PDI-9: When a Two-Page Spread Isn't Enough: Navigating Your Instructional Materials

Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Location: Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Room 409
Science Area: Integrated/General
Intended Audience: Elementary; Middle Level; High School; General

Recommended Pathway Sessions

Presented by:

K–12 Alliance/WestEd

Presenters:

Kathy DiRanna, WestEd
Jo Topps, WestEd
Karen Cerwin, WestEd
Jody Sherriff, WestEd
Melissa Smith, WestEd

Framing Questions:

1. How are instructional materials organized?
2. To what extent are instructional materials designed to maximize student learning?
3. How can instructional materials be modified for better instructional and assessment practices?
4. What criteria should you use to select instructional materials? What should you look for while visiting the publishers in the exhibit hall?

Description:

Instructional materials range from excellent to mediocre. How can new teachers, or even veteran teachers, become better consumers and users of instructional materials?

In this session, we explore how instructional materials can be analyzed for their instructional design (or lack there of); coherence of activities to build student understanding; and usefulness of assessments to measure student understanding. The session includes a combination of input, activities, discussion, and application to the participants’ context. Participants will:

• Experience several processes and tools that can be used to determine the conceptual flow in instructional materials and the appropriateness of formative assessments.
• Use a lesson mapping tool to determine the effectiveness of student activities (e.g., investigations, readings, and discussions) in building student understanding.
• Apply these tools and processes to the participants' own instructional materials.

Importance to the Field: With limited professional development opportunities, teachers have only their textbooks as guides to instruction. How instructional materials are designed has a tremendous impact on how teachers teach. Teachers need to identify the instructional and assessment design in their materials, and know how to modify, enhance or adjust to maximize student learning.

Audience: New teachers and those who want more than a traditional "two-page" spread of content, as well as professional developers or teacher leaders who assist teachers in implementation of instructional materials.

Expertise of Presenters: The K–12 Alliance, recognized as California's premier K–12 science education professional development program, is part of WestEd. With more than 21 years of experience in developing and implementing professional development, the K–12 Alliance has been recognized nationally, statewide and locally for its expertise and diversity of programs. The K–12 Alliance was the science component of the NSF funded State Systemic Initiative and recently served as the professional development component of the NSF funded CLT entitled the Center for the Assessment and Evaluation of Student Learning (CAESL). We have professional development programs that address: whole school change; teaching and learning practices including increasing content knowledge and pedagogical skills, and assessment practices; building leadership; administrator needs. We currently work with in depth with more than 1000 teachers in California, with 13 California Math Science Partnership programs, and provide technical assistance to districts/projects across the nation.

Funded Work: National Science Foundation (CA State Systemic Initiative; Science Partnerships for Articulation and Networking—the middle school program; California Systemic Initiative Assessment Collaborative; Center for the Assessment and Evaluation of Student Learning); California Department of Education (California Math Science Partnership Grants, environmental education); Other partnerships (Walter S. Johnson foundation, Using Data Project, Washington University St. Louis MSP, BSCS National Academy for Curriculum Leadership).

Special Instructions: Participants should bring their instructional materials, teacher edition, to the session to be apply to directly apply the tools and processes to their materials.

Register Now!