Template Introduction
Attached is the SIM K–8 Stage 2 supplemental overview. This overview should not be submitted as a lone document. It should always accompany the three-stage template.
The overview is a word document so you can work in the document to include the customer’s name and your contact information. Any information that is highlighted needs your attention before you submit the proposal. Either fill in the information needed or delete the comment and text if you choose not to include the information in the proposal.
Customization
If you need to add/delete/change any of the information in the template for a more customized response, Iowa City Proposal Services can help you edit the template to meet your needs. Fill out the appropriate form on Salesforce.com or contact Mary Beth Rozmus, Proposal Manager, at , JoAnn Goerdt, Proposal Writer at , or Nicole Schrobilgen, Proposal Coordinator at .
Schoolwide Improvement Model (SIM)
K–8, Stage 2
Table of Contents
Pearson’s Schoolwide Improvement Model (SIM)
What SIM Is Designed to Do 2
The Ingredients of Improvement: An Overview of
SIM’s Components 3
A Component-by-Component Walk Through of SIM 6
Getting to the Core of Things: Implementing SIM 23
Examining Efficacy: Evaluating SIM 30
SIM Scope of Work 31
Attachment: Foundation SIM for K–8 School in Action:
Stage Two Implementation Focus, Settings, and Supports 34
Pearson’s Schoolwide Improvement Model (SIM): A New and Innovative System of School Improvement Designed to Build Your School’s Capacity to Create its Future
The Schoolwide Improvement Model (SIM) from Pearson is a school improvement model built on the foundations of the research-proven America’s Choice and Learning Teams school improvement models. SIM draws on the extensive experience gained implementing these models in more than 1,000 schools over the past 20 years and is purpose-built to be responsive to the current needs and circumstances of schools seeking to improve their performance.
What SIM Is Designed to Do
Get Your Students on the Pathway to College and Career Readiness
The path to college and career readiness begins in the primary grades. SIM is focused on helping schools assist all students to prepare for college and careers. It takes its lead from the definition of college and career readiness that is articulated in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the standards for college and career readiness established by specific states.
Help Your Students Achieve the Common Core State Standards
Consistent with the focus on college and career readiness, SIM is designed to help schools meet the demands of the CCSS. SIM has been crafted from the ground up to support CCSS implementation. Content-area concentrations in literacy/English language arts (ELA) and mathematics provide scaffolding to help teachers align their instruction to the CCSS. SIM features a schoolwide instructional focus on academic language and learner competencies that lays the groundwork for college and career readiness further down the road. In addition, content area concentrations in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics provide scaffolding to help teachers align their instruction to the CCSS and assessments by attending to the “Instructional Shifts” as defined by Common Core in Literacy and Mathematics. The model also provides support for teachers to adapt their own curriculum materials to achieve the curriculum and instructional alignment that is required for students to perform at high levels on the new assessments.
Provide High-Quality Instruction for All Students
SIM focuses on high-quality instruction for all students by placing a primary emphasis on building the quality of the core instructional program—Tier 1 as defined in Response to Intervention (RtI). At the foundation of RtI is the concept that the instructional needs of the vast majority of students should be accommodated within the core instructional program. If we take seriously the idea of high standards for all students, then we need to focus on how to organize instruction and learning within the core instructional program to meet that expectation. When the quality of “first” instruction is maximized, the number of students requiring supplementary support through Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions is likely to be reduced as more students’ learning needs are met within the regular classroom. In this way Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions can be reserved for students whose needs cannot be met within the regular classroom and targeted specifically to these students’ needs.
Reach Every Student, Every Subject, Every Day
Comprehensive and sustainable school improvement requires more than a focus on ELA and mathematics. Essential as these core subjects are, they occupy only a portion of each student’s day at school and involve only a fraction of the teaching faculty. Schoolwide improvement requires a schoolwide approach: One that impacts—every day—teaching and learning for all students across all content areas (both core and elective) and leads to change in the systems that organize and link programs and practices throughout the school. SIM is designed to achieve schoolwide, high-quality instruction for all students in your school.
