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Description: The opportunities we provide students to demonstrate their understanding of our content and the skills they have acquired. Assessments are observable and measurable. They may include demonstrated proficiency in the classroom through participation in discussion, presentations and completed projects, as well as traditional tests, quizzes, and homework assignments.

Performance Tasks: What evidence will show that students understand?

A task that uses one's knowledge to effectively act or bring to fruition a complex product that reveals one's knowledge and expertise. This is an authentic assessment that asks students to use knowledge in real-world ways, with genuine purposes, audiences, and situational variables.

Ex. Music recital, oral presentation, art display, technology competition.

Supplementary Evidence: What other evidence needs to be collected to meet Stage 1 Desired Results

Other (often more traditional) assessments of knowledge, skill, and standards that are not otherwise assessed by the performance task.

Ex. Tests, quizzes, prompts, work samples, observations

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We've moved to the next stage in our school-wide curriculum design process!

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We've moved to the next stage in our school-wide curriculum design process!

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During the third quarter, we took the Atlas Learn course titled Assess Learning: Developing Quality Assessments.

This was to consider the components of assessment design and how we can apply best practices to units of study.

Now, it's time to add our unit summative assessments to Atlas!

Head to bishopoconnell.rubiconatlas.org

Click into one of your courses and a unit and scroll down to Stage 2: Summative Assessments.

Check out the little encircled "i" to the right of Assessments for info on Performance Tasks and Supplementary Evidence.

Then, under "Assessments," click "Add New Assessment"

You'll then choose an Assessment Type and Assessment Method.

Add an Assignment Description and any Attachments that pertain to the Assessment (links, files, Google Drive)

Make sure to also click which Unit Targeted Standards the assessment is...assessing!

Add 1+ Summative Assessment(s) for each unit in each of your courses.

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Slides from the May 2, 2024 Professional Learning Sessions with Atlas

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Unpacking Learning Goals from Priority Standards

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Unpacking Learning Goals from Priority Standards

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An Overview of Our Spring 2024 Process

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Unpacking Learning Goals from Priority Standards

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Check out this Presentation designed by Colleen Swaim.

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Standards are a foundational guide for your unit. However, it can be helpful to sharpen the focus of your unit by unpacking them into clearly defined Learning Objectives.

While developing your Course Content & Skills,

you may also want to consider the following questions:

Is this a core building block?

Consider knowledge transfer

Avoid less important facts or definitions that won’t contribute to long-term understanding

Will these be assessed?

Only include Learning Objectives that you will explicitly teach and assess

Do these fit naturally into the unit?

Do not include elements that are disconnected or arbitrary

Does it make sense to unpack both the priority & supporting standards?

Consider only unpacking priority standards for units

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Your Mission: Write Essential Questions for each of your course units and record them in Atlas by Friday, February 23, 2024.

- Once you have written and completed the Essential Questions for all the units of each course you teach, please respond in the igKnight Canvas assignment's text entry box to the following:

What was your design and work process for writing Essential Questions?

What did you find most challenging, rewarding, and/or surprising about this stage of the curricular design work?

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The content & skills for your unit provide a clear outline for what you want students to know and be able to do by the end of the unit. The next step is to consider what students should understand by the end of the unit, and what questions may help guide them to that understanding. You're looking to achieve a mix of both framing units around big ideas AND pointing them beyond to overarching ideas.

As you create the Essential Questions for your units, it may be helpful to reference some characteristics below:

Essential Questions:

Engaging, open-ended questions that promote higher-level thinking

Spark authentic student conversations and help raise new questions

Lead students to central ideas of a unit

Will transfer to other contexts beyond the unit

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December 2023/January 2024

Your Mission: Write Enduring Understandings (Big Ideas) for each of your course units and record them in Atlas by Wednesday, January 31, 2024.

- Once you have written and completed the Enduring Understandings for all the units of each course you teach, please respond in the igKnight Canvas assignment's text entry box to the following:

What was your design and work process for writing Enduring Understandings?

How did you move beyond the standards to articulate the particular understandings your students should acquire during a unit?

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May 2023

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June-August 2023

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"What knowledge is of most worth?"

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Our Curricular Collaboration in Departmental Teams

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Our Curricular Collaboration in Departmental Teams

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November 2022-March 2023

At O’Connell, our disciplines' learning standards primarily come from the professional organizations that represent our disciplines or Virginia state standards.

