​Go back to the meat of your curriculum to start! Ask yourself these questions.

• What standard(s) is the focus of the unit?
• What essential skills or content do students need to demonstrate?
• What can students do or produce to demonstrate mastery?

​You can probably answer all of these questions pretty easily because they are questions every teacher has to think about regardless of the setup of their classroom. In the table below you can see an example from a unit we each chose to make self paced. Becca gives short assessments and a final unit test. Her department gets 100% of their grades from quizzes and tests so that is important to continue to use though she would also like to integrate a project into this unit. Danielle also uses a quiz as her way to test for mastery in this unit. ​

 Now that you have the end goal in mind, what will you do with your resources to make this unit self paced?

• How will you provide expectations?
• What resources can students use?
• How will you monitor student progress? 
• How will students monitor their own progress?
• How will students receive feedback and how often will they receive it?

Something to keep in mind when you are changing to a self paced classroom is that you typically aren't going to spend a lot of time speaking to the class as a whole. Many of the things that you ask students to do need to be self guided.

    For Becca, she found it useful to give a short version of each lesson about twice a week to the whole class. If students were already ahead of the material she was teaching, they just kept working on their own or assisted her in the lesson. Everyone else was given a short version of the notes but mainly a lot of examples. When she was finished, it was pretty easy for her to tell if students were completely lost or ready to work. She could then work with small groups to help those who were lost understand but all of the other students were still working on their own. With online lecture videos, fill in the blank notes, examples with answer keys, and links to immediate feedback math problems, all students were working on what they needed to and she was still able to help students understand parts that they were confused on. Students would decide when they were ready to take a 5 question quiz corresponding with the lesson they felt they had completed and get immediate feedback. Whether they passed it or not, they would show Becca their score which gave Becca the perfect time to check in on progress and either congratulate them on their success or help them see their mistakes. Students could tell whether they were "on track" or not by looking at the checklist of mastery quizzes. While having a true deadline is not completely self-paced, we all have a last day of school and students need to understand what they are expected to complete. Having suggested due dates let them know what they needed to do and helped them monitor their progress and understand the expectations. 

For Danielle, it really comes down to working with small groups. The students go through self-guided material, but in addition to the self-guided material Danielle does small group instruction twice a week on average. The self-guided material is a variety of activities that she used to do as a whole class that are modified for self-paced and some new ones she has found or created. The students have access to videos, website, books, etc for the activities and many of them are not online activities. She still does hands-on activities as much as possible. For the small group activities, she picks particular skills that correlate to where students are in the curriculum and has mini lessons that she does with the students. This allows Danielle to have carved out time with each student and make sure that they are understanding the material. 

Danielle also makes it clear that, if any student would like, they can schedule class time to work with Danielle in a small group or 1:1 and work on specific content. Danielle also uses formative assessment to create remediation small groups. Students have to complete 2-3 formative assessment activities per unit and they have to be reviewed with Danielle before they can move forward. This allows Danielle to check for understanding frequently and forces students to pause and make sure they understand material before the summative assessment. 

Danielle also makes a point on certain days of the week to do what she calls 'rounds'. She goes around the room and talks to each student about their progress and goals for the content and class. This is when many students make appointments for small groups or she assigns students to specific small groups. It is a really great way to check in and have one on one conversations with students. 

We've filled out this section of the template below to give you a snapshot version of what it looks like! These are the questions that lead you to the logistics of your self paced unit. 

Now for the setup and what your classroom will look like during this unit:

