1

August 2015 Newsletter: Curriculum Updates

From the Desk of Catherine Berry

and the Curriculum team: Lynette Graves, Kim Johnson,

Sharon Johnson, Brooke Johnston, Leigh Jones, and Nan York

Maximize Instructional Time

Make every minute count and

every student count

The 5 Prerequisites to Rigor

Everybody wants more rigor. States want more rigorous assess-ments. Colleges want students who took the most rigorous course-work in high school. Parents want a more rigorous curriculum to prepare their kids for the best colleges, and educators want more rigorous instruction. It is safe to say that we all want more rigor in schools. But there's our problem! Wanting rigor for every student is the goal; delivering rigor in every classroom for every student is the challenge. There has to be a solid foundation in place before teachers can successfully deliver more rigor . Just like upper level high school classes require prerequisite courses, rigor has its own set of prerequisites too. In order to create rigorous learning environments for all students, teachers and leaders have to master the gatekeepers to rigor first. If not mastered or even addressed, rigor will never come to fruition. It will just be another buzzword that has no real meaning to anyone. If you want to ensure that rigor is in every learning environment and accessible to every student, you must ensure that these 5 prerequisites to rigor are in place first. 1. Resources

Identify resources that help create a challenging learning environment. Determine how resources and tools can be utilized to achieve a rigorous learning environment If educators do not have skillful use of all the resources at their disposal, they won't have the tools to reach rigor. Collaborative work among educators and participation in other forms of professional development focused on the skillful use of all resources are essential to increasing rigor.

2. Routines

Rigor requires routines and procedures for self-directed learning. Resources are the tools, and routines are the be-havioral organization structures needed to reach rigor. Without routines, rigor will be replaced with teacher-directed dependency. What routines and procedures are needed in every classroom to challenge students to be self-directed in their learning and working with one another as well as with the teacher?

3. Relationships

The student and teacher relationships matter, and the better the relationship, the greater investment students will make in learning at rigorous levels. What must teachers do to know their students deeply, and what actions will they take to build relationships with every student that will motivate them to learn at high levels?

4. Relevance

If students can't find meaning in the learning they are exposed to, they will never challenge themselves to learn at deep levels. Teachers must remember that how they engage students entices or turns students off to rigor. Students must continuously be engaged in active learning from the moment they enter the room until the moment they leave. Students will stay engaged if and only if the learning is relevant to them and active for them. No relevance, no rigor.

Every student will have opportunities to read, write, and speak every day in every class

2

Engaging Students In Cooperative Learning Activities

Many educators like the idea of cooperative learning to actively engage students in the classroom, but it is the

learning in cooperative learning that is often left out. Teachers can get the greatest benefit from cooperative

learning and collaboration by using the five strategies listed below. Used properly, cooperative learning is an ex-

citing way for all students to learn more, feel successful, and actively participate in their own learning experiences.

1. Form interdependent teamsCompose teams of a cross section of the class: high and low achievers, boys

and girls, students of different ethnicities. The teacher should make the team assignments, since the groups

will not have the diversity if students choose their own teams.

2. Set group goalsPlan for a product that shows that the team has done a good job of getting every member

to contribute. It could be one product comprised of components to which every team member clearly con-

tributes. The teacher looks at the team average and also evaluates the individual products.

3. Ensure individual accountabilityIn order to achieve the team goal, all team members must master the tar-

geted content or skills.

4. Teach communication and problem-solving skillsTeam members need to know how to make good use of

the opportunity to work with each other through active listening, explaining ideas and opinions, engaging

teammates, and completing tasks.

5. Integrate cooperative learning with other structuresThe best way to use cooperative learning is to replace

individual, isolated practice which typically happens in the traditional lesson cycle after the lesson has been

taught and before the assessments.

Adapted from Making Cooperative Learning Powerful, Educational Leadership, October 2014.

5. Content Knowledge & Expertise

Knowing your curriculum is important, and inspiring students to know it as deeply as you do is equally as important. The barrier to rigor is not knowing the complexity of the standards that students need to master. It's transforming your knowledge into engaging activities and thought-provoking questions that pique student curiosity in such a way that makes them want to learn at the highest levels. The biggest issue with rigor is in creating the learning environ-ment where students can't wait to dive into rigor and that is better known as marketing your content. If you can't market your content and expertise, the students won't invest in rigorous learning.

