CEC Design or “Course First!”

Conceptual Framework

This is an outline of recent thinking related to growing a Content Enhancement Course (CEC) design approach to the implementation of Content Enhancement routines. However, this design approach supports the overall integration of SIM interventions and SIM professional development efforts and resources. It does this through an emphasis on and the expansion of SMARTER planning. I liked the use of “Course First!” as a short and user-friendly way to promote a mindset shift as we move forward in thinking about CEC design work.

It seems that that are at least two areas to work through. The first area involves identifying the knowledge and core tools required to provide initial and ongoing professional development in a CEC design approach. The second area involves identifying the processes involved to implement a CEC design approach.

In terms of the knowledge and core tools required, I have identified four types of tools: These core tools consist of: 1) Professional Knowledge resources from SIM, 2), Tools to support SMARTER Instructional Coaching, 3) GIST technology tools, 4) Resources to support CEC design work. A visual representation of these four core sets of tools is depicted below in the Appendices section.

  1. Professional knowledge resources from the Strategic Instruction Model. SIM is comprised of a lot of high-quality materials and support resources that have been developed to convey information about strategic instruction. The amount of information included in SIM is so extensive that even those individuals who have a long history of working with SIM and the KUCRL, including many of those who have long been part of the KUCRL staff, are unfamiliar with many important components of SIM that might be critical in CEC design work. The design and delivery of SIM materials has long focused on the independent delivery and implementation of individual interventions and has often been based on the actual materials used in the research conducted to validate the effectiveness of each intervention. As those individuals who are familiar with different types of SIM interventions will agree, different types of SIM interventions (e.g., The Learning Strategies Curriculum, Content Enhancement Routines, etc.) are designed around a standard format., Therefore, instructional manuals and resources are designed around instructional activities (e.g., the stages of strategy acquisition; Cue-Do-Review; Get Ready, Get Set, Go, Win, etc.) and repeat information about these instructional frameworks in each manual. As an individual learns and implements a greater number of interventions of a specific type are implemented, the less a user must rely on the repeated information provided for each different type of structure. However, the professional development and implementation time anticipated for each intervention often assumes that the participating end user is a novice and, in order to assure fidelity in both the professional development provided and in classroom implementation, is standardized for learning for that novice implementer. As a result, it would take many years for end users to gain the knowledge required to design an effective course based on the integration and implementation of a variety of appropriate SIM interventions.

Therefore, experts in SIM who have acquired much of the vast knowledge contained in specific SIM interventions must become involved a design process that leads to the development of professional knowledge resources that focus on the integration of SIM interventions most critical to strategic secondary course design and how this integrated package of interventions is communicated to classroom teachers. The way that this information is communicated to teachers must allow teachers to design the general structure of a course in a way that allows for of upfront design work followed by ongoing learning, integration, implementation, and assessment of fidelity and student learning as the course progresses. As initial implementation progresses, there is a conscious emphasis on ongoing revision of the design of course activities both during and at the end of the course in preparation for offering the course again.

Such resources might include:

  1. Online study of SIM components
  2. Video clips showing high quality implementation of targeted SIM interventions.
  3. Cue cards and examples of high quality devices with quick start implementation guidelines. (An example of Question Exploration Guideteaching device that could be included as part of a suite of quick start resources is offered in the Appendix as A2.)
  4. Design and implementation quick start checklists. (An example of Question Exploration Guideteaching device that could be included as part of a suite of quick start resources is offered in the Appendix as A3.)

Comments:

What else might be included?

  1. Tools to support SMARTER Instructional Coaching. Professional development must be designed that is built around an initial professional development experience that creates a knowledge foundation that allows for an initial course design that facilitates the incorporation and integration of multiple devices that is then followed by ongoing coaching with a SIM professional developer that involves both distance and online coaching to support ongoing learning and use of discipline aligned strategic interventions. This coaching would be tied to supporting implementation of high-quality CEC design proposed by the teacher during initial professional development and would be based on the principles of high quality coaching already linked to SIM. However, the professional knowledge resources identified above would be used to support coaching, and since coaching would focus on whole course design as well as the implementation of specific SIM interventions, coaching would be grounded in the steps of SMARTER as a type of instructional coaching used to support coherent course, unit and lesson design and implementation effectiveness. A table showing the steps of SMARTER as part of the coaching required for CEC design is included in the Appendix as A4.