• How will you communicate about this process with parents and peers?​
  • This set up will be very foreign to most parents and peers. We suggest sending home a letter as well as having materials available at open houses and parent teacher conferences so parents can see what their students are doing in class. If you have a study hall type of time where your students may be in another classroom, it would be great to let other teachers know what your students can be working on so they continue to get things done! We have our communication letters in our TPT store!
• How will you communicate about this process with students?
  • Constantly is the correct answer here. Throughout the first unit of the year (or whichever unit you pick) you will need to reiterate expectations for your students. We use a self-regulated work rubric in our rooms. We blow this rubric up to a poster size as well as print out a copy for each of our students so they can reference it daily. Becca takes a few minutes at the beginning of each class to let everyone know what is expected for the day. She also writes on the board all of the possible things that students may be working on that day as a quick reference for getting students back to work. It is important to give a lot of feedback throughout this unit, too, so students can not only understand what they are learning but how they are learning. 
• How will you differentiate your expectations, resources, etc.
  • Having a self paced room is incredibly eye opening. You will notice who is self motivated and who has a tendency to be lazy. When you talk to those who aren't getting work done you will discover some students who need a little push to start getting things done but you'll also find students who are going through things at home you never would have imagined. You'll also discover students who aren't lazy but just truly need a modification. At this point you have picked apart every bit of your material and laid it out like a map for you students to follow. In a self paced classroom it is so easy to take out one of those pitstops or adapt it with no one else the wiser. That student will get the modification needed and never have to feel like they have been singled out in the class. You will see students excel that you didn't expect to and may be up for tutoring, an extra project, or even a competition you find online! Becca had a student who mastered all of the Geometry concepts in her class a month before school was out. She had him find a MOOC (a massive open online course) that he was truly interested in and work on it the remainder of the year. Modifications are not only for those who need things to be a bit easier. Don't forget to come up with some ways to challenge your students, too!
• How will you get feedback from students and adapt your plans?
  • You may try a unit and decide all of the running around during class and the up front work necessary is not your cup of tea. Maybe it is but you still need to check in with your class and see how they are feeling about it. Both Danielle and Becca have their students take a Google form survey at the end of each quarter to gauge how students are doing and look for ways to improve the process. Both of us have had overwhelmingly positive feedback from our students for a lot of reasons. Here are a couple of things our students have said:

How can we not advocate for this process when we see how much it has meant to our students? This is why we do it. This is why we love it!

Here is the plan for the communication of a self paced classroom at a glance! We have a lot of the items we use available on our TPT store!
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 In the end, you have to do what is best for you and your students. Feedback is so important not only to let you know how the student feel about the process but to get ideas for how to continue to improve your class and the positive feedback has lead us to continue and advocate for self paced classrooms. If it doesn't work for you and your class, abandon ship after one unit and do what you need to do!  

If you are really interested in attempting the self-paced learning concept, we recommend starting with one unit or a specific project or skill that you could have students work on at their own pace throughout the year or semester. Check out the self-paced classroom section of our blog to see all of the pieces we went through to get our classes started. This is something that we are really passionate about and it has helped students learn in our classes. We are still trying to improve as well and we welcome any suggestions and ideas from other who have or plan to take the plunge into self-paced learning!

Step 2: Review Activities to Match Standards, Learning Intention, and Success Criteria
The next step for me is going through my activities and looking through my resources to make sure everything matches up and to see what needs to be improved. For me this means going back and making notes in my plan book from last year, writing notes on my copies of student checklists, and writing ideas and notes in a notebook. I process through writing and talking, so I always write things out to help me think through things and I look for a partner (usually Becca) to talk about my ideas and bounce things off a person.  

This process is really about deciding to make changes and what areas need to be worked on. I look for lessons that are weak or really just didn't perform the way I wanted them to and mark them for change and what ideas I have for changing them. I go through a series of questions like the ones below to get me thinking about what kinds of changes to make.

• Does this activity correlate to my success criteria and standards?
• How can I make this fit the standards and success criteria better?
• How will this activity prepare students for the assessment?
• What skills do students need to complete this activity? What kinds of support could they need?
• How or Can I make this interactive for students?
• It is possible for students to have options in how they do this activity?
• What resources are needed to make this activity happen?

Those questions are always in my head as I review lessons.  Once I have an idea of what needs to be worked on, I begin the next step.​
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Step 3: The Hunt for Resources and Ideas
Next is the hunt for new ideas and resources, to make those changes you want to your lessons. Honestly this is something that is personal to every teacher, but the best place to find these ideas is:

1. Teacher Network - Talk and observe other teachers for ideas and resources
2. Teacher Blogs - This has been a huge help in finding new ideas and resources. Teachers blogging is the best thing, because we understand that we need to share and we are typically out to make ourselves better and help others get better. We have a page dedicated to technology tools we love using in the classroom! We also have a page of posts that we call "Pick Me Ups" that often are new ideas to try in your classroom to promote engagement!
3. Social Media - Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are filled with articles, ideas, resources, etc that can help you get ideas and find resources that can help you improve your lessons. 