How Many Prerequisites Do You Have? Remember, we don't teach content. We teach students, and if we want to reach the highest levels of Bloom's or the deepest levels of depth of knowledge, rigor begins with setting students up for success. If we can focus on creating the conditions where students want to learn at the highest or deepest levels, rigor will take care of itself, because the re-sponsibility for learning will quickly and easily transfer from the teacher to the student. Students who understand rele-vance in what they are being asked are more likely to be enthusiastic about their own learning. Adapted from: John Wink Blog http://leadlearner2012.blogspot.com/

3

What Is 'Personalized Learning'? Educators Seek Clarity

By Sean Cavanagh link to article: http://goo.gl/hYwlzQ

A number of education and technology organizations are seeking to forge a clearer understanding of what this concept really means.

In the diverse and ever-changing world of educational technology, the term "personalized learning" seems to be every-where, though there is not yet a shared understanding of what it means. Many school officials, and companies scram-bling to do business with them, use that omnipresent phrase to refer to efforts to tailor lessons to students of different ability levelsan appealing concept, given the pressures schools face to raise the achievement of students coming to academic topics from very different starting points.

Over the past few years, a number of education and technology organizations have sought to move beyond generali-ties to forge a clearer definition of what personalized learning really meansin the hope that the guidance will provide more specific and useful information to the K-12 community.

As it stands, districts see the potential in personalized learning to meet the demands of a student population that has grown more diverse, with a wide range of academic and language needs. And technology, in the view of many, offers a powerful tool for achieving that goal. They point to the myriad digital devices, software, and learning platforms offer-ing educators a once-unimaginable array of options for tailoring lessons to students' needsand for collecting data on each student's individual performance.

Yet many obstacles persist. School leaders are struggling to strike a balance between safeguarding sensitive student data and being able to collect and use such data to individualize learning. Districts are also facing challenges in making their personalized learning strategies work, and in determining how to evaluate the true impact of those strategies on student learning. The challenge for schools is to bring those elements together in a holistic way, one that creates more opportunities for students, said Andrew Calkins, the deputy director of the Next Generation Learning Challenges, a grant competition that encourages personalized learning, among other goals. "The thing to understand about person-alized learning is that it describes a methodology, rather than just a set of goals," said Mr. Calkins, whose nonprofit organization, EDUCAUSE, manages the competition. EDUCAUSE, which promotes the use of technology to improve education, also has worked to create a clearer definition of what personalized learning means. A core piece of that definition, in Mr. Calkins' view, is that "the default perspective is the student'snot the curriculum, or the teacher," and that schools need to adjust to accommodate not only students' academic strengths and weaknesses, but also their interests, and what motivates them to succeed. Yet some say that too much of what is being labeled "personalized learning" in classrooms today misses the mark.

Shaping the Concept Many technology-based approaches to personalized learning amount to nothing more than tailoring or personalizing the reading of texts to students of different abilitiesrather than personalizing a mix of activities that give students a richer and more meaningful educational experience, said Elliot Soloway, a professor of computer science at the Univer-sity of Michigan who has studied and developed digital education tools.

"Everybody's saying they're doing itbut we have to go one level deeper when we say 'personalized learning,'" Mr. Soloway said. If schools and technology advocates don't set higher standards for what they mean, the movement "will not be sustainable," he predict-ed. "It will peter out." The allure of personalized learning is evident in the way that both the education community, and companies trying to do business in schools, shape the term to suit their needs. A perusal of the sessions at the 2014 International Society for Technolo-

gy in Education conference, the biggest ed-tech gathering in the country, held in June, provides a glimpse of personal-ized learning's many permutations. One session offered school administrators insights on "personalized digital toolbox-es." Another advised audiences on how to use information technology to enable "personalized connected learning." There was an event on "systemic adoption of personalized learning," and "self-sustaining personalized learning." There were sessions on personalized learning for entire districts, for kindergartners and 1st graders, for struggling students,

4

and for new teachers. One session said that personalized learning is tied to a "culture shift" within schools, while another described the "perfect storm of personalized learning." But the prevailing enthusiasm for personalized learning has obscured a fundamental question: How should it be defined?

