1. CCRS Quarterly Meeting 1 2014 - 2015 English Language Arts

2. Phases of CCRS Implementation
CCRS website
CCRS Self Assessment
Evaluation & Accountability
Awareness
Follow Up & Support
Implementation
Year one we were in the awareness phase and just trying to spread the word that we had new standards! We shared an overview of how the standards were set up, what the key shits were.
Year 2, last year, we were in the implementation phase. We spent the whole year learning about the 6 strands in the ELA CCRS and started to plan lessons.
This year we are in the Follow up and Support phase. We will assume that if you are here you have a lot of knowledge about year 1&2.
Regional Planning Team
Regional Support Staff (RSS)
Differentiated Support
District and school coaches
CCRS Team Professional Learning
Alabama Insight Tool
Global Scholar
Summer Teaching Academies

3. Alabama State Board of Education
Our state superintendent, Dr. Bice, has led the way in developing a new plan for our state. It is called Plan 2020.
Plan 2020, starting in 2012, is an 8-year plan outlined in 4-year segments.
There are four pillars to Plan 2020
- Alabama’s Learners
Alabama’s Support Systems
Alabama’s Professionals
Alabama’s Schools and Systems
You’re here as a part of developing Alabama’s professionals. Our goal is to provide research based professional growth opportunities based on individual and collective learning plans. As leaders in your school system, you also have a direct impact on the Alabama’s learners.
PLAN 2020

4. Outcomes for the Year
Effective Practices to Help Students Meet Standards
Tasks and questions of powerful teams:
Co-creating lessons- What learning experiences do our students need to reach the standards?
Co-creating assessments- How will we know if they have reached the standard?
Looking at student work- What does student work suggest about what they do and don’t understand and what will we need to do next?
We will spend a lot of time this year at these meetings co-creating lessons. We will be using our Equip rubric to guide us through this process.
How will we know if they have reached the standard? By formatively assessing daily! In session four last year we started talking about formative assessment and will continue to include it in each session this year.
How do we formatively assess? By looking at student work all the time, not just after the weekly test. Please understand that you are here to take this info. back and practice it in your own classrooms so you will be expected to bring back student work to share so we can all learn what our next steps should be.

5. Outcomes Participants will:
Discuss the data gathered from state and national implementation surveys.
Analyze a unit plan using the EQuIP Rubric.
Determine how the standards connect across multiple lessons to provide scaffolding during Tier One instruction in order to maximize student learning.

6. Outcome 1
Discuss the data gathered from state and national implementation surveys.

7. CCRS Implementation Team Survey
On a five-point scale (where 5 is “very prepared” and 1 is “not at all prepared”, how prepared are teachers to teach CCRS to the following groups of students? Students as a whole 92% English Language Learners 60% Students with Disabilities 61% Low-income Students 80% Academically At-Risk Students 74%
About 40% do not feel prepared to teach ELL students and Students with disabilities
Slides 15-22
20 minutes

8. CCRS Teacher/Administrator Survey
How prepared are teachers in your school to teach CCRS to the following groups of students? (from Very prepared to Not at all prepared) Students as a whole 81% English Language Learners 61% Students with Disabilities 64% Low-income Students 75% Academically At-Risk Students 75%
About 40% do not feel prepared to teach ELL students and Students with disabilities
Slides 15-22
20 minutes

9. Alabama’s Professional Needs Align with the National Research
Working with colleagues is the most useful support for implementing the standards.
Teachers feeling most comfortable tend to be those more frequently working with others to analyze student work, design curriculum, and create assessments.
Teachers in all disciplines are actively engaged in shifting literacy practices.
Teachers engaged in cross-discipline conversation about literacy are making greater shifts in their instruction.
When given the opportunity, teachers are owning the change by innovating and designing appropriate lessons and materials.
Last year's national NCLE study, Remodeling Literacy Learning: Make Room for What Works (see below), indicated that working together is working smarter—educators’ most powerful professional learning experiences come from working with their colleagues.
Nationwide, teachers feel ill-prepared to help their students achieve the new literacy standards.
Working with peers is the most valued support for standards implementation.
Time for working together in schools is decreasing.  
Most teachers have not had a voice in determining how standards are implemented in their schools.
Positive changes are occurring most where teachers are actively involved in the renovation.
Teachers feeling most comfortable tend to be those more frequently working with others to analyze student work, design curriculum, and create assessments.
Teachers in all disciplines are actively engaged in shifting literacy practices.
Teachers engaged in cross-discipline conversation about literacy are making greater shifts in their instruction.
When given the opportunity, teachers are owning the change by innovating and designing appropriate lessons and materials.