The Ingredients of Improvement: An Overview of SIM’s Components
SIM has five components, each contributing to comprehensive, schoolwide improvement.
Standards-Aligned Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Standards-based learning and the alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment to standards forms the foundation of SIM. The model builds a collective commitment to systemic improvement to provide high quality instruction for all students by combining content area concentrations in math and literacy/English language arts (ELA) with a schoolwide focus on instructional practices that support students’ development of college and career readiness. SIM Stage 2 deepens the focus on the aligned instructional system by explicitly connecting the spirit of the standards to the instructional shifts and leads the school through the assessment analysis cycle to monitor and determine student progress The concentrations in math and literacy/ELA include alignment of Tier 2 and Tier 3 academic interventions with the core (Tier 1) instructional program.
High-Performance Leadership, Management, and Organization
SIM Stage 2 trains leadership teams to support school improvement efforts at every level by:
§ Empowering staff through distributed leadership
§ Balancing support and pressure to help teachers transform their practices
§ Focusing the school on organization-wide activities proven to positively impact student success
§ Develop & nurture collaboration, using a systems approach to engage the entire school in shared responsibility & shared learning
§ Provide anchor for development of a data-driven culture and nurture use of data among Workgroups
High Achievement and Engagement
SIM complements its focus on standards-aligned instruction with a schoolwide focus on high expectations for student achievement and strategies to build parent and community commitment to high expectations for student achievement. Support for students’ commitment to their academic success, particularly when it comes from their parents, galvanizes learning. Strong family and community support, coupled with standards-aligned instruction, connects students’ engagement in learning with their social and emotional development. The result is a stable and healthy learning environment that promotes academic achievement.
Data-Driven Culture
SIM Stage 2 supports the emergence of a data-driven school culture by initially centering on the work of the school leadership team. This focus on building habits of appropriate and effective use of data to guide decisions extends over time to an ever increasing number of teachers and school staff, thereby impacting and improving all aspects of school policy and practice. Data sources include both academic progress and achievement data and information related to students’ engagement in learning. Special attention is given to how academic interventions support students’ progress toward meeting the standards.
Sustainability for Continuing Improvement
Capacity building for continuing improvement is a primary focus of SIM’s design. Our proprietary, validated technical support system promotes continuous improvement via distributed leadership and collaboration, as well as through professional development, coaching, and technical support. The technical support system incorporates structures and processes for monitoring, adjusting, and sustaining implementation over time to ensure school-level capacity building and a gradual transfer of responsibility from Pearson staff to school staff that enables the school in take the driver’s seat in its improvement process.
The wheel below depicts the relationships among SIM’s five components: (1) Standards-Aligned Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment; (2) High-Performance Leadership, Management, and Organization; (3) High Achievement and Engagement; (4) Data-Driven Culture; and (5) Sustainability for Continuing Improvement.
Helping Students Succeed. The five components of the SIM model interact to promote academic success and to prepare students for college and careers.
Three concentric circles surround SIM’s “hub” of College and Career Ready Students. In the middle circle, Standards-Aligned Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment (also referred to as Standards-Aligned Instruction) and High-Performance Leadership (also referred to as Leadership) are locked together to show their tight connection. The primary role of Leadership is to provide the guidance and support needed to achieve Standards-Aligned Instruction.
The component of High Achievement and Engagement overlaps with both Standards-Aligned Instruction and Leadership to underscore the role of the latter two components in building parent and community belief in the importance of establishing high expectations for all students. The overlap also emphasizes the critical connections between students’ in-class and out-of-class life and experiences in shaping their engagement in learning and their belief in their capacity to keep learning, both of which are critical to their development of commitment to college and careers.
The fourth component, Data-Driven Culture, also overlaps with both Standards-Aligned Instruction and Leadership. A “data-driven culture” means a culture in which data collection and analysis—and the use of this information to inform decisions about all aspects of school operations and activity—is both systematic and customary. Systematic data use and analysis cannot become “the way we do things around here” without Standards-Aligned Instruction to provide the underpinning and High Performance Leadership to show the way.
