benchmarks.
  • Includes clear criteria (rubrics) for evaluation of student work.

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Building Our Conceptual Library
    Many districts are using a particular philosophy, system, or approach to guide their overall educational program. The CLASP group felt it would be very useful to collect a library of these.

    So, if you are using (or just aware of) a particularly insightful and useful set of conceptual tools, could you please send them to Mass Networks (email to Leslie Hazle at lhazle@massnetworks.org). We will assemble them and then post them on our website for everyone's edification.

    For example, if you find Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences particularly brilliant and useful, you would find something from one of his publications (or, if absolutely necessary, from someone else's publications) that gives a very short overview of Gardner's main points (i.e. a list and description of each of the intelligences) and send in that summary along with one or more citations of Gardner's work (or other material) which an interested person can read to learn more.

    Thanks.

    REMEMBER: The next CLASP meeting will be on January 28, 1999 at the MTC campus. We'll send out several reminders in January. If people don't mind, there has been a request to move the starting time up to 9:15 AM.

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