10. Outcome 2
Analyze a unit plan using the EQuIP Rubric.

11. Why is it important to develop unit plans?
Unit planning provides you with a sense of direction and organization that helps you and the class to make connections within a particular time period.
A unit plan helps you make difficult decisions about what to teach and how to teach it.
A unit plan keeps you on pace to reach your unit (and ultimately long-term) goals
A unit plan provides an opportunity to stimulate student interest through overarching content that is relevant to students. .
Unit planning provides you with a sense of direction and organization that helps you and the class to make connections within a particular time period.
We know that the brain is a pattern seeking organ that needs to make connections. The unit plan allows this to happen.
When teachers plan across a larger space of time, they have the opportunity to develop the connections and provide purposeful scaffolding. Ideas are connected to form the concept. A deep concept cannot always be developed in a single or even multiple lessons.
A unit plan helps make difficult decisions about what to teach and how to teach it. After
taking the time to develop a unit plan, you are less likely to be side-tracked by objectives,
lessons, or activities that do not advance your ultimate quest for academic achievement.
Tempting diversions will look much less appealing if you have your sights set on your students
achieving a particular set of goals in a particular four-to-six-week period.
A unit plan keeps you on pace to reach your unit (and ultimately long-term) goals. Your unit
plan, which should be referred to with almost daily frequency, is your point of reference when you
ask yourself, “Given where I want to be in two [or four or six] weeks, am I where I need to be now?
Am I spending too much time on certain skills and concepts given the other skills and concepts
that must be included in these X weeks, or X days?” Given the limited number of weeks, days,
and lessons in a unit, each moment becomes more precious, forcing you to pace yourself
appropriately in order to meet your end goals.
A unit plan provides an opportunity to stimulate student interest through overarching content
that is relevant to students. When you design your unit plan, consider what content will engage
your students given their interests and backgrounds. As Jere Brophy indicates in Tomorrow’s
Teachers, “whether in textbooks or in teacher-led instruction, information is easier to learn to
the extent that it is coherent (i.e., a sequence of ideas or events makes sense and the
relationships among ideas are made apparent). Content is most likely to be organized coherently
when it is selected in a principled way, guided by ideas about what students should learn from
studying the topic.” Your unit plan does precisely that—it creates discrete segments of learning
that have a cohesive unity. And, you will help engage your students in learning because unit
will have an overarching idea that is relevant and interesting to students.

12. Graphic
Let’s look at the rubric in a slightly different way. Last year we looked at the top part of each dimension as we made connections to various exemplary lessons. This year we are going deeper as we look at how the rubric can help us scaffold our students’ learning and strengthen their understanding across a unit.
Ask participants to look at each dimension, focusing on the bottom part. How will this deepen students’ understanding of the concepts and help them make necessary connections?
Review the top section of Dimension 1.
Read the bottom section of Dimension 1 and determine what additional thought needs to go into a unit that maximizes student learning.
Continue with each dimension, having a conversation between each.
Note to facilitators:
You want to bring the participants to the understanding that units provide opportunities for students to make much needed connections and take the learning deeper
Dimension 1: Participants should notice that all strands are included and that application and synthesis across lessons should be intentionally planned.
Dimension 2: There needs to be a balance of the shifts with scaffolding to help students develop their skills.
Dimension 3: This is a learning progression, supports are gradually removed as students deepen their understanding.
Dimension 4: There should be various assessments throughout a unit that are purposefully planned to inform both the teacher and the student about their progress. .

13. Unit Analysis Read the unit plan.
Using the rubric worksheet, determine if the unit meets the criteria in Dimension I.
In the blank beneath Dimension I, make notes about what was observed.
Place a check to the left of the bulleted item if the lesson plan meets the criteria listed.
Discuss your findings with a partner.
Handouts: EQuIP rubric with blank columns for writing notes, unit packet (Unit Overview, Lesson 12, “The Tell Tale Heart” “ I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain”)
Read the text first and then the lesson plans 1-5. (20 Minutes)
Note Facilitators should focus closely on group discussions to ensure participants acquire information provide on the EQuIP Review Feedback form.

14. Was the integration effective?
Table Discussion
How were reading, writing, speaking and listening integrated into the lesson?
Was the integration effective?
Were there missing Dimension I components?
Which item(s)?
Note to Facilitator
Model this one for participants.
The lesson plan clearly does not have the standards explicitly stated.
The participants should point this out very quickly during the discussion.
At this time, distribute copies of the standards for teachers to reference. (EACH REGION HAS A CLASSROOM SET OF THE ALABAMA COURSE OF STUDY ELA STANDARDS)
Take a few minutes to allow participants to work in partners to find and read the standards before going on.