Personalizing learning, in some respects, is an age-old concept. For generations, teachers have sought to craft instruction to meet individual student needsa manageable challenge when

working with a relatively small group, but much more difficult for a class of 20 to 30 students. Personalized learning in today's schools essentially amounts to the "differentiation" of lessons for students of different skill levels, or efforts to help students move at their own pace, said Susan D. Patrick, the executive director of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Vienna, Va.

But she added that personalized learning must also promote "student agency"basically, giving students more power through either digital tools or other means, accounting for how they learn best, what motivates them, and their aca-demic goals. The most effective digital tools support that purpose, she said. "Technology can help provide students with more choices on how they're going to learn a lesson," Ms. Patrick said. "*It+ empowers teachers in personalizing learn-ing" and "empowers students through their own exercise of choice."

Essential Elements Four years ago, a trio of organizationsthe Software & Information Industry Association, a Washington based trade organization; the ASCD, a nonprofit focused on curriculum development; and the Council of Chief State School Offic-erscame together for a symposium and produced 10 "essential elements" and "policy enablers" for personalized learning. Their definition emphasizes project-based learning, and more flexibility for students to set their learning paths, among other goals. An overwhelming majority of the symposium's attendees said technology played a key role in personalized learning; the essential elements also emphasized the importance of providing equal access to technology. This year, in an effort to provide clearer direction for K-12 officials and others, iNACOL, along with a group of philan-thropies, nonprofits, and technology advocacy organizations, created a "working definition of personalized learning."

That definition, crafted by organizations that included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and EDUCAUSE, rests on four pillars. (Education Week re-ceives support from the Gates Foundation for its coverage of college- and career-ready stand-ards.) Each student should have a "learner profile," or a record documenting his or her academic strengths and weaknesses, motivations, and goals; students should have personal learning paths that encourage them to set and manage their individual academic goals; students should follow a "competency-based progression" through topics; and their learning environmentsin most cases, schoolsshould be flexible and structured in a way to support their goals. INFOGRAPHIC for important questions for districts/schools http://goo.gl/1lIAxd

Those pillars have been integrated into the request for proposals crafted by the Next Generation Learning Challenges, a grant program created in 2010 that pays for technology-based efforts in schools that promote preparation for, and completion of, postsecondary education.

Building Student Ownership True personalized learning calls for a "rethinking and redesign" of schools, which could require them to overhaul class-room structures and schedules, curricula, and the instructional approaches of teachers, Mr. Calkins of EDUCAUSE ar-gued. For instance, in an effective personalized learning model, teachers' roles are more like those of coaches or facili-tators than "content providers," he said. Many of the projects financed through the learning-challenges grants aspire to that goal, though there's certainly room for schools to integrate personalized approaches more slowly, he said. In Wis-consin, the Kettle Moraine school system's foray into personalized learning has been ambitious, but also deliberate.

The 4,000-student district, located in the suburbs west of Milwaukee, has been a high-performing system for years. But district leaders became concerned that students were more focused on completing academic tasks than on setting their own learning goals, recalled Theresa Ewald, the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning. "We were looking at

5

ways of transferring the ownership of learning from teachers to students," Ms. Ewald said. In 2005, the school board challenged the district's administration to "transform the educational delivery system" to better meet students' needs. The district eventually put personalized learning at the heart of that change.

Today, personalized learning comes in many forms in Kettle Moraine. The district has created interdisciplinary pathways for students, in areas such as advanced manufacturing, and it has given individual teachers greater flexibility to use les-sons and digital tools as they see fit to promote student learning. Yet, unlike many districts that have put personalized learning programs in place, Kettle Moraine decided not to invest heavily in digital devices to build a 1-to-1 computing environment. Instead, it relies on a bring-your-own-device program, and it has used Google systems for distributing as-signments, scheduling, and communication between staff and students. In most cases, technology is used to support per-sonalized learning, though it is not always the essential piece, district officials emphasized.

