+Literacy Curriculum Development: Differentiation within a UbD Framework

Presented by:Bob O’Donnell, Joyce YoungHempfield School District

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“Every journey does begin with a single step. The journey to successfully differentiated or personalized classrooms will succeed only if we carefully take the first step – ensuring a foundation of best-practice curriculum and instruction.”

Carol Ann Tomlinson

Best Practice Foundation

Essential Question: What are the “best practices” when it comes to teaching reading?

READING FIRST•Phonemic Awareness•Phonics•Fluency•Vocabulary•Comprehension

READING NEXT

•Professional development•Formative assessment•Summative assessment•Direct, explicit instruction•Effective instructional principles embedded in the content•Motivation and self-directed learning•Strategic tutoring•Diverse text•Intensive writing•Technology component

Research Findings on Effective Strategy Instruction

•Comprehension monitoring•Question answering and generation•Graphic organizers / text structures•Main idea and summarizing•Activating prior knowledge / Prediction•Cooperative learning•Combining more than one strategy•Embedding instruction in content classrooms

NRP, 2000, Snow 2002

How do we move from research to creating rich curriculum that reflects best practices AND impacts student learning/achievement?

Why does this matter?

Hempfield’s First Steps…

It matters because “quality classrooms evolve around powerful knowledge that works for each student. They require quality curriculum and quality instruction based on our current best understandings of teaching and learning.”

Tomlinson and McTighe, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design

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Add this … Not this Independent reading Teacher modeling Teaching reading as a

process Writing before and after

reading Use of reading in the

content field Choice

Round-robin oral reading

Teaching isolated skills on worksheets

Teaching reading as a single, one-step act

Little or no writing

Grouping by reading level

Measuring success of reading program only by test scores

Teacher selects all the reading materials

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Understanding by Design frames our curriculum process because “there’s no such thing as the perfect lesson, the perfect day in school, or the perfect teacher. For teachers and students alike, the goal is not perfection but persistence in the pursuit of understanding the important things.”

Tomlinson and McTighe, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding

+ Our journey began four years ago and continues today…

Restructured our Middle School leveling practices

Articulated LA curriculum at the MS and HS levels

Staff Dev. for Differentiation

Backward design from MS to grade 6

4-Powerful Strategy Units K-6

Continuum of growth and change

Four Big Comprehension Strategies

+ Expectations for Reading Instruction

Beginning Developing Fully Implemented

+ Components to Reading Instruction

Reading - Strategy Focus Writing Including Grammar

Word Study Vocabulary Spelling Phonics

+ Ongoing Refinement

Mapping Solution EdInsight Lesson Topic concept

And in the End…

Deeper understanding requires a reader to go beyond the author’s message, assimilating the text experience into his or her own background and in the process, creating a new message. To move deeper into the text implies that readers are moving deeper into their ownminds. - Linda J. Dorn and Carla Soffos (2005)