Humble ISD Curriculum Development
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
June 24, 2014
Purpose of Report: To provide an update to the Board of Trustees information regarding the Curriculum Development for Content Areas.
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According to the Curriculum Audit Conducted by Phi Delta Kappa International Curriculum Management Audit Center during the 2010-2011 school year and reported June 2011, the following Recommendations noted in the Summary Report for initiating system-wide improvements:
RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendation 3: Develop and implement coordinated planning processes that
produce congruent district and campus plans, and link the planning for curriculum
management, staff development, student assessment, program evaluation, and
budget development with those plans.
Recommendation 4:Develop, document, and implement a comprehensive
curriculum management plan. Revise curriculum resources/documents to meet audit criteria and provide improved quality control, ensure deep alignment, and support effective delivery. Develop and utilize single source primary curriculum guides, and streamline online documents to guide instruction and assessment. Monitor the delivery of the written curriculum for congruence with district expectations.
Recommendation 5:Implement actions focused on eliminating barriers to equitable access to district college readiness courses and programs to reduce the achievement gap. Examine existing staffing practices and school boundaries to balance student demographics regarding ethnicity and socioeconomic status.
After close examination of Humble ISD’s curriculum documents it was difficult to ascertain that they were from the same school district. The district curriculum documents did not have a common structure or evidence of an expectation. After meeting with parents and listening to their concerns regarding the curriculum being “lockstep,” a close examination of the documents revealed one elementary content area had written scripted lessons. Principals also voiced concerns regarding the curriculum documents not meeting the needs of students and the documents were difficult for teachers to follow.
The first step of the curriculum realignment process involved identifying the need to make adjustments and a plan to implement. A plan was created to ensure all District Curriculum Coordinators, Academic Lead Teachers, Principals and Assistant Superintendents have the same understanding of curriculum. During February 2014, the curriculum coordinators and directors received two days of training from Dr. Crain in curriculum development. Once the district administration team had established a common understanding for curriculum, the Academic Lead Teachers received a day of training in curriculum development so they had a common understanding of the curriculum development process and the common language. Finally, the Principals and Assistant Superintendents received a day of training in understanding curriculum.
The guiding questions for each training were as follows:
1. What is curriculum?
2. What’s wrong with using the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) as a district/campus curriculum? Why aren’t they sufficient?
3. How do you use the TEKS as a framework for developing district specific curriculum?
§ Create a 12-K Vertical Alignment Document
§ Create “Big Bundles” on a Time Line
4. Who is responsible for:
§ Creating the curriculum?
§ Monitoring implementation of curriculum?
Dr. Crain and I met with the curriculum coordinators for each content area to review the curriculum development plan, gather input to ensure a common understanding of the process, review updated documents and answer any questions regarding the process and documents.
The two areas identified to go through the curriculum realignment process first were Mathematics and Reading English Language Arts. The Mathematics was chosen because grade levels Kindergarten through eighth will implement new Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) during the 2014-2015 school year and they were also receiving new state resources. The Reading/English Language Arts was identified for curriculum revision because the elementary and secondary curriculum documents were not in alignment and the formatting was very different from each other.
As noted in Humble ISD Curriculum Management Plan, “Curriculum is a set of standards based, non-negotiable, challenging, and relevant learner outcomes that guide decisions about teaching and learning. The written curriculum is the set of knowledge, skills, and processes that teachers are to teach and students are to learn in Humble ISD schools…”
District Improvement Plan:
District Goal: Each student is on track to be college and career ready by graduation.
District Improvement Plan Strategy:
· Ensure alignment of the district's curriculum, assessment and instruction, and operations of the school system that influence student learning. (5.1.2, Line #1):
· Increase rigor, consistency and equity across all programs (1.3.1, Line #1)
· Ensure campus instruction and assessment are aligned to state and district curriculum standards. (1.2.1, Line #4)
· Ensure alignment of tested and taught curriculum. (1.3.1, Line #2)
· Students that are limited English proficient need additional instructional support. (1.1.1, Line #5)
The Curriculum Development Process
The Humble ISD’s curriculum writing process is designed to promote higher student achievement by engaging District staff in the study and implementation of best practices in teaching and learning. The curriculum writing teams consist of campus and district staff, who work collaboratively to develop, implement, and evaluate the district curriculum. The following process components for curriculum writing foster thoughtful planning to continually improve instruction. This plan articulates periodic review of curriculum and major or minor changes to scope, sequence, and content.
