Representatives from the Language Arts departments at Correia and Dana Middle met on Friday, August 29th, 2014 to develop a coordinated professional development plan for 2014-15. The purpose of the meeting was to establish a plan for proving 5th through 8th grade Language Arts teachers with support in implementing the Common Core State Standards. Representatives from the SDUSD Literacy Department participated in the meeting.
The group reviewed the district generated units of study and the current plan for providing teachers with professional development in the area of Language Arts. This included studying the alignment between the current district goals and the work being conducted at Dana and Correia around increasing rigor, text selection, quality student dialog in the classroom, and strategies for teaching students how to develop a deeper meaning of content covered in class.
The group discussed the change in structure from organizing content into units of study (ex. Expository, Narrative) to a philosophy of "braiding" where different genres sharing a common focus on a specific topic are presented together in one unit. We also discussed the movement to use the district generated interim assessments as a formative tool for measuring student knowledge.
The Correia/Dana team requested support from district staff in the development and implementation of professional development opportunities for our teachers during our common Thursday release days.