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          Curriculum can refer to so many things because its actual definition is so broad - referring to the subjects comprising a course of study in school. As teachers we could think of curriculum as the standards we teach, the activities and lesson plans we make, or the books and resources we use but the truth is that a great curriculum is all of those things. If you have struggled with putting together curriculum, we wanted to take a full post and talk about how to build a great curriculum. With a couple of weeks left before school starts, now is a great time to look at your current curriculum and make a couple of tweaks if necessary. If you are a first year teacher, I highly recommend reading through these steps and familiarizing yourself with the process! You’ll use it many times in your career!

Step 1: Identify your priority standards. There are a million standards you are supposed to teach but we all know some of them are more important than the others. Which ones are the most important in YOUR class? It is best if you can get together with the grade above and/or below you and have a good conversation about what is the main focus of each grade. If possible, use a top down approach and have your high school/upper level teachers identify their priority standards. Once you know the end goal, each grade level can choose the priority standards that they will be most responsible for. These are the things that you are committing to spending the most time on. Your students should be amazing at the standards you choose as priority standards! Here’s a really important part of this first and most important step - you can’t make everything a priority. We have these books that are “aligned to the standards” that have endless resources. We may even feel like a failure if we don’t make it through the book. But while your instincts will continue to push you to make everything a “priority” and push through the book, the book is a product made by a company trying to appeal to as many people as possible. It will be a great resource but it is not your curriculum and some standards will have to be less important than others. You cannot make all of the standards a priority in a great curriculum. That just can’t happen. The best thing you can do is communicate with your team teachers and the grade levels above and below you and choose carefully and strategically.

Step 2: Identify support standards. Most of the rest of the standards that you didn’t choose as a priority fit under the umbrella of one of your priority standards. For me, it works best to organize it visually just that way. I like to use a spreadsheet (preferably a Google Sheet so everyone working on it can see and contribute) or a giant whiteboard. Separating the support standards under each priority standard begins step 3.

Step 3: Arrange your standards in the order you would like to teach them. Technically you could switch step 2 and 3 if you want, I just like to get everything I plan on teaching up on the board/sheet. Keep in mind what prior knowledge students will need to have for each priority standard. This is another time that having the general outline of the course before and after yours is helpful. It would be great to be able to pick up where your students left off and set them up at the end of the year for their next class.

Step 4: Identify learning intentions and success criteria. This is the lingo we use in my school district but you may know it as “I can” statements. What specifically do you want students to be able to do? Standards are not put into students or parent friendly terms.  Go through each standard you have chosen and decide what you really truly expect to see with your own eyes in your classroom that would mean the student has achieved mastery of the standard. Does this feel like too big of a job because there are too many standards? Go back to step 1 and try to be realistic about your school year and your expectations for your students.

Step 5: Decide how you will help the students master the learning intentions. This is the fun part! Now that you have laid out exactly what you want students to learn, you can be so much more intentional with how you teach it! Make GREAT lessons specific to the learning intentions and success criteria rather than thinking how a worksheet or activity in a textbook says it meets the standards. Your learning intentions meet the standards and make much more sense to everyone involved. Work with those! If you find resources in a textbook, great! There are amazing resources online. So many resources have been created by teachers who know exactly what its like to be in your spot! Look at teachers pay teachers or teacher’s notebook! Check back on our site for some ideas and resources! Try to find ideas for your content in your everyday life! TAKE A TRIP TO TARGET! We all know that’s the best place to get the creative juices flowing! :)

Step 6: Keep working on step 5 and the rest of your classroom organization/management. We are continuously finding resources and perfecting lessons which means we tend to live in step 5. Don’t forget the ever important part of revamping curriculum: communication.

• Who needs to know that you made some changes?
• What do you need to do to communicate?
• Will your grading change? If so, how?
• How will you differentiate in your classroom with the new resources?
• How will you communicate expectations to parents and students? (parent letter, syllabus, etc)
• Do you need money for any subscriptions, manipulatives, or other resources you’re planning on using?