This is where our essential content (prioritized standards) is derived from.

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Our Goal: A guaranteed and viable curriculum

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Our Goal: A guaranteed and viable curriculum

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What is a curriculum?

It comprises the totality of a student’s experiences at school, but more importantly the classroom academic learning dimension of the O’Connell experience.

Guaranteed?

The same essential content is taught in all classrooms.

Viable?

With academic success at the forefront, learning content is appropriate to the age and ability of the students.

Learning content can be taught in the time available to the teachers.

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The content & skills for your unit provide a clear outline for what you want students to know and be able to do by the end of the unit. The next step is to consider what students should understand by the end of the unit. As you create the Enduring Understandings (aka Big Ideas) for your unit, it may be helpful to reference some of the characteristics below:

Enduring Understanding:

Broad, overarching concepts & ideas that help students organize and make sense of information

Includes core themes, concepts, principles, theories, & processes within a discipline

Recurring & transferrable to other contexts beyond this year, grade level, or discipline

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O'Connell adopted Atlas for its curricular home during Summer 2023.

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Asking Essential Questions to Inspire Lifelong Learning

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Asking Essential Questions to Inspire Lifelong Learning

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How much do you remember from your middle school science class? What about your high school English or History classes? I have various memories from these courses, like writing a screenplay or using Punnett squares to predict whether or not genes will be inherited by various Sesame Street characters. But, for the life of me, I can't remember anything about my 9th grade history class... except that my teacher had a great sense of humor.

Why is it that certain concepts, ideas, and activities stick with us years later, while others quickly fade away?

One way that teachers can help students internalize and retain learning is by writing engaging and thought-provoking essential questions. These questions are posed throughout a unit of instruction to help students make connections and see the big picture. They get at the heart of learning to connect academic content with real-world application. Though I don't remember the specifics, my middle school science teacher inspired us with the question, " What makes us who we are?" For a 14-year-old desperately searching for the answers- looking at genetics and thinking about who I am, how I got to be that way, and why I am different than my classmates- the question itself made the learning stick. Do I need to remember the specifics of the Punnett square? Probably not, but I do remember it because the essential question, and resulting conversations, resonated with me (the engaging activity with Sesame Street characters didn't hurt either). When we are busily grading, prepping materials for the next day, and trying to make sure we cover everything we are supposed to cover, it is hard to keep sight of the big picture. This is why creating unit-level information, including essential questions, is so important. If we, as teachers, get caught up in the day-to-day, how can we expect our students to see beyond the homework they have tonight and the test they have next week?

Essential questions help students make connections and see the big picture.

Characteristics of Essential Questions

Open-ended

Debatable- students should be able to have a conversation and share varying opinions

Stimulating- mentally engaging and thought-provoking

Recurring- the ideas should be broad and significant enough that they are addressed many times throughout a course, and across multiple grade levels

Guiding Questions

Essential questions are over-arching and help students make connections and see the big picture. But what about the unit-specific "guiding" questions that are still important for students to grapple with? These questions could be paired with a corresponding essential question. For example:

EQ: How does conflict produce change?

What were the causes and effects of World War II?

What led to US involvement in World War II?

How is our life different today because of World War II?

In this case, students will learn about World War II within the larger context of "conflict" throughout history. This overarching essential question might be spiraled throughout this history course, and it should even come up across multiple courses and grades.

Tips for Writing Essential Questions

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Asking Essential Questions to Inspire Lifelong Learning - Atlas

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How much do you remember from your middle school science class? What about your high school English or History classes? I have various memories from these courses, like writing a screenplay or using Punnett squares to predict whether or not genes will be inherited by various Sesame Street characters.

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*Depending on the standards your course has adopted, they may already be framed in terms of enduring understandings and essential questions, as can be seen in Virginia's curriculum frameworks

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Teaching, Learning & Assessment

Instruction in Virginia's public schools is guided by the Standards of Learning (SOL). The standards describe the commonwealth's expectations for student learning and achievement in grades K-12 in the following subjects:

The Commonwealth and its public schools also provide specialized instruction and programs for the following:

Gifted students

Students with disabilities

English language learners

Children in schools serving economically disadvantaged communities.

