1. Social Studies Collaboration: Special Populations Quarterly Meeting 3 February 2015
CONTENT AREA FACILITATOR: Introduce yourself and the State Special Education Specialist and the ESL/ELL persons in the session. (You may need to poll to see if ESL is in the session).
Explain that during this session the Special Education Specialist will be collaborating (assisting) with you (the Content Area Specialist) on today.
After you introduce yourselves, please have your participants number off.
EXAMPLE: All of the number 1’s, I’d like for you to sit at this table to my far right. All of the number 2’s, I’d like for you to sit at this table to my far left and so forth.
Explain to the participants that they have been placed in these groups because they will be working together, thinking together, and hashing out some scenarios together, on today.
Begin your PowerPoint presentation.

2. Opening Session Prepared Graduate-College/Work Ready
Words from Dr. Bice
Plan 2020
Stay the Course
Graduation Rate 86% (4 Years ahead of schedule)
Prepared Graduate-College/Work Ready
Absolutes
Standards-teach to standards
Clearly articulate curriculum
Align & implement curriculum-Road Map
Formative & summative assessments
Objectives
Perform at or above proficiency and continuous improvement
All students succeed (Gap Closure)
All students graduate
All student prepared

3. Team Planning
Graduation Rates (GED program counts toward graduation rate)
DCHS=93%
Keith=93%
SSHS=90%
State average=86%
ACT Aspire (actaspire.pearson.com) password=actaspire
10th graders will take ACT Aspire
Training manuals and item specs
Sample test

4. CCRS Quarterly Meeting #3 – Review
Special Populations
Outcomes
Integrate instruction Supports
Dimension 3-Rubric
Scaffold instruction
Standards
1.4 State content standards
2.7 Supportive environment
5.3 PLC

5. Prepared Graduate
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.
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.
CONTENT AREA FACILITATOR SAYS
Remember, that our ultimate goal is to graduate students who are prepared to succeed when they enter college or trade/technical school without the need for remediation, ready to apply academic skills to real-world situations.
This preparation starts from DAY ONE of a child’s education! 5

6. Session Outcome Participants will:
Understand how to effectively integrate appropriate instructional supports to differentiate instruction with struggling learners, ELL, and special populations.
Understand how to scaffold instruction in an explicit and systematic manner relying heavily on prior learning to help make connections to new information and skills.
Co-create lessons from what has been learned.
CONTENT AREA FACILITATOR SAYS:
We will become familiar with how to integrate the appropriate instructional supports to differentiate instruction with our struggling learners, ESL/ELL, and special populations We will “briefly” look at Dimension III of the EQuIP Rubric, which calls for integrating the appropriate supports for instruction.
We will be looking at scaffolding instruction and a variety of instructional techniques to employ.
Last, you were asked to bring a lesson that you have already taught or you plan to teach in the next couple of weeks, in order to, revamp this lesson with the “new learning” you will have gained today from this CCRS training session. We are going to create lessons in the afternoon session.

7. Alabama Quality Teaching Standards
1.4-Designs instructional activities based on state content standards 2.7-Creates learning activities that optimize each individual’s growth and achievement within a supportive environment 5.3-Participates as a teacher leader and professional learning community member to advance school improvement initiatives
CONTENT AREA FACILITATOR SAYS
You are all here today for specific professional learning. Let’s not forget that today’s learning aligns with the Alabama Quality Teaching Standards. You may want to include some of this as part of your Professional Learning Plan for the year.
FACILITATOR: Read the Alabama Quality Teaching Standards and connect them to what we will do today.
1.4-Our work today is centered around the content standards. The instructional activities we engage in are designed to meet the literacy standards.
2.7-One purpose of CCRS is to create a supportive environment for us to learn together.
5.3- The main reason you are here today is because you are a teacher leader, and you can influence CCRS implementation in your school or district.

8. Who Do We Have In Our Classrooms?
CONTENT AREA FACILITATOR SAYS
Who Do We Have In Our Classrooms?
We must always know our individual students.
We should always have access to our special education, ESL, and special populations teachers.
Know your individual students.
Have access to your special education and ESL teachers.

9. OUTCOME 1
Understand how to effectively integrate appropriate instructional supports to differentiate instruction with struggling learners, ELL, and special populations.
CONTENT AREA FACILITATOR SAYS
All to often we reach into our ONE SIZE FITS ALL bag to design or teach a lesson and we call it differentiation.
Christa van Kraayenoord says that “It comprises modifications to the curriculum, teaching structures, and teaching practices in combination to ensure that instruction is relevant, flexible and responsive, leading to successful achievement and the development of students as self-regulated learners.” (Christa van Kraayenoord, 1997)
What do we mean by differentiated instruction? It is an approach that benefits all students. It is a….
• a BLEND of whole class, group, and individual instruction.
• curriculum, instruction, and assessment that is carefully designed to meet the needs of all students
• MULTIPLE approaches to content, process, and product.
• a way of thinking about and organizing instruction.
• all students engaged in respectful and challenging tasks.
• Student-centered.

