SDW in the SPOTLIGHT!

This past week we were invited to spotlight SDW literacy at the national level. Our district is a part of the Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy (PCL), which is a nationwide community of schools, educational agencies, and literacy leaders. The PCL model supports student achievement across the grades and across all content areas and embraces the Comprehensive LIteracy Model (CLM) and the Comprehensive Intervention Model (CIM). A charge of the PCL is to provide and encourage professional learning and collaboration to build teacher expertise in literacy and learning. 

On Tuesday, SDW had the opportunity to share some of our literacy teaching and learning at the middle school level. 7th grade Butler Teacher and Literacy Interventionist, Jake Paulson, and District Literacy Intervention/CIM Coach, Wendy Hamilton, co-presented some of their work to the PCL’s Comprehensive Literacy Learning Network (CLLN). Jake and Wendy shared some of their thinking, planning, and teaching from one of the CIM Interventions called Comprehension Focus Group (CFG). They shared the intentionality behind the framework they developed for the intervention, aligning it to universal instruction, and then they shared various lessons in the language, reading, and writing phases. The duo also highlighted the importance of gradual release of responsibility, student choice, and building metacognition and self-regulation skills. It was an honor for SDW to be spotlighted at this powerful, national literacy network. The positive feedback received reassures us that SDW is indeed doing the right work!

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Elementary Social Studies Update

 Elementary Social Studies Update April 9, 2021

The first Elementary Social Studies Pilot is complete!  

Dedicated teacher leaders from all grades, buildings and teaching contexts (Dual, ESL, Special Education too) engaged in facilitating this first pilot.

The Results of the Pilot of TCI Instructional Materials are IN!

Highlights of the pilot!

• Teachers loved having a resource, rather sources to use for teaching!  Vibrant primary sources like photos, maps, graphs and tables really hit a home run for our staff!
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Continued needs from the pilot:

• Lesson resources for instruction were not strong.  Significant re-working of the compelling questions, supporting questions and learning tasks made the resource challenging to use.  Significant planning would be required to ensure a tight alignment to the Arc of Inquiry.
• Little to no assessment opportunity that is aligned to the skills required of our Wisconsin students in terms of Inquiry and Argumentation. Teachers had to design this
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• Resources to effectively engage families would need to be developed in SDW
• Little to no recommended resources for engaging students who are learning English or who might have diverse learning needs
• Wisconsin requires an integrated approach to addressing standards (ie. no more geography or economics stand alone units), this resource was not integrated sufficiently without our reworking.

Our SECOND PILOT will start on April 19th!  We will be piloting the Impact Social Studies Resources through May.  Updates on the progress of the next Pilot will be communicated early May, and the results of our teachers experience will be gathered via survey to inform next steps.

Check out the Teaching and Learning Committee Meeting from April 6th

Here Hadaasa Robinson and Lucia Torres present with the team on the pilot 1 experience.