As its academic strategies have drawn attention, Kettle Moraine has been flooded with inquiries from vendors touting their own brands of personalized learning. Many of them fall short, either because they try to do too much or cost too much, Ms. Ewald said. Others focus primarily on customizing lessons to students' ability levelswhich Ms. Ewald agrees is a part of personalized learningbut they don't offer a diversity of approaches for how a student experiences a topic, such as by engaging with it visually versus reading about it. Ultimately, those tools have to mesh with the work of class-room teachers, who are making their own judgments about what's working in their classes, Ms. Ewald said. "Nothing replaces the teacher, and *a+ teacher's ability to know a student and what they need," she said. "You can't get that from a piece of software."

Multi-Tiered System Support (MTSS)

Whats Your Plan? Accurate Decision Making within a Multi-Tier System of Supports: Critical Areas in Tier 1 by Terri Metcalf, M.Ed., J.D., Michigans Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MiBLSi) Each day, hundreds of decisions are made within schools: What counts as a passing grade? Who needs more support? What kind of support is needed and how will it be delivered? Most decisions within the framework of multi-tier system of supports (MTSS) are made by teamsbuilding leadership teams, student support teams, or grade-level teams. These teams may or may not use a deliberate decision-making process driven by data, but even if they do, a variety of factors, such as lack of consensus, the restrictions of the building schedule, the skills of available interventionists, and the amount of resources available to meet student needs can distract the team from its task. That can be a problem when the success of MTSS implementation depends upon making good decisions.

This first in a two-part series of articles addresses the complexity of MTSS decision making and identifies critical decision points within Tier 1 (universal or core instruction for all students) at the building level. The building level refers to the school unit that is implementing MTSS (e.g. an elementary or middle school), as opposed to the larger district unit. The second article is about Tier 2 (secondary prevention) intervention selection, management, and evaluation. Both articles provide tools that will have a positive impact on student outcomes by assisting teams in sharpening the precision of their decision making and describing typical barriers that teams may expect to encounter in implementing MTSS.

Unpacking the Complexity of MTSS Decision Making Successful MTSS implementation is a highly complex process that involves the following tasks:

Gathering accurate and reliable data Correctly interpreting and validating data Using data to make meaningful instructional changes for students

Establishing and managing increasingly intensive tiers of support Evaluating the process at all tiers to ensure the system is working

MTSS decisions are made using a team based process. For example, the steps in the process described above should be coordinated through an MTSS building leadership team. The MTSS building leadership team is responsible for coordi-nating and communicating all MTSS implementation efforts for the building. The MTSS building leadership team uses a

6

problem-solving process at both the system and student levels. For example, at the system level, the team might ask, is the core instruction effective? At the student level, the team would ask which students need additional support? Teams look at both system-and student-level problems by asking 1) What is the problem? 2) Why is the problem occurring? 3) What should we do about the problem? and 4) Did our solution work?

Accurate and timely data are also crucial to effective problem solving. MTSS is a framework, not a rigid filter, so teams may make decisions based on student performance data that has established benchmarks or effectiveness based on em-pirical studies, especially in the areas of screening, progress monitoring, and intervention effectiveness.

In addition to student performance data, teams should familiarize their members with guidelines, indicators, flowcharts, and checklists to improve the functioning of the MTSS process. Checklists can be particularly helpful. They are used in a variety of professions, such as aviation and medicine, because they minimize human error by guiding the user through the many steps and activities involved in complex work (Gawande, 2010). Checklists should identify critical elements of the work and give assurance that the system is working effectively. But at the same time, checklists should not be overly detailed. Having to review too much information can shift the focus from the system to the checklist, which can over-whelm and paralyze of the team, causing them to lose momentum. Table 1 provides a list of checklists that support MTSS implementation in the areas of reading and behavior:

Table 1: Checklists that Support Implementation of a Multi-tier System of Supports

All of the checklists listed above are available on Michigans Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MiBLSi) website; see also PBIS Assessments.

Tier 1 Critical MTSS Decisions MTSS decisions at the Tier 1 building level are focused on balancing the needs of the entire student population and the resources available to the building. Critical areas for teams to examine include identification of student needs and the effectiveness of the core instruction or the instruction that all students receive every day.

Who needs more support? One guideline for MTSS implementation is having approximately 80% of the students reach the benchmark criteria estab-lished by the screening tool. If the percentage is significantly lower than 80%, buildings should intensify their focus on improving Tier 1 instruction for two reasons: 1) buildings do not have the resources to intervene with a large percentage of students and 2) you cannot intervene your way out of core instruction that is not effective. Given these limitations, it is critical for teams to choose reliable and valid criteria for screening. Some buildings may base their screening measures on benchmark criteria established by a curriculum-based measurement screening tool (for example, Dynamic Indicators

Checklist Title Author(s) Purpose

Planning and Evaluation Tool for Effec-tive Schoolwide Reading Program, Re-vised (PET-R)

Kameenui, & Simmons (2000) Provides checklist and rating system for

seven critical elements of an elemen-tary, schoolwide reading program

Benchmark for Advanced Tiers (BAT) Anderson, Childs, Kincaid, Horner,

George, et al. (2009)

Provides questions and scoring rubric for key features of a schoolwide, behav-

ior support system (K-12)

Benchmark of Quality (BoQ) Kincaid, D., Childs, K., & George, H.

(March, 2010)

Provides a set of questions linked to 10 critical elements within schoolwide

PBIS. Assists teams in identifying strengths and needs for action planning.

7

of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) or AIMSweb); others may choose norm-referenced criteria (for example, their lowest 15%); still others may use a combination of both. The challenge is to find the right students and match them to right in-terventions as early as possible.

Within screening, there are additional decision points beyond the identification of a score that will identify a level of risk for a student. Because screening data is a critical function within MTSS, the data must be accurate. The following fidelity checks for each period of screening are an important part of systematically checking for human errors in collecting screening data:

Are assessors given a checklist of standard administration and scoring rules? Are the checklist administration and scoring rules reviewed with the team before each screening period? Is the data

entry process checked for clerical errors? Do the assessors have adequate training and coaching? Does the building have an efficient schedule to collect screening data in a timely manner?

Finally, if screening is working properly, it can assist schools in deciding 1) if they are getting better over time and 2) what changes they need to make to the core curriculum. Graphs that show a visual picture of student growth are extremely helpful in making these decisions:

Figure 1: DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation

Fluency Data

Is the core instruction working? Within a school district, assume there are two buildings (School A and School B) with similar student populations, staff, resources, and an identical reading curriculum. In the spring, School A has 91% of the 2nd grade at their screening bench-mark goal while School B has 36%. State test scores between the two buildings show a similar gap. Why? One hypothesis is that something within Tier 1 of MTSS is not working within School B and deep analysis is needed at this level before focusing on the individual student issues.

To avoid being overwhelmed, School B can prioritize Tier 1 actions by critically and honestly completing the PET-R (Simmons & Kameemui, 2000). The PET-R has seven sections (with five to ten items per section) that examine the follow-ing areas:

1. Goals, Objectives, Priorities 2. Assessment 3. Instructional Program and Materials 4. Instructional Time 5. Differentiated Instruction/Grouping/Scheduling 6. Administrative/Organization/Communication 7. Professional Development

8

Buildings complete the PET-R once a year with a 4- to 6-person leadership team, preferably with balanced representation from teachers, coaches or itinerant staff, and administration. Teams read the items and rank how MTSS for reading in their building is functioning according to a scale: 0 (not in place), 1 (partially in place), or 2 (in place). An accompanying document, called the PET-A, provides examples and ideas for comparison. For example, if there is one area of the PET-R that the team ranks particularly low, one recommendation is to have a larger representation of staff (for example, all staff teaching one grade level or all lower elementary staff) complete the items within that section.

In our example, School B rated their schoolwide reading system a total score of 56% on the PET-R, while School A gave themselves 96%. School Bs lowest area was Instructional Time with a subscore of 42%. According to these scores, School B has a critical area to prioritize: How are we using our instructional time? How much is allocated? How much do we actu-ally use? How long are students engaged? How much time are students given to respond and receive feedback?

An additional tool for Tier 1 analysis is to inventory practices by surveying teachers on the following questions and having them provide a scope and sequence of their day-to-day instruction in a subject area.

What instructional routines are used? Are the routines consistent from classroom to classroom, general education to special education?

Is there evidence of scaffolding and explicit instruction, especially when students are learning something new? Is there evidence of distributed practice of critical skills?

Is cumulative review built in on a systematic basis? How much time is allocated? How is that time used (for example, whole group instruction, small group instruction,

or independent practice)?

Does the pace of the instruction match student needs? Do students have multiple opportunities for response and feedback? Are students actively engaged (that is, are

they saying, writing, and doing)?

A careful analysis of time, materials, and delivery of core instruction is an essential piece of knowing which components of the Tier 1 system are working well and which items need to be improved.

Link to article: http://goo.gl/On1G13

Key Dates for the 2014-2015 Accountability Report

Month Activities

August NCDPI submits North Carolina Final Exam (NCFE) data to EVAAS. NCDPI provides preliminary audit files embargoed until September State Board of Education (SBE) meeting to all districts. Pending SBE approval, schools that earn an A designation and do not have significant achievement and/or graduation gaps will be designated as an A+ school. Significant achieve-ment and graduation gaps are defined as in-school gaps that are above the three-year state average when averaging gaps in the previous year and at least one of the two prior years be-tween the highest achieving subgroup and lowest achieving subgroup.

September September 3rd SBE approves the release of the READY Accountability, AMO, and School Per-formance Grade (SPG) results. September 3rd - SBE approves the release of the four-year and five-year Cohort graduation rates. September 4 10th Data corrections window for school districts.

October October 1 SBE approves final changes to READY accountability, AMO and SPG reports. October 1 NC School Report Card released.

9

Top 10 Back to School Tips from the

Department of Exceptional Children

1. Organize All of your Paperwork. EC teachers manage an extraordinary amount of paperwork and documentation for their caseload. Make sure

that you keep each individual EC folder organized, in correct order, and locked in a filing cabinet in order to maintain confidentiality.

2. Speaking of Confidentiality. Remember that you should never have conversations regarding students to anyone other than your administra-

tor, the students current teacher, and their legal guardian(s). 3. Communication! Communication! Communication! Each year you should keep a communication log and make parent contact early in the year for each student on

your caseload. A positive professional phone call goes a long way! A great tip to keep an open line of commu-nication is to schedule phone calls on your calendar throughout the year.

4. Know your Students and their Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). It is imperative that you know and understand each IEP that you are responsible for carrying out each year.

Double check that all IEPs are in compliance and no corrective action needs to occur at the beginning of the year. Make a note of all annual review, reevaluation, and other key dates on your calendar for the entire school year.

5. Compare IEP Service Delivery against Schedules. As the students EC Case manager, you will need to verify that the IEP service delivery time matches their daily

schedule. Be sure to communicate any discrepancies before the school year begins. 6. Meet with Regular Education Teachers. During the workdays, be sure to set aside time to sit down with each regular education teacher for each stu-

dent. Explain the IEP and any modifications/accommodations that they will be responsible for implementing. Background information such as visual schedules, Behavior Plans, medical information should be discussed as well.

7. Communicate with Related Service Providers. It is important to touch base with related service providers Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists,

Speech/Language Therapists, Guidance Counselors, Teachers of the Visually Impaired, Teachers of the Hearing Impaired, etc - as soon as possible to determine their scheduling needs for the students on your caseload. Be sure to help itinerant staff locate a space to work with the student if needed.

8. Plan your Beginning of the Year Assessments. Assessment data is important for IEP progress monitoring. Take time to review End of the Year Assessment in-

formation and organize your data notebook. 9. Attend Professional Development Opportunities. Check the EC Professional Development Calendar and write down all PD opportunities that you are required to

attend. Also make note of future PD that you are interested in attending to continue to grow as a professional. 10. Utilize Central Service Itinerant Staff. Remember that as an EC teacher, you have lots of support itinerant staff available as resources. Reach out and

schedule time to meet so that you are ready for the first day of school!

10

ACCESS for ELLs Summative Assessment- What Does the Data Tell Us?

ACCESS for ELLs (Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State for English Language Learners) is a secure large-scale English language proficiency assessment given to Kindergarten through 12th graders who have been identified as English language learners (ELLs). It is given annually in WIDA Consortium member states to monitor stu-dents' progress in acquiring academic English. ACCESS for ELLs is only available to Consortium member states. Features ACCESS for ELLs test items are written from the model performance indicators of WIDA's five English Language Develop-ment (ELD) standards: Social & Instructional Language Language of Language Arts Language of Mathematics Language of Science Language of Social Studies Test forms are divided into five grade-level clusters: Kindergarten Grades 1-2 Grades 3-5 Grades 6-8 Grades 9-12 Within each grade-level cluster (except Kindergarten), ACCESS for ELLs consists of three forms: Tier A (beginning), Tier B (intermediate), and Tier C (advanced). This keeps the test shorter and more appropriately targets each students range of language skills.

