Professional Development for Schools

• Participants will explore the key elements in a curriculum process
• Gain hands-on experience in developing an outline of your curricular strategic plan

• Review their current curricular process to determine opportunities for growth
• Conduct an in depth review of the curriculum and outline resources to strengthen the process

• Identify the purpose and vision for the curriculum process at your school/ district
• Walk through a high level overview of the elements in a curriculum process

• Explore ways to configure your Atlas site to achieve your school and district curriculum goals
• Define clear expectations, templates and resources for developing curriculum

• Define curriculum and its components
• Articulate the opportunities and barriers of mapping for different audiences
• Explore sample units in our Public Site (use with caution)

• Review the process and purpose of curriculum mapping
• Explore the key features and navigation tools in Atlas

• Walkthrough the key features of Atlas specific to your role
• Use Browse to explore various courses in Atlas
• Preview reports to support curricular conversations at individual schools

• Unitizing Standards within a Course
• Unpack Standards into Concepts and Student Objectives
• Develop Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions
• Assess Learning: Formative and Summative Assessments
• The Learning Plan or Create Lessons Aligned to Unit Plans

• Walkthrough strategies to develop and define course-level curriculum based on a backwards design framework
• Discuss elements of high-quality curriculum by reviewing sample units

• Establish a common understanding of how to prioritize standards
• Review alignment of standards across multiple units or courses

• Walkthrough the organization of standards and how they can drive instruction
• Review the vertical scaffolding of standards

• Analyze the course-level standards
• Explore strategies to select and organize standards within a unit of study
• Identify which standards are the primary focus of the unit

• Walk through strategies for unpacking standards into clear learning goals, including content and student outcomes
• Identify what students should know and be able to do by the end of the unit

• Identify the overarching purpose and focus of a unit
• Develop big ideas and essential questions that guide student learning

• Explore ways to meaningfully assess understanding of unit goals
• Review elements of quality assessments, including sample rubrics and success criteria

• Differentiate between characteristics of formative and summative assessments
• Learn how to develop and add assessments in Atlas or Managebac

• Develop clear learning targets aligned to the unit plan
• Create meaningful activities that help students achieve the learning objectives in a unit

• Discuss how lesson planning connects to the bigger picture of unit planning and overall curriculum development
• Explore how to develop lessons aligned to the unit plan
• Walkthrough the lesson planner in Atlas or Managebac

• Review current unit goals and assessments with a lens of cultural relevance
• Update concept and skills in the units to support culturally relevant learning for diverse learners
• Discuss elements of inclusive assessments

• Overview of a 5 Step Curriculum Review Cycle
• Using Reports in Atlas to Review Curriculum
• Quality Unit Review

In this advanced series, sessions will include a brief refresher of the steps in a review cycle and hands on experience in completing a cycle with a specific focus. Participants should plan to work with their team between sessions and come prepared to make decisions through collaborative conversations

• Explore and discuss the 5 steps of a review cycle with examples
• Consider additional needs to ensure the ongoing use of the curriculum review cycles to update and strengthen the written curriculum

• Learn how to utilize reports in Atlas to support your role in curriculum work
• Walk away with several reports saved for future use

• Discuss the elements of a high quality unit plan
• Review unit(s) using a sample rubric and/or Atlas reports

• Review curriculum and document any changes that occurred during the previous academic year
• Use reports to identify potential gaps in learning and discuss next steps

• Based on school’s template, explore the variety of ways to organize content/thematic information
• Discuss ways to include and/or document non-thematic elements in a unit planner

• Break down the stages of phonological awareness development to understand the subtle differences between these skills
• Discuss teacher strategies to support various levels of development

• Standards & Learning Goals for Language Development
• Create Assessments for Multilingual Learners
• Develop Learning Plans for Multilingual Learners

• Align units with content & language standards and provide language goals for multiple English proficiency levels
• Outline unit learning goals that support culturally and linguistically diverse students

• Determine how students can demonstrate understanding of both the content and language goals, using multiple language domains
• Analyze the unit assessment(s) for alignment to content & language goals

• Develop integrated lesson targets aligned to the unit plan
• Outline instructional strategies and approaches to support content learning and language acquisition

• Explore techniques and strategies for scaffolding language and content at various levels
• Create or update units & lessons with intentional content and language scaffolds

• Review key elements of differentiated instruction
• Explore differentiated instruction strategies and add specific strategies to current units