Featured Instructional Resources

Virtual Teaching & Learning Hub

Visit the Virtual Teaching & Learning Hub to discover best practices for supporting virtual learning, find tips on lesson planning and assessment strategies, and access professional learning resources.

Stay Informed with TeacherDirect

TeacherDirect provides a direct line of communication with classroom teachers and educators. TeacherDirect includes information about new instructional resources created by VDOE staff as well as professional development, grant opportunities, and other information of special interest to teachers and students.

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K-12 Standards & Instruction | Virginia Department of Education

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Instruction in Virginia’s public schools is guided by the Standards of Learning (SOL). The standards describe the commonwealth’s expectations for student learning and achievement in grades K-12 in the following subjects:

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Includes a checklist!

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Course Team Collaboration: Unpacking Goals from the Standards

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Course Team Collaboration: Unpacking Goals from the Standards

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Our course learning objectives should specify a performance and reflect:

1. The facts, concepts, generalizations and principles that are the focus of our curriculum.

2. Consciously understood factual information

3. What students can explain to others

Your Mission: Take each of a course's 8-15 standards and break them into roughly 30 declarative and procedural objectives. To start out, use the stems “Students will understand…” and “Students will be able to…” to explicitly distinguish between declarative and procedural objectives.

As a second level of drafting, consider using Revised Bloom’s verbs to more specifically denote declarative objectives.

For instance, “Students will retrieve/paraphrase/illustrate/distinguish/design/justify…”

See O'Connell's Unit Template and Style Guide (also linked from your Atlas units) for further guidance.

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Unpacking Learning Goals from Priority Standards

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March 2023

Academic content standards typically contain far more content than is viable for a grade level during a given school year.

Our next task was to distill these standards down to a manageable amount of essential content.

Each course team identified and drafted a list of
- 8 to 15 priority standards for year-long courses
- 4-8 priority standards for semester-long courses

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O'Connell's Unit Template and Style Guide

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O'Connell's Unit Template and Style Guide

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A tool for rating the importance of individual standards

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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April 2023

For this last step in the process of identifying essential content, the selected standards were vertically reviewed by the courses just above and below it.

While reviewing the draft of 8-15 standards from the other grade levels/courses, teachers posed questions and shared any concerns about omissions and redundancies.

1. Course teams should ideally not choose the same priority standards spanning year-to-year.

2. Instead, course teams should make decisions about when to prioritize or turn focus away from each standard.

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Vertical Alignment Toward a Common Curriculum

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Vertical Alignment Toward a Common Curriculum

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To increase our students’ learning quality, a guaranteed and viable curriculum is crucial.

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To increase our students’ learning quality, a guaranteed and viable curriculum is crucial.

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This includes each departmental team member having a clear understanding of what they will teach.

Student learning outcomes should reflect our O’Connell mission to “provide students an education rooted in the life of Christ and to foster the pursuit of excellence in the whole person.”

During 2022-2023, we worked in our departmental teams,

as members of a school-wide professional learning community, to identify course Priority Standards.

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Once I grab a cup of tea and reflect upon my newly-grouped standards, I am ready to write the Enduring Understandings by examining the overarching purpose for the unit.

Questions to consider:

Why have I chosen to put these particular standards together?

What is the common thread?

What do I really want my students to remember at the end of this unit?

Why should this information matter for my students today?

Why should this information matter for my students ten years from now?

For a teacher that has activities and materials to prep, quizzes to grade, and more, this can be hard. Really, this is even hard for teachers devoting entire professional development days to thinking about curriculum only. But taking the time to flush out the purpose, focus, and value of the unit can make the rest of the planning more targeted and instruction far more effective. After coming up with content, skills, activities, assessments, etc., the teacher has an anchor to check everything against- does this activity really support the purpose of this unit? Is it necessary? If the answer is yes, then you are well on your way! Keep going and check out our Enduring Understanding examples and resources below:

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Enduring Understandings: Seeing the Forest through the Trees - Atlas

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Once I grab a cup of tea and reflect upon my newly-grouped standards, I am ready to write the Enduring Understandings by examining the overarching purpose for the unit. Questions to consider: Why have I chosen to put these particular standards together? What is the common thread?

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by Grant Wiggins

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Essential questions rarely arise in a first draft. Here’s how to construct good ones.

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from Jay McTighe's website