Each form of the test assesses the four language domains of Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing.

Purpose and Use ACCESS for ELLs: Generates results that serve as one criterion to aid in determining when ELLs have attained the language proficiency

needed to participate meaningfully in content area classrooms without program support and on state academic con-tent tests without accommodations.

Provides districts with information that will aid in evaluating the effectiveness of their ESL/bilingual programs. Identifies the ELP levels of students with respect to the WIDA ELD Standards' levels 1-6. Provides information that can be used to enhance instruction and learning for ELLs.

Principals will receive the ACCESS results for the Spring 2015 Testing Cycle at the August Principals Meeting. ESL teachers at school sites should already have this data.

11

Digital Resources

For the 2015-2016 school year, access to State resources will be through the new Identity Access Management (IAM) system. For everyones convenience you may get to the IAM screen by clicking on

the icon or my.ncedcloud.org .

This will take you to the login screen.

Please note that if you have not claimed your new IAM account you must first click on Claim My Account. (Faculty and Staff were asked to complete this upon leaving for the summer and prior to July 1, 2015. If you have forgotten your password, but have claimed your account click on Forgot My Password. This should walk you through re-setting of your password.

12

Once you have logged in you should see the HomeBase/NCEdCloud Applications Dashboard. Here you will find Schoolnet, True North Logic (NC Evaluation System), Power Teacher, PowerSchool, etc. Other resources will be add-ed to the dashboard.

Additional Resources...

NCDPI WikiCentral State Regional, Content Areas, and Departmental information

My DE Great place for users to get started! Get familiar with all the tools available as part of your subscription, how to search, and more Digital Integration (for use of video, audio and images) The Student Experience DE Builder Tools The Discovery Education Community

NC Educator Evaluation System

Schoolnet

Discovery Education - District resource for all. Interactive Training Modules are a great refresher on the service providing tips, tricks, and practical integration strategies for using Discovery Education digital resources. Modules include:

13

Professional Development Opportunities

NC Informational Module for National Board Certification North Carolina continues to lead the nation in the number teachers with National Board certification. Educators consid-ering National Board certification can start their exploration with this new mini module, which will help them deter-mine their readiness for the certification process, guide them through the new certification requirements, and equip them to complete Components 1 and 2 of the process. A follow-up mini module will be available when new guidelines for Components 3 and 4 are released. For a complete list of online courses, modules and mini modules, visit http://rt3nc.org/ or look under the Professional Development tab in Home Base. Educator Effectiveness Offers New Self-Paced Online Modules NCDPI Educator Effectiveness staff are excited to announce the release of the following self paced online professional development modules: modules: Assessing Digital Tools, and mini modules: Creating a Connected Culture Through Stu-dent Engagement and Empowerment, Creating and Managing PD Through Home Base, Google Apps for Educators, Twitter in Education, and Using Adobe Connect. For a complete list of online courses, modules and mini modules, visit http://rt3nc.org/ or look under the Professional Development tab in Home Base. To self register for these free courses, follow the instructions below to log into Home Base: Log in to the NCEES system using your usual PowerSchool log in or the alternate log In https://ncees.homebase.ncpublicschools.gov/alternateLogin.html Click the Professional Development tab. Search for the course, or list all opportunities to find the course for which you wish to register. Click on the course title, you are then presented with the course screen. Click on the section. Click on the register button. Directions on how to register also are available at https://ncees.homebase.ncpublicschools.gov/content/Searching%20and%20Registering%20for%20Courses.mp4

******

A complete list of district-wide professional development opportunities for the Randolph County School System can viewed on our website at http://www.randolph.k12.nc.us/Default.asp?PN=Pages&SubP=Level1&PageID=29077

Our district is now engaged in the External Review process. Our External Review will be con-

ducted March 13-16, 2016. Enclosed with this newsletter is information about the review for

all staff in the Randolph County School System.