PDI-5: Going with the Conceptual Flow: Bridging the Gap Between Your State Standards, Curriculum Materials, and Student Learning

Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Location: Marriott San Francisco Marquis Hotel, Room Yerba Buena 5
Intended Audience: Grades K–12

Recommended Pathway Sessions

Presented by:

WestEd

Presenters:

Kathy DiRanna, WestEd
Jo Topps, WestEd
Karen Cerwin, 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:

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.

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. 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.

New teachers will learn a portable process that is sure to become an enduring strategy in their teaching careers. The conceptual flow assists new teachers with understanding their instructional materials for the purposes of planning and assessment. The conceptual flow is also a collegial process where new teachers make decisions with their peers about: just want is the important content they want to teacher their students, standards alignment, how much time to spend on a particular topic and when to assess student learning. The conceptual flow process results in a physical "road map" for instruction that new teachers can use for daily lesson planning.

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