Strand I - Teaching for Learning The school holds high expectations for all students, identifies essential curricular content, makes certain it is sequenced appropriately and is taught effectively in the available instructional times. Assessments used are aligned to curricular content and are used to guide instructional decisions and monitor student learning.
• Michigan Curriculum Framework The Michigan Curriculum Framework includes standards focused on content, teaching and learning, assessment, and professional development.
• Coalition of Essential Schools For over twenty years, CES has been a national leader in public education transformation. Guided by the Common Principles, CES strives to create and sustain a network of personalized, equitable, and intellectually challenging schools.
• Leadership Folio Series: Sustaining School Improvement McREL?s Leadership Folio Series: Sustaining School Improvement is intended to help school leadership teams ? teachers, administrators, and other school leaders ? deal with the complexity of change by explaining what it takes to sustain improvement and by providing guidelines for addressing the factors that affect the ability to do so.
• Annenberg Institute's Tools for School Improvement Planning Web site contains observation protocols, focus group samples and questions, surveys, questionnaires, and other techniques to help you examine your specific school-improvement concerns.
• Surveys of Enacted Curriculum Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) are affordable, research-based questionnaires developed through collaborative efforts of state specialists, content experts, and education researchers at the Council of Chief State School Officers, Learning Point Associates, and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. SEC tools are currently available for K-12 teachers of English language arts (including reading), mathematics, and science.
• Lesson Planner The Lesson Planner is a free, comprehensive tool for teachers who desire a complete and exhaustive means to plan curriculum units aligned with standards that address assessment, content, teaching strategies, and use of technology while incorporating their own unique content and conditions.
• Curriculum Mapping Web Site Curriculum Mapping is a free, user-friendly, and interactive Web site supporting district leaders and curriculum experts in refining existing mathematics and science curricula. It was developed by North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL), the U.S. Third International Science and Mathematics Study (TIMSS) National Research Center at Michigan State University, and First in the World Consortium.
• National Education Association Teacher Toolkit The NEA Teacher ToolKit? is a fully integrated web-based application that empowers teachers to make curricular decisions with confidence.
• Michigan Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development This site provides information and awareness about Michigan ASCD; to create a forum for educators to discuss, become knowledgeable about, and conduct research on educational topics; to post professional development and growth opportunities available through the organization; to identify promising and effective educational practices and much more.
• Schools Moving Up SchoolsMovingUp, a WestEd initiative, helps schools and districts address the immense challenge of raising student achievement in low-performing schools.
• The SIOP Model of Sheltered Instruction Offers a research-based approach to sheltered lesson planning and implementation that has proven effective with English language learners throughout the United States.
• Teacher Quality Resource A new resource is available to state agencies and school districts. It is an online publication from Learning Point Associates called TQ Research & Policy Brief.
• The Future of Schooling: Educating America in 2014 After analyzing key demographic, economic, cultural, global, political, and technological trends in the US, McREL has written 16 scenarios that describe how these trends may converge to create different futures for schooling in America.