PARCC Education Leader Cadre-CHICAGO PART 2

This morning....freezing in the hotel ballroom. We started off the day with a whole group meeting. Ten states are represented- Ohio ,Oklahoma ,New Jersey ,Rhode Island ,New York, Mass., Arizona, Maryland, New Mexico Ohio's model curriculum is being used as an example by some of the other states...yay OHIO! We had the opportunity to hear more about how the new assessments are being built...using a process very similar to Understanding by Design. The writers are beginning with the Language of Claim....evidence centered design in the classroom. Then identifying what student products will allow teachers to say with assurance that the student has mastered the content standard. The next step is figuring out what do the products look like and then finally deciding what are the classroom activities necessary to get to this product. The assessment items can then be developed using these claims by identifying what evidence can teachers point to,highlight or underline in a student response that they will be looking for. The tasks or items are designed to elicit specific evidence from students to support the claims. Finally, writers can build task models that can be used to develop lots of items. More specifics on this to follow when I get back from the conference. Today was really about big picture. I had the opportunity to go to the 96 floor of the Hancock Building tonight and look out across the city of Chicago. Road plans, city design and building detail were immediately visible. Sometimes it is difficult for classroom teachers to get this same big picture view of curriculum. I think that by first focusing on big ideas...like College and Career Readiness, Building A Culture of Literacy, Embedding Research Skills Across the Curriculum, Building Math Fluency...then focusing on what it is we want the students to be able to ultimately do or produce at each grade level, teachers will be better able to see how individual units and lessons will fit into the scheme of the Common Core Curriculum. It is part of the job of the ELC members to help communicate these big ideas.