10. What Is Fair Isn't Always Equal
Looking at the slide above ask:
Is the first picture fair? Then ask:
Is the second picture a better perception of what is fair?
Remember, what is fair isn’t always equal!!!

11. What Is Fair Isn't Always Equal
Another Differentiation Means Unbalanced Workloads: Another myth is that teachers differentiate instruction and assessments by changing the workload or difficulty of the task. Example: If a student is an unusually gifted reader, teachers don't give him longer or more books to read. If he's really that smart and teachers give him additional tasks to do, he'll learn to play dumb. Instead, teachers increase the challenge of the reading, pushing the student to use reading and the author's ideas in new ways. If possible, teachers try to keep the task roughly the same for students because it was something the teachers deemed important to instruction. If we change that task, however, it's fine, but we have to make sure it's not an increase in the workload. We don't ask advanced students to complete something in two days that we allow the rest of the class an entire week to do. Are there times we allow struggling students to do a representatively, yet subset of social studies questions that the rest of the class is doing in full just because it will take these struggling students longer to complete them? Sure. We believe we can build on the concepts down the road. Right now, we're just working on concept attainment. For example, teachers who are differentiating instruction sometimes tell some students to not do homework others are doing. Homework is meant to reinforce, practice, extend, and prepare, not to learn new concepts from scratch. Teachers can re-teach partial-understanding students tomorrow and give them an alternative assignment that combines practice from today and tomorrow's concepts. What is fair isn't always equal. At every turn, principals and teachers are not out to be equal. Instead, we are pushing to be fair and developmentally appropriate. This is sometimes hard to accept, but it enables schools to push students farther, thereby achieving more than they would if schools practiced only one-size-fits-all pedagogy.
Are there times that we allow struggling students to do a representatively, yet limited subset of social studies questions or concepts than the rest of the class is doing in full just because it will take these struggling students longer to complete them?

12. Teachers Who Differentiate Instruction Regularly Ask Themselves These Questions:
Are we willing to teach in whatever way is necessary for students to learn best, even if that approach doesn’t match our own preferences?
Do we have the courage to do what works, not just what’s easiest?
Do we actively seek to understand our students’ knowledge, skills, and talents so we can provide an appropriate match for their learning needs? And once we discover their strengths and weaknesses, do we actually adapt our instruction to respond to their needs?
Do we continually build a large and diverse repertoire of instructional strategies so we have more than one way to teach?
Do we organize our classrooms and our lessons for students’ learning or for our teaching?
Do we ceaselessly self-analyze and reflect on our lessons— searching for ways to improve?
Do we regularly close the gap between knowing what to do and really doing it?
Turn and Talk Activity
Ask Participants:
Read the Questions on the slide.
Which question resonates with you?
Turn and talk to a partner.
Share Out.
Go over #4 and #6 first.
Come back to #3 and rap it up.
From Differentiated Instruction for School Leaders, NASSP, 2010

13. Quick Reference: Differentiated Lesson Planning Sequence
Steps to Take Before Designing the Learning Experiences:
1. Identify your essential understandings, questions, benchmarks, objectives, skills, standards, and/or learner outcomes.
2. Identify your students with unique needs, and get an early look at what they will need in order to learn and achieve.
3. Design your formative and summative assessments.
4. Design and deliver your pre-assessments based on the summative assessments and identified objectives.
Adjust assessments or objectives based on your further thinking discovered while designing the assessments.
Design the learning experiences for students based on pre-assessments, your knowledge of your students, and your expertise with the curriculum, cognitive theory, and students at this stage of human development.
Let the participants know these are things they may already be doing.
From Differentiated Instruction for School Leaders, NASSP, 2010

14. Helpful Resources We Will Use
EQuIP Rubric, Dimension III
Curriculum Guide to the Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies
Lesson Planning Tool
WIDA Performance Definitions/I Can Do Descriptors
Instructional Strategies Packets-Hand out During CCRS#3
ON YOUR TABLES ARE SOME HELPFUL RESOURCES WE WILL BE USING TODAY.
Dimension III of the EQuIP Rubric (Blue Handout)
The Curriculum Guides (2-3 per session handout—Participants can use their ipads, laptops, iphones, etc. to access a copy)
A Lesson Planning Tool (We are not saying you must use this format by any means. We are just using it as a model for this session.)
The WIDA “I Can Do…Descriptors that ESL/ELL use.
The instructional strategies packet (We have used during several prior sessions.)

