+ Literacy Curriculum Development: Differentiation within a UbD Framework Presented by: Bob O’Donnell, Joyce Young Hempfield School District

+ “Every journey does begin with a single step. The journey to successfully differentiated or personalized classrooms will succeed only if we carefully take the first step – ensuring a foundation of best- practice curriculum and instruction.” Carol Ann Tomlinson

Best Practice Foundation Essential Question: What are the “best practices” when it comes to teaching reading? READING FIRST Phonemic Awareness Phonics Fluency Vocabulary Comprehension

READING NEXT Professional development Formative assessment Summative assessment Direct, explicit instruction Effective instructional principles embedded in the content Motivation and self-directed learning Strategic tutoring Diverse text Intensive writing Technology component

Research Findings on Effective Strategy Instruction Comprehension monitoring Question answering and generation Graphic organizers / text structures Main idea and summarizing Activating prior knowledge / Prediction Cooperative learning Combining more than one strategy Embedding instruction in content classrooms NRP, 2000, Snow 2002

How do we move from research to creating rich curriculum that reflects best practices AND impacts student learning/achievement ? Why does this matter? Hempfield’s First Steps…

It matters because “quality classrooms evolve around powerful knowledge that works for each student. They require quality curriculum and quality instruction based on our current best understandings of teaching and learning.” Tomlinson and McTighe, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design

+ Add this … Not this Independent reading Teacher modeling Teaching reading as a process Writing before and after reading Use of reading in the content field Choice Round-robin oral reading Teaching isolated skills on worksheets Teaching reading as a single, one-step act Little or no writing Grouping by reading level Measuring success of reading program only by test scores Teacher selects all the reading materials

+ Understanding by Design frames our curriculum process because “there’s no such thing as the perfect lesson, the perfect day in school, or the perfect teacher. For teachers and students alike, the goal is not perfection but persistence in the pursuit of understanding the important things.” Tomlinson and McTighe, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding

+ Our journey began four years ago and continues today… Restructured our Middle School leveling practices Articulated LA curriculum at the MS and HS levels Staff Dev. for Differentiation Backward design from MS to grade 6 4-Powerful Strategy Units K-6 Continuum of growth and change

Four Big Comprehension Strategies

+ Expectations for Reading Instruction Beginning Developing Fully Implemented

+ Components to Reading Instruction Reading - Strategy Focus Writing Including Grammar Word Study Vocabulary Spelling Phonics

+ Ongoing Refinement Mapping Solution EdInsight Lesson Topic concept

And in the End… Deeper understanding requires a reader to go beyond the author’s message, assimilating the text experience into his or her own background and in the process, creating a new message. To move deeper into the text implies that readers are moving deeper into their own minds. - Linda J. Dorn and Carla Soffos (2005)