The Major Elements of Curriculum Development:
· Development of the TEKS Vertical Alignment Document. The TEKS lack specificity in both the Content Standard and Performance Standard.
· Creating an Instructional Framework (Scope and Sequence of Units) with the following:
o Organize the aligned student expectations into “big bundles” – on a time line (9 weeks or discreet number of days) and create Student Performance Indicator to clarify the Performance Standard. The TEKS are not organized into rational, coherent units of instruction with recommended time lines.
o Marrying process Student expectations to content Student Expectations
o Creating Student Performance Indicators
o Recommending Aligned Resources
· Year at a Glance
· Bundles at a Glance
Let me take this opportunity to share all that our curriculum development teams have accomplished this far:
Reading English Language Arts Progress
Reading English Language Arts is the only content area there are over 100 Student Expectations that are similar from grade level to grade level. This team worked 11-K to vertically and horizontally align.
- From March to May a TEKS Vertical Alignment Team developed the TEKS Vertical Alignment Documents by adding specificity and all state assessed questions from STAAR; this ensures each teachers has a strong understanding of the standards and the depth and complexity. The team did a significant amount of work in a short period of time.
- Teachers/ALTS reviewed the work of the TEKS Vertical Alignment team who had added specificity to the TEKS. The review of the work occurred May 19-21. The ELAR curriculum development team walked each standard back in the TEKS Vertical Alignment Document and discussed at each grade level the academic language to ensure it matched vertically. “Curriculum has a high common floor that never has a celling,” so each grade level decided for Humble ISD what the “such as” from the state would include. On May 22, 2014 for half a day grades 3-K added the phonics components.
- The walking back of the standards continued during May 28-29. The afternoon of May 29th. the team began the process of developing the Instructional Framework and finalized May 30. Then the team worked on mapping the standards out for the year.
A significant amount of time was spent teaching and learning what curriculum is and is not, what is and is not included in district curriculum documents. It is imperative that the curriculum development team have a common understanding. The team has more team standards than any other core area and more team members.
The TEKS Vertical Alignment Document for Reading and Writing was completed last week and sent to Documenting to be formatted.
Elementary has been working diligently. The fifth grade completed the first marking period June 19, 2014. The elementary team is on target to complete the first nine weeks curriculum by June 26, 2014.
June 23-26, 2014: Dr. Crain will work with the team as long as needed to develop the Instructional Focus Documents for the first marking period. I too will be with the team each day. The plan is to have curriculum documents complete for the first 9 weeks and sent to documenting to finalize formatting by July 11. The Instructional Framework, Year at a Glance, Bundles at a Glance for the first nine weeks and the TEKS Vertical Alignment Document for the year are to be uploaded into Eduphoria for the teachers by August 1, 2014.
The second marking period will begin construction in early August. A discussion will be held with the team to collaboratively finalize timeline.
Future Work:
September 22-24 Dr. Crain is scheduled to work with the curriculum development team to add the performance indicators.
Mathematics Progress
The curriculum coordinators worked with a small team to add specificity, examples and released STAAR items to the TEKS Vertical Alignment document.
The Mathematics team worked with Dr. Crain on the following dates:
April 28, 2014, Dr. Crain worked with the High School Curriculum development team on the TEKS Vertical Alignment documents. Then the District Secondary Curriculum Coordinator continued to work with the High School Team to complete the TEKS Vertical Alignment document.
Grades: Algebra 1-K: On April 29, 2014 Dr. Crain worked with a team of teachers to walk the standards back Algebra 1 to Kindergarten. Then on April 30 the District Curriculum Coordinators worked with the curriculum development team to complete the TEKS Vertical Alignment document.
May 16, 2014, Dr. Crain worked with the team to develop Instructional Framework for grades Algebra 1-Kindergarten. The District Curriculum Coordinators have continued to work with their curriculum development teams on May 19-20 and June 23-26 to ensure the first semester (marking periods 1 and 2) is completed by June 30, 2014.
