Okay let's next talk about the decision-making points for this opportunity,
thinking about what are the needs of your school district or school and how
best this opportunity can support your needs. So we recommend that you first start with the
question of core instructional materials for math. So before thinking about supplementals or other
resources for the summer, beginning first thinking with the question of do we need something for
core instructional materials? Then moving to how can we supplement that
core math program to give our students additional conceptual development support? Then, finally,
what do we need for summer programming built off of core instructional materials?
To make that decision we encourage you to create a team. Even with limited time,
it's important to have representative of all stakeholders as much as possible.
So thinking about including administrators, district curriculum leaders, school leaders,
classroom teachers, other support personnel, even students potentially, or school board members,
or other caregivers in the community. We want to have as much diversity in our voices as possible
to bring to the group to really figure out what are the needs of our district
and how to make the best choice possible for our students. So that includes people
from different levels of experience, different perspectives, a variety of backgrounds and races
that can really give us as comprehensive a view of the needs of our students as possible.
So within thinking about core instruction materials,
first we want to consider how well are our current materials meeting the needs of our
students? So are we getting the best results that we can for our students? Are they really designed
to meet the needs of students, the students that we have in our district and school? And to get
more information from existing reports through CURATE or EdReports, it can give you another lens
into the overall quality of your instructional materials for math. Finally, thinking about
how current your materials are and whether they're aligned. And so again you may have more or there
may exist more up-to-date versions of materials you are using or maybe it just has been a while
since you've reviewed your materials. So this is an opportunity to take a new look at that.
Also thinking about, for the supplement to the core materials, these programs are designed to
be done independently by students online. They're designed to support conceptual development of the
students with minimal need for reading and written words. And so here you're thinking
about some logistical questions also in terms of do students have computers at home? Do they
have the opportunity to do this supplemental work during the regular school day? This opportunity
for the supplemental programming is designed to be able to start in the summer and continue into
the school year. So thinking about how this will look or how it'll be used in those two
different circumstances. And so finally then also how well does the supplemental program
integrate with our core instructional materials? Is it something that's going to work
naturally to supplement our core instruction materials? Or is there any potential conflicts?
And then finally what do we need for this summer specifically?
Do we have specific summer programming that we could use resources to support and to help us
organize content for the summer? These are based off of high quality core materials
that have some specific learning sequences designed for this summer of 2021 to prepare
students for success in the upcoming school year. This could be they include both in-person and
virtual opportunities or virtual learning and they all include teacher directed instruction.