That’s it! Whether you start from scratch or you are just revamping your current curriculum, you can feel great about being so intentional with your time educating your students!​

     Teachers have many jobs and duties they must perform every day. Understanding what is most important gets distorted and sometimes neglected. Having a solid curriculum is crucial to a teacher’s focus and success in the classroom. Robert Marzano has written about school districts having a guaranteed and viable curriculum. In education today, many things have gotten in the way of solid teaching practices. So many districts are trying to capture the magic offered in the form of numerous well-marketed educational programs. 

Educational programs very rarely live up to the hype that got them into the classroom. Many factors play a part in that. The kind of professional development it takes to get any program implemented to its fullest very often does not make it to the table. Instead, it is typically one false start after another. 

Districts that take the time to understand their state’s standards and get down in the weeds to develop curriculum, find success on many levels. First, teachers who participate in the development of curriculum have the opportunity to define the standards and vet out what students are asked to do. Second, teachers become experts of their content area.

Curriculum done right carries with it the reward of clarity for teachers about standards and what is to be taught. Great lesson plans and resources can be gathered once an understanding of what needs to be taught is in place. Developing a common vocabulary, clarifying objectives, and student outcomes are also components of a well-developed curriculum. The time teachers will spend collaborating about the mapping process of curriculum will help them effectively use tools like Bloom’s taxonomy to scaffold the intensity of lessons as students migrate through the grades. Using a pacing guide helps all teachers stay on the same page and especially helps students who move from building to building within a district of any size. A lack of common pacing guides can spell failure for students who tend to be transient. They can often miss whole concepts established through learning that scaffolds material, like math and science. 

Teachers are asked to do so many things for their students today. Struggling to find the right materials to meet state standards should not be one of their battles. In an attempt to teach often nebulous standards, fundamental skills (number sense, phonics, phonemic awareness, etc.) are very often not adequately taught. 

Teachers can master their content areas when they are involved in writing curriculum. Defining standards and collaborating with one another to map and pace the work, brings about a guaranteed and viable curriculum, which spells success in the classroom.


The Importance of Good Curriculum

Stephen Gilbreth, EdD

Assistant Superintendent, Learning Services

Joplin Schools
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Of all of the things teachers are, first and foremost teachers are leaders. We lead school programs, other teachers, community organizations, and most importantly we are leaders in the classroom. Our students look to us to show them how to learn and how to operate in society. Our individual styles of leadership vary but there are 3 qualities that all leaders have:

1. Being an effective communicator - Master the art of verbal and written communications. Know how to be culturally fluent and interact with others from a wide variety of backgrounds.
2. Approachable - Being genuine and encouraging honesty will make your challenging, but achievable and straightforward vision a reality.
3. Clear Direction - Being clear about expectations, guidelines, and measurements enables collaboration.

Having these qualities and being a leader allows to make an impact in the lives of our students and help them become the people they are supposed to be.

Take this quiz to see what type of leader you are!

Before school starts back up again it is important to think about our actions and behaviors and how to be the best leader we can for our students. Our leadership skills are what can make or break a school year. A teacher’s leadership skills impact student learning, behavior, and connection to school.

If you feel like you need to brush up or improve your leadership skills here are a few ideas from across the internet:

1. Take a Leadership Personality Test - For people that would like a little more constructive results or more detail than the fun one we provided. Check out this one from Skills You Need.
   
2. Journal - Journaling is a great way to reflect on the day-to-day of teaching. What are you interactions like with students, keep track behavior issues and how they were dealt with. It doesn’t have to be formal, but writing or typing down will help you process what is happening in the classroom.
   
3. Observations - Observe master teachers in your building or district. What are they doing? How do they interact with students. Having conversations with these master teachers can really help you build your leadership skills.
   
4. Build Communication Skills - How you communicate with students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members is incredibly important to be being a leader. Even if you are good at everything else, not being a good communicator will keep you from advancing on your school goals. This is a skill that always needs to be kept sharp as well. It is not something that a leader can let slide.
   

There are tons of resources out there on how to build these skills if you are interested in working on your leadership skills for the classroom. It would be an investment well worth the time.