1. How to leverage the Ela content leader modules
Rebecca Stephenson – Director of Assessment, Accountability, PD, and IT
Alisa Brown – Professional Development Coach
Pointe Coupee Parish Public Schools

2. Objectives

3. Check in

4. About us

5. Alisa brown District Professional Development Coach
Current Cohort of ELA Content Leaders

6. Rebecca Stephenson
Director of Assessment, Accountability, Professional Development, & IT
Participated in Year 1 ELA Content Leader
Redelivered district-wide
– Leveraging in PLCs

7. Our journey I came in 2016, the district was a D.
2018 Guidebooks implemented for a full year. Overall, we saw growth, but not like we expected. I knew the research, what was going on? What were we doing wrong?

8. We knew the research
One study found that switching curriculum to boost achievement was, on average, nearly 40 times more cost-effective than reducing class size to bolster student outcomes. This is in part due to curriculum’s power to affect meaningful student growth, rivaling even the impact that teacher effectiveness has on student performance. 
- LearnZillion, Nov. 2018
“The single most important initiative a school or district can engage in to raise student achievement is a guaranteed and viable curriculum”
Marzano, 2003

9. SUPPORT So what happened?
We were not giving our teachers the support that they needed. Nor did we give the principals what they needed.
I was sitting the Content Leader Training thinking, “How can get this PD back to all teachers in my district?”

10. 2019 Preliminary results 63% to 85% Basic and Above
39% to 49% Mastery and Above
AI: 61.9 to 82.5
63% to 85% Basic and Above
39% to 49% Mastery and Above
Increase of 20.6!

11. Our Plan
So what did we do to get here?

12. How to do it Get your Leaders on Board Make a Schedule
Research on Shifts – CLM1
Annotate Guidebook Lesson
Give Walk-Through Expecations
Make a Schedule
Train your Teachers
Support your Teachers in PLCs

13. 1. Educate your leaders

14. Why?
Here are five essential insights supported by reading research that educators should know—but all too often don’t: 
Grouping students by reading level is poorly supported by research, yet pervasive. For example, 9 out of 10 U.S. 15-year-olds attend schools that use the practice.
Many teachers overspend instructional time on “skills and strategies” instruction, an emphasis that offers diminishing returns for student learning, according to a Learning First and the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy report this year.

15. Why? Cont…
Students’ background knowledge is essential to reading comprehension. Curricula should help students build content knowledge in history and science, in order to empower reading success.
Daily, systematic phonics instruction in early grades is recommended by the National Institute for Literacy, based on extensive evidence from the National Reading Panel.
Proven strategies for getting all kids—including English-language learners, students with IEPs, and struggling readers—working with grade- level texts must be employed to ensure equitable literacy work.
“We Have a National Reading Crisis” (Education Week, June 2019)

16. Experiencing the shifts

17. Annotate a Guidebook Lesson
Compare to the COMPASS Rubric

18. Walk-through expectations
What should they be looking for?
Create in Google Forms

19. 2. Make your schedule

20. TIPS: Be creative with funding Utilize built-in PD dates
Leave at least 6 weeks betweek Modules 3 to 4 and 5 to 6
Give an overview day to ALL new teachers before beginning Module 1!

21. 3. Train your teachers

22. Our PD then vs. now
Initial training on how to navigate LearnZillion
Collaborations focused on assessment guides, rubrics, and planning
Individualized walk-throughs and feedback
Engaged in ALL 6 modules
Dug deep into the shifts and research
Understood the backwards design of the Guidebooks
Unpacked unit assessments
Collaborated with peers
TEAMBUILDING

23. 4. Support your teachers Through PLCs
We noticed that as the teachers were engaging in amazing learning with each other, unpacking their units, looking at student work in a new way… there wasn’t any follow through at the school level. PLCs were still compliance, looking at unreated data, etc. We needed to do something to support our work.

24. https://tinyurl.com/PCPSBContentLeader
Couldn’t do it all ourselves… partnered with a vendor (SPDG Funds)
Leaders engaged in learning thorugh walk-throughs and PLCs
Activity
Access “Unpacking the Cold Read” through hard copy or website
Discuss: What do you notice and what do you wonder about how this can be used?