All elementary teachers across the district gathered at Magnolia Elementary yesterday for a reunion of colleagues with the purpose of developing and revising pacing guides for each grade and subject.
In his book Leading with Focus, Mike Schmoker contends (and I concur)
that educators would be wise to focus on three areas: curriculum, instruction,
and literacy. Doing so increases the quality and substance of schooling
in a relatively short time. When our elementary teachers came together
yesterday, they focused their time and attention on our
math, literacy, science, art, music, counseling and technology
curriculums. The goal we wanted to achieve during this time together was to
revise and review the pacing guides for the first two trimesters. This was a short amount of time for this process, but every team made great progress toward that goal.
Schmoker refers to curriculum as, “those things that are
taught in common by teachers of the same course in a school or
district. It doesn’t mean lockstep, air-tight, day-by-day conformity to a
scripted program, but rather what most parents already think it means: an
adequately defined set of essential topics, concepts, texts, and writing
assignments that they can assume the school will provide for their children
regardless of which teacher they happen to get.”
Clear, teacher-friendly curriculum provides focus and allows
for both common assessments and meaningful teacher dialogue (which is essential
to productive teacher teams). All teachers deserve a clear and coherent
curriculum. It saves them time, lightens their workload, and reduces
workplace anxiety and confusion. A large-scale, systematic analysis of
research found that coherent, content-rich curriculum is probably the single
largest factor affecting levels of achievement in school (Marzano,
2003).
We want to thank Dr. Jeter and her teachers for hosting the event and for facilitating the meetings. Many thanks, also to Magnolia
Elementary PTO for the wonderful snacks. Thank you to every participant, teachers and administrators, for embracing this opportunity to gather all of our teams of teachers
together. These professionals rolled up their sleeves, collaborated and worked together to ensure that we have a guaranteed and viable
curriculum for TCS.
Second Grade Teachers
Physical Education Teachers
Counselors
Fourth Grade Math/Science Teachers
Fifth Grade Science Teachers with Dr. Faust, K-12 Science Coordinator
Fifth Grade Literacy Teachers
Fourth Grade Literacy Teachers
Kindergarten Teachers
No comments:
Post a Comment