As teachers are introduced to CEC design, we might want to consider four phases of CEC design coaching. These phases involve: (a) Phase 1: Shift, commit, build, (b) Phase 2: Learn, expand, link, and share, (c) Phase 3: Refine, listen, and reduce, and (d) Revise, revisit and reteach. These phases are described below and depicted in the Appendix as A5. However, as implementation proceeds, the Identify, Learn, Improve instructional coaching cycle would be embedded in the broader course design coaching process to guide coaching related to the implementation of individual SIM components. A pdf of an article that describes the Identify, Learn, Improve cycle is included in the Appendix as A6

The phases of SMARTER instructional coaching used in CEC design focus on the following:

(a)Phase 1: Shift, commit, build: This phase represents a teachers first experiences with CEC design. Whether their prior professional development has involved other SIM interventions or not, the shiftthat needs to happen is that teachers must realize that their practices must live in the larger bodies of a course and units. They must commit to identifying standards and making a guess as to the type of thinking that students must be routinely engaged in. This is reflected in the SMAR steps of SMARTER. Once they begin to develop a vision of what that learning “playing field” might look like, they begin to build their course with GIST under the guidance of SIM PDer and colleagues from their discipline. This forecasting also provide the ESE teacher with the types of support that needs to be provided to students across the course and what prerequisites might be required. The GIST built course is submitted to the SIM PDer for review and comment and to plan the ongoing PD that might be required. Goals are set for the course.

(b)Phase 2: Learn, expand, link, and share: In this phase, more specific on-the-ground coaching is implemented. In addition to the Three Step Cycle of Instructional Coaching that Jim Knight promotes, an overall SMARTER coaching framework is used to ensure over CEC design work. This moves implementation from “silos” of good practice within a course to attention to course, unit, and lesson coherence. I have added in Dropbox a Unit organizer planning worksheet that may or may not be useful to help with this. This is largely centered on the “T” of SMARTER. earn stands for learn the practice, Expand stands for use more than one SIM intervention, Link stands for the need to coherently integrate multiple interventions to progressively build competence, and Share stands for reaching out to your colleagues, and coach, and SIM PDer for support and feedback.

(c)Phase 3: Refine, listen, and reduce: In this phase, information and feedback from colleagues, professional development, and coaching is used to refine elements of the course, even to the point of revising course and unit questions if they are not on target. Listen to student feedback (building reciprocal academic relationships with students), and ultimately streamlining the course, units, and lessons so that they are manageable. I think this is where independent support resources and ESE may play a role. What stays in class and what is attained elsewhere….

d) Phase 4: Revise, revisit and reteach: In this phase, the notion of the “ER’ of SMARTER, while it is ongoing, at the end of the course, teachers come together and they revise their course based on lessons learned. Theyt look at data and decide what they need to change. This revise is probably a “summer after” activity for course level changes.

  1. GIST technology tools.

The GIST Course and Unit Builders are used to design the ourse. Throughout the year, resources are linked. I really think that the course is built over time, over years. However, having teachers need to consciously add to the digital warehouse for this course. Textbooks are linked to t he course.

Students need to be taught how to use GIST Mobile

We need to figure out how teachers use GIST Mobile to review student work and give feedback. This is a “to do” item for all of the tech folks.

  1. Resources to support CEC design work.

I think that examples of CEC designed courses go here.

Libraries of well integrated units.

More information related to how to link standards to specific devices and how to develop progressively difficult assignments and plot course progress.

This is where I am sorting out anything that CEC design specific (such as his document) that do not seem to fit elsewhere.

  1. Standards to Classroom Assessment Examples

The follow example show in Appendix Figure 1 show standards to objectives to prerequisites to assignments to assessments might be task analyzed to support coaching and the SMARTER Instructional Cycle. Does this help?

Appendix: Figure 1

Important Factors to Keep in Mind When Planning Standards Aligned Instruction Leading to the Effective Design and Implementation of the Unit Organizer Routine

Standard / Instructional Objectives / Use in the Design of a CEC
Students demonstrate and discuss how they manipulated information, explored relationships, and arrived at conclusions associated with critical discipline-specific ideas.
Includes language that prompts the general type of skills, steps, strategies, and thinking required (e.g., cite to support, analyze to explain, identifies explicit stated as well as inferred reasons, provides an objective summary, explains relationship between ideas and supporting evidence, argues a position or claim) that should be applied during discipline specific learning without specifying their exact nature.
Used to plan learning experiences across disciplines, within specific courses, to promote conversations about content throughout collaborative co-constructed learning experiences that promote higher-order reasoning thinking at the course, unit, or lesson levels. / Uses specific standards to shape a new set of intended outcomes for a specific course in a discipline. So, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.1 is judged to be relevant to understanding the discipline of History and, specifically, to the outcomes associated with the U.S. History course.
Across units in the course, instructional objectives routinely are designed to align instructional activities to the standard using course, unit, and lesson specific history content.
Instructional objectives are written to more explicitly include reference to the types of thinking or strategies that are required to manipulate content as part of higher-order reasoning in order for the instructional objective to be judged as met.
Instructional objectives reference how collaborative co-constructed as well as individual learning experiences will be included in instruction and how the student will demonstrate competence toward meeting standards aligned course outcomes. / Developing, sharing, and using course, unit, and lesson questions with students to guide learning is a process used to bring standards-based learning into the classroom and directly to students in a meaningful way.
Course, unit, and lesson questions support instructional objectives and are aligned with standards.
Unit questions are developed to help the student answer course questions, and lesson questions are developed to help the student answer unit questions tied to standards.
While drafted before instruction begins, questions are collaboratively developed during class with teacher guidance and feedback.
Teaching and learning devices that scaffold learning through the use of verbal prompts. These verbal prompts include the phrase on connecting lines in graphics, steps that guide the thinking process during completion of the teaching/learning device. The teaching/learning devices are designed around the cognitive, metacognitive, and behavioral steps involved in completing strategies and engaging in reasoning processes. Sections of graphics are labeled to prompt construction of responses. Reasoning processes to be used are surfaced, listed, and discussed. Strategies for collaboration are taught, monitored, are part of formative and summative assessments.