15. Graphic Now, let’s take a look at Dimension III of the EQuIP Rubric:
Content Facilitators: Remind the participants that units or longer lessons provide opportunities for students to make much needed connections and take the learning deeper. However, the rubric is a tool for teachers to check their lesson plans against. What we did with the rubric at the last CCRS session is not what we expect a teacher to do every time she/he prepares a lesson. This tool provides teachers with a way to think about the new standards and can serve as a reminder as they plan.
Under Dimension III, Instructional Supports:
• Cultivates student interest and engagement in reading, writing, and speaking about texts.
• Addresses instructional expectations and is easy to understand and use.
• Provides all students with multiple opportunities to engage with text of appropriate complexity for the grade level; includes appropriate scaffolding so that students directly experience the complexity of the text.
• Focuses on challenging sections of text(s) and engages students in a productive struggle through discussion questions and other supports that build toward independence.
• Integrates appropriate supports in reading, writing, listening and speaking for students who are ELL, have disabilities, or read well below the grade level text band.
• Provides extensions and/or more advanced text for students who read well above the grade level text band.
Remember, lessons are organized in a meaningful way that allows students to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the lesson. The lesson format is usually organized into three parts: Before Strategy/Engage; During Strategy/Explore, Explain; and After Strategy/Explain, Extend

16. To the Alabama Course of Study
A Helpful Resource
Curriculum Guide
To the Alabama Course of Study
__________________
Social Studies
Grades K-12
STATE SPECIAL EDUCATION SPECIALIST (May wish to elaborate.): HOLD UP TO SHOW.
Don’t forget another Instructional Support tool we’ve talked about that can be helpful as you consider the ESL, Special Education, and struggling students in your classrooms is the Alabama Curriculum Guide for Social Studies.
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. The Curriculum Guides begin at 2 grade levels tracing the prerequisite skills.
Content Facilitator Ask: “How did you use the curriculum guide to provide support for special populations or any struggler in Tier one instruction?” “If you have not had a chance to use it yet, how might you use it in the future to support and scaffold your instruction?”
Curriculum Guides

17. Content Area Specialist Ask: How many of you have been using the Insight Tool to plan lessons?
Please explain what the Insight Tool can do such as:
You can type in the Keyword block a concept, vocabulary term, or historical term and it will show the first time the term was used, in what grade, how and what the standard at the grade level called for.
It will tell the teacher from the Evidence of Attainment column what students should be able to do at a particular grade level.
It also has a teacher vocabulary and in some cases a student vocabulary column.
It has a column for the knowledge and skills students should acquire at a certain grade level.
And there are 4 additional columns left for your LEAs to add more social studies content pertinent to your district.
Can everyone access the Insight Tool if you do not have a certain password? Yes. Some administrators in your district may have special passwords.
However, if you go onto ALEX Select Personal Workspace.
Select Create New Account, and complete the information.
You will receive a confirmation with a link; CLICK on it.
Update your Profile and CLICK “Update Account.”
CLICK on your Personal Workspace.
Click on the Insight Tool button. You will have access to it.

18. Reminder of Lesson Planning and Phases of a Lesson
Lesson Phases
Student Engagement
Assess/Evaluate
Before Strategy/Engage
________________________
Activate Prior Knowledge; Build Background Knowledge; Generate Essential Questions; Make Predictions; Discuss Essential Vocabulary; Establish Purpose for Lesson;
Other ___________________
Read, Write, Talk, Listen, and Investigate (100%)
During Strategy/Explore, Explain
__________________________
Interact with Content; Verify and Formulate Predictions; Self-Monitor Comprehension; Construct Graphic Organizers; Summarize Content; Use Mental Imagery; Integrate New Information with Prior Knowledge;
Other __________________
After Strategy/Explain, Extend
Reflect on Content of Lesson; Evaluate Predictions; Examine Essential Questions; Justify, Deliberate, and Evaluate Conclusions of Self and Others; Retell or Summarize; Demonstrate Proper Use and Understanding of Vocabulary; Other ___________________
The Lesson Planning Tool is a YELLOW handout.
Content Area Specialist Please Explain:
Phases of the Lesson Column
The Student Engagement Column (TWIRL);
And the Assess/Evaluation column (what the teacher is doing to formatively assess the student learning).

