Required Program Information/Grant Narrative:

This is the heart of your grant proposal. This is where you will provide details for the activity (or activities) you propose to support with your grant award. The narrative should include information on the following key topics, each of which is briefly described below. Please provide a separate narrative section for each topic.

Topic 1. A brief description of the outcome goals, participating teachers (e.g., grade levels), and aligned activities, strategies, or initiatives that teachers will undertake within this grant to attain the outcome goals. (500 word maximum)

Describe how the activity will deepen teachers’ understanding of the revised English Language Arts-Literacy and mathematics standards and prepare them to teach the standards. Describe how the activity will help evaluate the extent to which the district’s curricula currently support implementation of the standards. Note that focus on early grade literacy and middle grade mathematics curriculum standards will be given competitive priority, though districts may support teachers in other grade levels and standards. Include a description of the activities, strategies, or initiatives you are proposing, focusing primarily on answering the following questions:

· What will educators be doing and learning while engaged in this work?

· Who will be involved (teachers? administrators?) How many people will be involved? Which schools will be involved? How will special education and EL teachers be included in the grant activities?

· Who will lead/facilitate the activity? What are their qualifications?

· When does the activity begin? When will it be completed? (Note that grant funds must be expended by 8/31/17 per federal regulations)

Note:

Ensure that the activities in this section align with activities described in the budget workbook in Part III.

Topic 2. Describe your rationale for selecting to use the funds to support these teachers and these activities, strategies, or initiatives. (250 word maximum)

Explain why you chose this particular piece of work to support, including information about the evidence and process you used to select it.

Topic 3. Anticipated changes, including anticipated products. (250 word maximum)

Provide clear, specific examples of the changes you expect to see realized and/or products you expect to see developed as a direct result of this activity, strategy, or initiative. How will this work directly support and impact practice at the classroom level?

Topic 4. Description of how participating teachers will assess the success of the grant, how the district will assess the success of the grant, and to what extent outcome goals were realized. (250 word maximum)

How will you know that this activity was successful? Describe your plans to assess whether any products or learning from the activity, strategy, or initiative are:

a) being implemented with fidelity, and

b) leading to the anticipated changes you articulated in Topic 3

Be sure to include information about:

· The types of evidence you will be collecting;

· How that information will be collected and analyzed and by whom;

· Who is ultimately responsible for this process?

Criteria for Review:[1]

· Does the grant promote teachers’ content knowledge and increased knowledge of the standards?

· Does the grant give teachers an opportunity to engage with the standards and with their curriculum and instructional materials, aligning the teachers’ work on the standards with the instructional materials that they use every day?

· We know that the most powerful professional learning for teachers often occurs when they are pursuing deep understanding of the content they are expected to teach.[2] Teachers need to have understanding of the content of the standards in order to teach them well. To what extent does the grant further teachers’ content understanding of the standards?

· Are the professional learning activities for educators described in the grant application examples of the type of rigorous, engaging and relevant learning we expect students to participate in, as characterized, for example, by:

o Including rigorous content and cognitively demanding tasks;

o Actively engaging teachers in solving problems and addressing dilemmas together that are important to them and to their work;

o Following the principles of universal design for learning by giving participants choices in how information is presented, how knowledge is expressed, and how they engage with the program;

o Setting expectations that the teacher participants will be the primary owners of the work and will do the bulk of the “intellectual lifting.”

· Are the goals for the grant and the teachers’ work clear, measurable and directly connected to advancing student learning?

[1] The criteria outlined below were informed by conversations on professional learning systems sponsored by the Aspen Institute, Washington, DC, March 1-2, 2017 and by a review of the draft of a paper produced by the Aspen Institute on professional learning.

[2] See, for example, “Designing Educative Curriculum Materials to Promote Teacher Learning,” Elizabeth A. Davis and Joseph S. Krajcik, Educational Researcher, Volume 34, Number 3, April 2015, as cited by the Aspen Institute, draft paper on professional learning, March 2, 2017.