District Curriculum Frameworks: Development, Implementation, and Refinement
This professional development series includes workshops on developing a Scope and Sequence as well as Units of Study, and includes support for Implementation, Instructional Materials Analysis and Selection, and Curriculum Framework Refinement.
Scope and Sequence
Through collaborative processes, representative teachers, divided into grade-banded groups particular to content, will parse the standards into a document that outlines the relevant standards taught within units of study (organized by quarter).
The resulting document—and the processes learned—will provide both a foundation for continued work by teacher teams to design units of study and create common lessons, and a platform from which to build a system wide commitment to implementing the standards.
Units of Study
Representative teachers in the identified grade levels will develop Units of Study (by quarter) aligned to the standards identified in the Scope and Sequence document.
These units will include an overview of the unit (total number of days, student learning expectations for both the content and the processes to be learned, and essential questions the students should be able to answer by the end of the unit) and a clarification of the standards within a vertically aligned instructional program.
Implementation
In this phase, teacher team members and colleagues draw on the processes they learned during the Scope and Sequence and Units of Study work above to engage as independent teams in
- studying the Units of Study collaboratively,
- planning common lessons, and
- documenting any revisions/refinements necessary in the Units of Study.
Instructional Materials Analysis and Selection
In this professional development, participants learn by engaging in a structured process for examining available instructional materials through the lens of the standards. This vetting of resources will provide viable options to bolster the District Curriculum Framework with aligned supporting resources.
Curriculum Framework Refinement
In this professional development, representative teachers will implement the refinements necessary to strengthen the District Curriculum Framework—by analyzing the documentation they gathered through the collaborative process of implementing the curriculum framework, reflecting collaboratively (through the lenses of how well the framework aligns vertically and horizontally to the standards), and determining which refinements will strengthen the framework.