19. Outcome # 2
Understand how to scaffold instruction in an explicit and systematic manner relying heavily on prior learning to help make connections to new information and skills.
Content Area Specialist

20. Reconstruction and Its Social Impact
Mrs. Jenkins’ daily outcome, “Explain how social changes that occurred during Reconstruction impacted the U.S.”
Let’s read the scenario of Mrs. Jenkins sixth grade class.
After reading the scenario, discuss within your group the content which is being taught and the strategies employed.
Let’s examine the Student Engagement and the Evaluation sections of the lesson plan.
Discuss in your group the following scenario:
Sixth grader Ambrosia is two grade levels behind in reading and she has a learning disability. How would you scaffold this lesson for this student?
Content Area Specialist
Today, we’re going to examine and deconstruct a great lesson to see what we may sometimes overlook when planning and teaching a lesson. We will evaluate the components of this lesson to see if it meets the needs of all students in our classrooms. We will also reconstruct this lesson to include some students that may possibly be struggling readers or limited readers such as those considered Special Ed., ESL, or other special populations.
Have participants discuss the following scenario:
Sixth grader Ambrosia is two grade levels behind in reading and she has a learning disability. How would you scaffold this lesson for this student?
Ask: What instructional supports would you consider for this student?

21. Activity Directions for Reconstruction and Its Social Impact
a) Go through the Student Engagement column. Discuss within your group the question, “Can Ambrosia do each or any of these steps in the lesson?” If not, how would you modify to accommodate for her needs.
b) Go through the Evaluation column. Discuss within your group how would the teacher formatively assess to check for Ambrosia’s understanding.
Content Area Specialist and Special Education Specialist Collaboration
Directions: (May use this slide instead of the previous slide.)
Have the participants read the “Reconstruction and Its Impact” Scenario. [Skim over]
a. After reading the scenario, ask participants about the lesson.
b. Ask about the content to be taught; the graphic organizers to be used; the SQ3R Method and Jigsaw; the BIG IDEA Summary Chart used as an Exit Slip.
c. Have them SHARE OUT.
Have the participants examine the ISP lesson plan.
a. After examining the lesson plan, have participants focus on the Student Engagement section. Ask if this student can do what is in this section: EX: Sixth grader Ambrosia is two grade levels behind in reading and has a learning disability, how could you modify and accommodate for her during this lesson?
b. Do the same thing with the participants for Assess/Evaluation column. Ask how will a teacher formatively assess during the before, during, and after stages of this lesson? What should Mrs. Jennings be checking for?
Have participants discuss the following scenario:
Sixth grader Ambrosia is two grade levels behind in reading and she has a learning disability. How would you scaffold this lesson for this student? Ask: What instructional supports would you consider for this student?

22. Reconstruction and Its Social Impact
Scenario of Student’s Descriptions
Student 1 Specific learning disability in the area of reading
Reads well below grade level
Language processing difficulties
Student 2 Autism
Nonverbal, shy, introvert
Performs close to grade level
Student 3 Disruptive and off task behaviors
Reads and comprehends below grade level
Written expression is below grade level/peers
Student 4 Speaks limited English
Content Area Specialist and Special Education Specialist Collaboration working together with participants (Walk around to hear, comment, and assist)
DIRECTIONS: In your groups, personalize Student #1, #2, #3, #4 by giving them a name.
What instructional strategies would you put in place?
How would you scaffold the instruction of this lesson for each one of these students?
Individualized
How are you individualizing the instruction for Student #2? (She talks to another a student but not in group settings.)
Content Specialist Reiterate: “Its about the instruction not about the student.”
WIDA Can Do Document
I can state who, what, when, where, and how questions….

23. Content Area Specialist and Special Education Specialist Collaboration
Outcome #3
Content Area Specialist and Special Education Specialist Collaboration
(Both facilitators should walk around to hear, comment, and assist for this portion of the session.)
Using the lesson you brought and the helpful tools, let’s create a lesson.
Handouts
The directions are on the next slides.
Co-Creating Lessons

24. Directions for Co-Creating Lessons
Think of the students you may teach at your school or in your class. Choose two (2) students: maybe one with a cognitive disability and maybe one with a language barrier to apply all you have learned as you create a daily lesson.
Use the lesson plan template provided and the helpful resources we discussed earlier such as: the EQuIP Rubric (Dimension III), the Curriculum Guide, the WIDA Can Do Descriptors Handout, and the Accommodations lists provided as you plan your lesson with these students in mind.
Content Area Specialist or Special Education Specialist Collaboration
(Both facilitators should walk around to hear, comment, and assist for this portion of the session.)
Directions
Think of the students you may teach at your school or in your class. Choose two (2) students: maybe one with a cognitive disability and maybe one with a language barrier to apply all you have learned as you create a daily lesson.
Use the lesson plan template provided and the helpful resources we discussed earlier such as: the EQuIP Rubric (Dimension III), the Curriculum Guide, the WIDA Can Do Descriptors Booklet, and the Instructional Strategies Packet provided as you plan your lesson with these students in mind.