Sustainability for Continuing Improvement is about the “how” of SIM rather than the “what.” This fifth component encompasses the other four and describes how the tasks of the other components are achieved. It reflects that the ultimate aim of building capacity is to sustain schoolwide improvement beyond the formal period of SIM implementation and reach the point of self-directed, self-managed improvement.
A Component-by-Component Walk Through SIM
All About Teaching: The Standards-Aligned Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Component of SIM Features a Focus on Literacy and Math and a Unifying Schoolwide Instructional Focus
SIM’s first component Standards-Aligned Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment has two sub-components:
§ Literacy Focus
§ Math Focus
Unifying the approach in these content areas is a Schoolwide Instructional Focus (SIF) on academic language and independent learner competencies, paving the way to for student development of college and career readiness. Stage 2 SIF deepens the focus of the CCR competencies that reflect a progression of learner independence.
SIM Moves Your School toward Achieving the CCSS in Literacy and Math
The SIM component of Standards-Aligned Instruction focuses primarily on literacy/ELA and math. The focus on these core content areas provides support for achieving strong alignment of curriculum and instruction with the CCSS and related assessments.
The Literacy Focus Provides Teachers Hands-On Experience with Standards-Aligned Curriculum and Instruction and Enables Students to Achieve the CCSS in Literacy/ELA
SIM’s Literacy Focus helps the school create a program that will enable all students to achieve the high levels of student performance in reading, writing, and speaking required by the CCSS. The following aspects of teaching reading and writing in K–8 are included in this focus:
§ Focusing on Literacy in Early Childhood Development and the Primary Grades. A strong focus on oral-language development in the primary years is the fundamental building block for literacy. With SIM, this focus begins in pre-K and extends through third grade. Benchmark expectations for students in both speaking and listening at each grade level from pre-K to grade 3 provide a framework for development of oral language. Videotaped samples of student work together with explicit guidance on strategies for building students’ skills in speaking and listening illustrate these benchmark expectations.
§ Building on Oral Language Development and Creating a Bridge to High School. SIM’s initial focus on oral-language development provides the foundation for a comprehensive standards-based approach to literacy/ELA that builds consistently from the primary years through to the bridge to high school. A workshop approach that incorporates reading, writing, oral language, and skills development provides the structure for this evolution in literacy/ELA. The workshop approach incorporates a balance of whole group, small group, and individual instruction and employs strategies for scaffolding the development of students’ academic behaviors to allow them to act as independent and responsible learners.
§ Developing Independent Readers. In the primary grades, reading focuses on establishing all students as independent readers by no later than third grade. SIM approaches this focus comprehensively by enhancing both students’ skill development and their development of the habits and behaviors of effective, independent readers.
Close monitoring of student progress is coupled with assessment using the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) or a similar tool that supports consistent, standards-based monitoring through to eighth grade. Progress monitoring in this manner helps ensure that students are making appropriate advances and allows for the use of timely interventions. This two-pronged approach to monitoring works with any reading program a school may use. It is complemented by careful consideration of the alignment of interventions to the core instructional program.
Complementing the instructional program is a schoolwide initiative to cultivate independent reading as a daily practice. Connecting closely with the school’s Media Center, this initiative is designed to help students expand their literary preferences, explore new genres and become habitual readers. This practice is closely associated with continuing student engagement and academic achievement.
§ Comprehending Complex Informational and Literary Texts. Alignment with the CCSS reading standards requires attention to text complexity. Accordingly, Stage 2 embraces the Instructional Shifts of Common Core that call for reading and writing grounded in evidence from text and regular practice with complex text and its academic vocabulary. SIM’s Literacy Content-Area Concentration targets compatible close reading strategies that improve student comprehension, especially the comprehension of complex informational and literary texts. Model lessons illustrate how to teach students to develop the following skills: