August eNewsletterCurricullumandInstruction

August Curriculum and Instruction eNewsletter

We have had one week of school with the students. We have had two district wide collaboration. We had at least one staff meeting/collaboration per site. We have had one school board workshop. We have had one management meeting. And much much more.

Highlights: - Students asking inquisitive questions about their learning for the day.

-           Building school spirit through the high school rally.

Students responding to the class and school behavior. expectations being established.

-             Building collective capacity in our district wide collaboration in calibrating instructional units, instruction, assessment and strategies.

Here is an update in the curriculum and instruction world at Konocti:

·         CELDT testing underway.

·         Teachers are into the teaching of the key skills and concepts found in the standards or in their content area; as laid out in the scope and sequence.

·         We are pulling district level Smarter Balance results (also known as CAASPP) to begin an analysis to establish a districtwide baseline.

·         Konocti continues to uphold the value of collaboration as the key vehicle in supporting adult best practices and student learning.

The Williams Compliance visit and inventory around sufficiency of materials will be underway in the next few weeks. Teachers can see their site administrator for more detail. Every K – 8 student will have a scholastic news. Every K – 8 students and teachers have access to the multitude of resources in the grade level common core units. Every 9 -12 student has a school board adopted content area instructional resource. Every student has a quality teacher.

Based on the Professional Development requests and the district initiatives, C&I along with management will look to take a representative team of teachers and administrators to the following conferences; CUE (education and technology), PBL (project based learning) and NGSS (the new generation science standards). Using this similar districtwide PD model, C&I along with management may also look for some CCSS literacy based professional development.

 In addition, each site and department can provide specific site focused PD or send staff to site specific focused conferences or trainings.

Donna, Tom, and Teresa will be out to visit classrooms in the month of September with peer observations and walkthroughs to follow in the months ahead. Many site administrators are already out visiting classrooms. These visits, observations and walkthroughs may be built around the indicators from the Danielson group identifying student engagement, formative assessment and types of questioning.. Timely and specific feedback (no ratings) will be provided through descriptive statements. This feedback is for teacher reflection. 

School sites have the calendar dates for the progress report distribution and report card windows.   Instructional coaches can assist in Aeries.net grade book set up

 Gradebook set up is the following:

Summative/Benchmark/Final (20%)

Assessments (20%)

Projects/Performance Tasks (20%)

Class-work/Homework (40%)

Your instructional coaches and site administration have the board resolution with the rational for this current policy.

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing.” Pele