From the Superintendent's Desk From the Superintendent's ... - Igenti

Dr. Jacquelyn Flanigan
Associate Superintendent
Our November Regional Days are right around the corner! The PD Commiee has reviewed the SurveyMonkey
results and your evaluaons and parcipated in a conference call with our presenters to share that feedback in
order to beer meet your needs for November’s Regional day.
The feedback revealed the following:
Although several schools and their teachers were using the Common Core to plan instrucon, there
remained a lack of clarity and understanding about how this really looked in pracce. It was also reported
that many felt they did not truly understand how to use the standards themselves ‐‐‐ they could reference
them, but not use them to drive the actual planning process.
Need for specific exemplars of CCSS units and teaching strategies
How are the literacy standards relave to other content areas; i.e. math, science, specials What does this
mean for those teachers
Need to understand how to build a unit using the CCSS template. Many teachers asked about working
collaboravely to build a single unit.
From this informaon the commiee worked with our presenters; and based on the above feedback, the
following will be the focus of our November Regional Day:
The presenter will guide the groups through a step‐by‐step unit design process using selected reading and
wring standards that apply to ALL content areas. These selected standards will be dissected so parcipants
will understand what the standard is really asking.
The 7‐9‐10‐1 strategies will be incorporated into the unit plan in order to clearly demonstrate the
connecon between these “best pracce” strategies and implementaon of the Common Core.
There will be guided pracce; the regional groups will not be broken out into rooms to work. Rather,
parcipants will be at table groups working on a single unit with their grade and/or content‐area colleagues.
This will allow parcipants to ask quesons throughout the process.
As part of the guided pracce, exemplars of the unit’s components will be shared and discussed.
Administrators will be taken through this exact process – the emphasis is on their understanding of what is
expected of the teachers. Administrators will learn what to look for.
Posng to EdModo will not occur during the Regional Day; this will alleviate the frustraon of mulple‐user
uploading slowing the system and process.
Specific instrucons, including what to bring (electronic devices, handouts, resources and materials), was
delivered via Igen. Please read carefully! This informaon will also be emailed to principals directly to be
certain all receive the instrucons.
We are looking forward to a great day!