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Curriculum

Platte #1 School District Curriculum Review Process

Vision Statement:

The mission of the Platte #1 School District curriculum review process is to establish and maintain a Pre-K through12 scope and sequence, learning goals, and academic vocabulary aligned to Wyoming and National curriculum standards, for each content area offered through the Platte #1 School District.  The vision for this process will be collaborative and reflective in nature, based on data-driven and research-based information, using consensus-building decision-making, and will reflect the needs and requirements of the various stakeholders of the District.

This process is ultimately grounded in the District’s goal to increase student achievement, and will have considerable support as an ongoing, cyclical process.

What should the Curriculum Review Process generate?
The process should generate, for each curricular area, a PK-12 scope and sequence, learning goals, and academic vocabulary with alignment to state and national content area standards that will guide instruction, growth, and decision-making.

Subsidiary benefits to the process include:

  • Increased student achievement in content areas and over time
  • Teachers becoming leaders in “best practice”
    • In their curricular areas, and
    • In their professional practice
  • Increased accountability/ownership/empowerment for teachers and administrators
  • Increased and ongoing support and collaboration
    • Between professionals
    • Between school and community
    • Between parents, schools, and students
  • Establishing a pathway to “good change”
  • Establishing guidance in crafting professional development opportunities for staff
  • Increased formal documentation
  • Better and stronger communication
  • Increased consistency in programming and decision-making
  • Better guidance for resource allocation in terms of
    • Time
    • Money
    • Personnel

Subsidiary benefits require no extra effort to accomplish, yet we will reap great rewards as a school district by accomplishing them.

Hierarchy of Decision Making for Curriculum Review Process:

The hierarchy of decision-making will be based on a flow of information as outlined below:

Focuses on what information?

Group

Meets how frequently?

Information reports, and recommendations from the District Curriculum PLC

 

Platte #1 School Board

 
  • During Curriculum review cycle and as needed

Information reports, and recommendations from each of the different Content Area Lead Teams

 

District Curriculum PLC

 
  • Every 4 weeks
  • Provides regular updates to the administrative team

Information from student learning and performance, information from content areas and curriculum teams, plus resource identification, reflection activities, evaluating district capacity for support and change, systems analysis, “best practice” models and tools, staff professional development

 

 

Content Area Lead Teams
  • Teams will meet during K-12 Curriculum early release days
  • Additional work and discussion will occur at grade level meetings on early release days

Information from student learning and performance, plus curriculum mapping, WI and national curricular standards, “best practices” in instruction (delivery, methodology at a classroom level)

 

PK-12 Content Area Teams
  • Ongoing informal meeting process, with time built in to facilitate meetings on district early release professional development days

Data from WY-TOPP, DIBELS, MAP, FAST; GPA, Cumulative Portfolios, in-class assessments (formative and summative), professional knowledge of individual students

 

Student Learning and Performance
  • Constant ongoing reflection, as well as formalized data team analysis
  • Incorporate feedback from parents, building level teams, other stakeholders

 

District Curriculum Committee

Roles and Responsibilities:

It is the role of the Curriculum Committee to develop the evaluation model and describe it in a written long-range plan.  Following the plan’s adoption by the Board of Education, it is the Curriculum Committee’s role to manage and evaluate the model, to serve throughout the life of the model as the quality control group for rigorous program evaluations, and to provide leadership for program improvement.  The Curriculum Committee’s responsibilities are to:

  1. Maintain the long-range evaluation plan
  2. Distribute and explain the long-range plan to all staff
  3. Appoint Lead Team members and make replacements as needed
  4. Arrange for orientation of Lead Teams to the plan as well as to determine the Team’s tasks and responsibilities within the plan
  5. Assist Lead Teams, as necessary, in completing their tasks
  6. Review and approve all products completed through the curriculum revision process
  7. With Lead Teams, determine phase specifications and processes
  8. After each review, monitor and evaluate the implementation of the recommendations
  9. Recommend changes in the plan as needed and have them approved by the Board of Education and communicated to all staff
  10. Communicate with staff, administration, Board and community about the total project’s progress and its educational impact on the district
  11. Facilitate PK-12 content area meetings and planning
  12. Support planning of district-wide and building-level professional development activities

Cycle of Curriculum Review

The following four phases shall serve as the framework for the curriculum review process in the Platte #1 Public Schools. The Lead Team in consultation with the District Curriculum Committee will carry out the activities within this process. The intent is that the team will move from phase to phase. Following phase four, the cycle would begin anew. The cycle is purposefully set in phases rather than in years as we recognize that, in order to accomplish the activities within the various phases, more than one school year may be necessary to complete the activities.

Reflection Phase

Conduct a needs assessment:

  • Conduct SWOT activity
  • Analyze data
  • Research best practices
  • Conduct learning drives
  • Participate in professional development activities
  • Review 21st century skills in context of content area
  • Identify philosophy and goals
  • Set content area student achievement goals

Planning Phase

Define the formal curriculum:

  • Analyze state, national, common core, and College Readiness standards
  • Develop scope and sequence
  • Identify grade-level/course learning goals
  • Complete new course proposal (if necessary)
  • Select academic vocabulary
  • Review and choose instructional materials
  • Invite textbook representatives to present top instructional materials choices
  • Choose instructional materials for adoption
  • Prepare preliminary budget estimate
  • Design multiple common formative assessments and rubrics in alignment with identified learning goals
  • Backward design of units (include instructional technology, differentiation, 21st century skills, bilingual education strategies, scaffolding, interventions)
  • Monitor instructional time available to teach and assess curriculum (curriculum mapping)
  • Input revised curriculum into Eclipse curriculum maps
  • Update standards-based report cards with revised grade-level learning goals

Implementation Phase

  • Purchase materials
  • Plan out future financial implications
  • Present to Board of Education
  • Provide necessary professional development for new materials
  • Continue to monitor instructional time available to teach and assess learning goals

Assessment Phase

  • Track student progress on identified learning goals and intervene as necessary with class-wide interventions
  • Evaluate and make adjustments as needed
  • Utilize curriculum maps to design interdisciplinary instruction and units
  • Continue to collaborate on integrating instructional technology and 21st century skills into units of study
  • Monitor progress on identified content area student achievement goals
  • Problem-solve and make necessary changes to keep curriculum operational and achieve goals