15. LUNCH

16. Unit Analysis
Using the rubric, determine if the unit meets the criteria of the bulleted items in Dimension II.
In the blank beneath Dimension II, make notes of concerns/issues; list items needed for improvement to meet criteria of rubric.
Check to the left of the bulleted item if the lesson plan meets the criteria listed.
Participants will work in partnerships to complete dimension II, but both partners will need to jot notes on their own tool.
All shifts may not apply to these lessons.
Note Facilitators should focus closely on group discussions to ensure participants acquire information provide on the EQuIP Review Feedback form.

17. Table Discussion Were there missing Dimension II components?
Which item(s)?
What would need to be updated about the lesson to meet the criteria?

18. Unit Analysis
Using the rubric, determine if the unit meets the criteria of the bulleted items in Dimension III.
In the blank beneath Dimension III, make notes of concerns/issues; list items needed for improvement to meet criteria of rubric.
Check to the left of the bulleted item if the lesson plan meets the criteria listed.
Keep in mind, we are addressing some of your concerns from last year about special populations – EL, Special Education, struggling students, more advanced students.
As you are reading dimension III and thinking about the lesson, consider the students in your class that fall into this category. What instructional supports do you notice?
Note Facilitators should focus closely on group discussions to ensure participants acquire information provide on the EQuIP Review Feedback form.

19. Table Discussion Were there missing Dimension III components?
Which item(s)?
What would need to be updated about the lesson to meet the rubric criteria?
What scaffolds are visible?
What scaffolds are still needed?
Scaffolding - Always start with the top, as this is the level of thinking you want all students to reach. Remember that scaffolding does not mean “dumbing it down” for some students; it means providing the structures necessary for students to reach the highest levels of thinking.

20. Unit Analysis
Using the rubric, determine if the unit meets the criteria of the bulleted items in Dimension IV.
In the blank beneath Dimension IV, make notes of concerns/issues; list items needed for improvement to meet criteria of rubric.
Check to the left of the bulleted item if the lesson plan meets the criteria listed.
Remember we will focus each session on formative assessment. In your analysis were the students formatively assessed?

21. Table Discussion Were there missing Dimension IV components?
Which item(s)?
What would need to be updated about the lesson to meet the criteria?
Remind participants about the importance of formatively assessing all along so that scaffolding can happen.

22. 2-Squared Discussion How did the skills progress over the unit?
Text complexity
Writing
Assessments
How did the skills lead to
developing the concepts?
3. What evidence do you have
that students met the
standards?
Partners get with partners from another table and continue the discussion using the guiding questions to go deeper into the unit.

23. Outcome 3
Determine how the standards connect across multiple lessons to provide scaffolding during Tier One instruction in order to maximize student learning.

24. Curriculum Guide to the Alabama Course of Study: English Language Arts K-12
One tool that can be helpful as you consider the EL, special education and struggling students in your class is the Alabama
Curriculum Guide for English Language Arts.
Facilitators – Background Knowledge for facilitators.
The Curriculum Guides provide a series of prerequisite and enabling skills that may be taught to help students access grade-level content standards that were missed in an earlier grade.  
Teachers report that they use the Curriculum Guides to pre-asses skills to discover the content students do and do not know. 
If a small group of students, for example, requires additional knowledge/skills to understand grade-level content, the general and special education teachers can plan classroom instruction accordingly. 
Additionally, general and special education teachers use the Alabama Curriculum Guides to match student needs with evidence-based practices such as collaborative teaching, peer tutoring, and flexible instructional grouping. 
Alabama teachers report that the Curriculum Guides have helped to address the achievement gap often experienced by students with disabilities and with general education students with gaps in their learning.
Handouts from Curriculum Guide. These pages are some of the standards taught in the 9th grade unit.

25. Reflection/Ink Think What are the benefits to using a unit plan?
For your students
For you
For mastery of the standards
For formatively assessing learning
Ask participants to write their thoughts on sticky notes and place them on the charts around the room. Participants will carousel and read each of the charts.
Or do an ink think and have facilitators share some of the thoughts.

26. Prepared Graduate Defined
Possesses the knowledge and skills needed to enroll and succeed in credit-bearing, first-year courses at a two- or four- year college, trade school, technical school, without the need for remediation.
Possesses the ability to apply core academic skills to real-world situations through collaboration with peers in problem solving, precision, and punctuality in delivery of a product, and has a desire to be a life-long learner.
Keeping the prepared graduate in mind, let's take some time to think about our next steps.

27. Next Steps
Take the EQuIP rubric review tool back to your school and use it to analyze a unit of study from any content area.
Use the analysis results to determine what needs updating to meet the criteria of the unit.
Bring back findings to share with others.
Begin to use The Curriculum Guide to the Alabama Course of Study: English Language Arts K-12 to provide differentiated support for special populations in Tier One instruction.