Setting Up For a Year of Learning

Here we are again, poised to open our doors to a new batch of learners on Monday. This year, the batch of learners needs to include the middle school English Language Arts teachers as well, while we launch the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) writing standards. Over the past month, I immersed myself in leadership training, learning techniques and thinking through how to help the department in this journey.

In true Understanding by Design fashion, I identified our goals:

1. Become familiar with the CCSS writing standards and related language standards, including noticing what was similar and different with our last set of standards as well as noticing what elements built up from year to year within the CCSS strands (unpacking the standards).
2. Identify and understand how to use the new Units of Study in Writing (Heinemann, 2014) on-demand performance assessments and learning progressions as tools to identify student strengths and needs (prepare for student data analysis). 
   
3. Become familiar with the new Units of Study in Writing (UoSW), including mapping out the sequence of units across the year and across curricular areas, noticing similarities and differences with our last set of units, and tips to lift the level of our teaching in those units (prepare for new teaching).
4. Make a departmental goal that guides our learning together and supports our efforts of professional growth as well as impacts student learning (goal setting).
5. Gather student data and analyze it so that it informs our teaching in ways that improve student learning (student data analysis).
6. Teach the new units, reflect and get feedback on our practice, and look for improvement in student learning (implementation of curriculum).

Our teacher inservice week focused on setting up Professional Learning Teams across all school divisions, during which we learned a cycle of continuous improvement as a way to work in our PLTs:

1. Analyze student data for areas of strength and areas of need
2. Identify a curriculum standard related to the area of need and unpack it
3. Identify a student and teacher goal to address the area of need
4. Professional learning to address the area of need
5. Implement new learning and gather assessment data
6. Analyze student data to see if student need improved

This continuous improvement cycle fits well with my goals for the department. Once we've decided the year-long calendar, we can gather student data through on-demand assessments before the unit starts, unpack the related genre-based writing standard for the unit we're about to launch, and make our student and teacher goal. We can spend our professional learning step digging into the unit itself as well as other resources such as Pathways to the Common Core and TCRWP videos. We can implement the unit in the classroom, get feedback from peer observation, and bring student data back to the team for further analysis and reflection.

I am excited by this school-wide initiative, and how it supports the work we teachers need to do this year. We have always been a strong team, and this protocol will help us become even better.