Here is an example of how several standards are translated into the design of a CEC unit.

Discipline / History / History / History
Unit / Causes of the Civil War / Causes of the Civil War / Causes of the Civil War
Big Idea / Sectionalism / Sectionalism / Sectionalism
Standard
Standards –informed curriculum planning question: How much and how many times do these standards need to be surfaced and explored by teachers across both grades and within a course? / Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. / Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text including its relationship to supporting ideas; provide an objective summary of the text. / Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
Integrated Instructional Objective / Students will collaboratively cite evidence from the text and the Web that describe the impact of the Dred Scott Decision on people in the North and the South and, based on reactions of those living in each section to other national events, infer how that Decision might have influenced them in other ways. / Students will work in pairs to identify at least one idea associated with democracy that remerges in the chapter around critical events that helps explain the growing unrest of the American people around America’s political, social, and economic foundations and will collaboratively explain to the members of the class how this unresolved ideal and civil unrest gradually evolved into a moral conviction used to justify their actions. / Students will individually write a five page essay in which s/he will take a position on whats/he believes is the major contributing factor that led to the U.S. Civil
War and develop a defensible argument for this position.
Possible supporting Routines, Strategies, Devices / Teaming
Paraphrasing
Self Questioning
Summarizing
Drawing Inferences
Cause and Effect
Comparison / Analyzing
Argumentation / Argumentative Writing
Possible Unit Map Connector Phrases / …started with…
…was based on…
…shown by…
...supported by evidence such as…
…led to…
…resulted in…
…might have led to…
…might have resulted in…
Unit Relationships / Analyze
Cause and effect
Compare/contrast
Infer
Unit Self-Test Questions / How might the Dred Scott Decision be viewed as one of the important culminating events that fueled conflict between the three sections of the United States leading to the Civil War? / How did unresolved democratic ideals develop substance and clarity in the minds of Americans prior to the Civil War contributing to a level of civil unrest making war an acceptable moral option? / Among the many factors that contributed to the U.S. Civil War, which one do you believe has the strongest most credible evidence? How would you develop a reasoned defensible argument to support your choice?
Integrated Assignment Placed in Unit Schedule
Other independent assignments related to developing competency related to acquiring basic content background knowledge, vocabulary, other prerequisite thinking skills, learning, strategies, and social skills will also be given to teach and develop fluency to prepare students for this integrated assignment. These assignments might focus on:
Teaming
Paraphrasing
Self Questioning
Summarizing
Drawing Inferences
Cause and Effect
Comparison
Analyzing
Argumentation
Argumentative Writing / First, based on your reading of the text, as well as evidence collected from the Web, list the different ways that the Dred Scott Decision had an impact on the people living in the North, South, and the West.
Second, select three other events that your group believes significantly contributed to civil unrest in the U.S. prior to the Civil War and list the ways that these events had an impact on the people living each section of the U.S.
Third, based on the information that you find about the impact of these other events on the people in each section of the U.S., list the social, economic, and political reactions that your group believes might be inferred as occurring after the Dred Scott Decision that paints a picture that goes beyond the information that you actually located?
Turn in one completed version of the graphic organizer device on “Cite, Study, Infer” to show your groups work. You will have 20 minutes of class time Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to complete the work reflected on the device.
Each member of the group will also complete individually and submit a self and team evaluation checklist with the organizer on Friday. Assignment value: 35 Points. / What might be the assignment that would be used evaluate student readiness to move to the next level towards meeting this standard? / What might be the assignment that would be used evaluate student readiness to move to the next level towards meeting this standard?
Dimensions of Assignment Evaluation Rubric / 1. Cites one to three text-based impact statements related to the Dred Scott Decision for each of the three sections.
2. Cites one to three text based impact statements for three relevant pre-civil war events for each section.
3. Develops at least three inferences about the impact of the Dred Scott Decision that can be drawn from the impact of other events on the people in the three sections.
4. What additions would you add to this rubric? / What would be the rubric that is needed? / Position stated, evidence cited, evidence defended, nature of evidence categorized, explained the reasoning used to link evidence to their position, counter-arguments named, defended position against other positions or counter arguments, and identified conditions of uncertainty about their claim that remain.
What would you do to improve this rubric?
Summative Unit Test Item / Which of the following statements reflects an impact that the Dred Scott Decision on the people of all three sections of the U.S. that can only be inferred? AQ / What test items would you develop? / What test items would you develop?

Appendix: Figure 2