May 23, 2014, Dr. Crain worked with the High School curriculum development team to develop Instructional Framework. Then the Secondary Curriculum Coordinator continued to work with the team to complete the curriculum documents on May 27-28. The team is finalizing all the curriculum documents by June 30, 2014 to be sent to document for formatting.
Progress Report for Elementary Mathematics:
K-5 Vertical Alignment with specificity for each standard.
-Created a plan for each grade levels sequence of standards, K-5 complete
-Instructional Framework documents have been created for each unit of all grades from K-5. All Instructional Framework documents have standards with specificity and the marrying of the process standards with the readiness and supporting standards with the exception of 3 units in Kindergarten. About 50% of the -Instructional Framework Documents have academic language.
Plan for curriculum work the week of June 23-25:
· Complete Kindergarten marrying of the process and content standards
· Add misconceptions and resources for grades K-5 Instructional Framework documents for Bundles 1 and 2.
· Add the remaining academic language to the Instructional Frameworks
Once all of the above is complete, the District Curriculum Coordinators will complete the YAGs.
Progress Report for Secondary Math
The following documents are completed:
· YAG's - 6, 7, 8, Alg 1, Alg 2, Geom, MMA
· BAG's - 6, 7, 8, Alg 1, Alg 2, Geom, MMA
· Specificities - 6,7,8,Alg 1, Alg 2, Geom, MMA
· VAM 5th - 8th
· VAM 6th - Alg 1
The following documents are under currently construction:
· IFD's - 6, 7, 8, Alg 1, Alg 2, Geom, MMA
· VAM 6th - Geom
Future Work:
September 3, 2014: Dr. Crain will work with the elementary and secondary curriculum development team to add Performance Indicators to the Instructional Framework.
Social Studies Progress
The TEKS Vertical Alignment documment for K,1,2,3 and 4/7 have been completed for Social Studies. The remaining documents are scheduled for completion by the summer of 2015.
Social Studies began the process in the second semester with the intent to roll out 2015-2016. The Social Studies will be going through state adoption of instructional materials during 2014-2015 school year.
Due to social studies standards not being aligned 12-K the alignment for curriculum development is as follows to ensure alignment between the standards:
3-K, 7/4, 5/8/US History.6/World History/World Geography.
Grades 4/7: The District Curriculum Coordinator worked with a small team to add specificity and examples to the TEKS Vertical Alignment document. Then a team of teachers was brought in on April 29-30 to walk the standards back 4/7. Dr. Crain worked with the team for half of the first day, April 29th and then the District Curriculum Coordinator continued the process and completed the aligned TEKS Vertical Alignment document April 30, 2014.
Grades 3-K: The District Curriculum Coordinator worked with a small team to add specificity and examples to the TEKS Vertical Alignment document. Then a team of teachers was brought in on May 1-2 to walk the standards back grades 3-Kindergarten. Dr. Crain worked with the team for half of the first day, May 1 and then the District Curriculum Coordinator continued the process and completed the aligned TEKS Vertical Alignment document May 2, 2014.
Future Plans:
Grades: 7/4, 3-Kindergarten: July 15 Dr. Crain will work with the team to develop Instructional Framework and then the District Curriculum Coordinator will complete the process July 15-17.
Grades: 5/8/US History, 6/World History/World Geography: The District Curriculum Coordinator is working with a small team to add specificity and examples to the TEKS Vertical Alignment document. Then a team of teachers will be invited to provide input and walk the standards back. Dr. Crain will work with the team September 2 and then the District Curriculum Coordinator will complete the process with the team to align the TEKS Vertical Alignment document September 2-4.
Grades: 6/World History/World Geography: Dr. Crain will work with the curriculum development team to create Instructional Focus Documents for the year. He will model on September 30th. Then the District Curriculum Coordinator will complete the process with the team October 1-2.
Grades: 5/8/US History: Dr. Crain will work with the curriculum development team to create Instructional Focus Documents for the year. He will model on October 6th. Then the District Curriculum Coordinator will complete the process with the team October 1-2.