Curriculum Leaders
Especially for you...
enjoy the resources, websites, and other information to extend the thinking and practices of others in your roles. Have a suggested resource? Use the form on the right to submit your ideas.
All students deserve high-quality materials. Less than 20 percent of the materials in use in classrooms is aligned to standards, according to EdReports.
What you select and how you select matters. Schools and districts have more options than ever from which to find high-quality materials that meet their local priorities. The selection process by EdReports is a critical lever for ensuring that quality materials are adopted and then used well in classrooms. Current adoption practices are simply not good enough. Check out the process offered by EdReports.
Access: Adoption of Instructional Resources - Ed Reports' Process
- Annual Notices and Deadlines for Public and Non-Public Districts: The Iowa Department of Education provides this list (which may not be exhaustive, but represents the DE’s best efforts) of state and federal notices that all districts are required to give to the public every year. This list does not attempt to include notices that are to be given to specific populations (e.g., notification of non-highly qualified teachers, notices to CPI families about testing). For CASA-specific deadlines, see the Consolidated Accountability and Support Application (CASA) webpage.
Access: Annual Notices and Deadlines for Public and Non-Public Districts
Carefully chosen summaries to energize leadership, teaching, and learning include the following: effective leadership, strengthening teachers, pedagogy that works, mindsets for learning, and classroom nuts and bolts.
Access: The Best of Marshall Memos
Dr. Kim Jones shared this presentation at the Iowa ASCD Curriculum Leadership Academy 2022.
Access: Building a Strategy for Deep Understanding of Standards
Dr. Kim Jones, former Iowa ASCD Director, shares this protocol for building or reviewing/revising a Curriculum Program.
CAST is a nonprofit education research and development organization that created Universal Design for Learning framework and UDL Guidelines, now used the world over to make learning more inclusive.
Access: CAST
Curriculum selection is no longer about textbook adoptions that happen every few years. Districts today are developing a strategy for instructional materials adoption and selection that takes into account district goals, pedagogical shifts, cultural relevance, and student-centered environments.
Access: Curriculum Adoption and Strategy
- Standards for Professional Learning - Learning Forward - YouTube Overview
- Modes of Professional Development - SLIDO
- IPDM (Iowa Professional Development Model) Plan Workbook
- IPDM's Rubric for Developing a Building/District Profile
- Comprehensive School Improvement Plan (CSIP)
- Hanover's District Leaders' Guide for Developing a Professional Learning Plan
- Why Professional Development Matters - Learning Forward
- Planning Powerful Teacher-Led Professional Learning - ASCD
- Planning Professional Learning -Thomas Guskey - ASCD
- Professional Learning Plans: A Workbook for States, Districts, and Schools
Day 1 and Day 2 and summaries of the 8 Functions of curriculum leaders. This is also the KASAB for curriculum leaders. Information on instructional frameworks is also included.
Here is the agendas for the two days of the Curriculum Leadership Academy:
Access: Iowa Curriculum Leadership Academy - 22
The Iowa ASCD Curriculum Academey - 2023 took place July 24-25, 2023. You may access the presentations made on each of those days at this site.
- Curriculum Leadership Academy - April 11 and 12, 2012
- Curriculum Leadership Academy - April 10 and 11, 2013
- Curriculum Leadership Academy with Jay McTighe - April 10, 2014
- Curriculum Leadership Academy - Day 2 with Featured Districts - April 11, 2014
- Curriculum Leadership Academy - Day 1 with Ken O'Connor - April 23, 2015: Standards-Based Grading for Learning
- Curriculum Leadership Academy - Day 2 with Featured Districts - April 24, 2015: Standards-Based Grading for Learning
- Curriculum Leadership Academy - Day 1 with Rick Wormeli - April 21, 2016
- Curriculum Leadership Academy - Day 2 with Featured Districts - April 22, 2016
Jay McTighe and Catlin Tucker identify four key actions educators can use to prepare students for a lifetime of continuous and autonomous learning.
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KASAB for Curriculum Leaders based on the 8 Functions |
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Access: Eight Functions of High Effective Curriculum Leads
This is the evaluation tool provided by SAI and developed by more than 70 central office administrators.
Access: Evaluation of Central Office Administrators
This protocol for examining assessments with others is available through the National School Reform Faculty.
Access: Examining Assessments
Angela Di Michele Lalor shares how examining curriculum with a focus on key elements of effective learning allows educators to gain clarity about what they are teaching and why.
The KASAB addresses the knowledge, attitudes, skills, aspirations, and behaviors of curriculum leads in demonstrating the functions/work of those curriculum leads.
Access: KASAB
This site is a curriculum director's "dream come true," with resources to support your work as well as protocols and processes to give structure and organization to that work.
Access: National School Reform Faculty
Dr. Kim Jones, former Director of Iowa ASCD, shares this protocol for Prioritizing and Unpacking Standards.
Access: Resource Evaluation Tool
Tony Frontier and Jay McTighe have shared an article about the role of well-crafted rubrics creating a shared language that lets teachers and students work together.
Learning Forward's site for professional learning supports for learning communities, leadership, resources, data, learning designs, implementation, and outcomes.
Educator Jenni Aberli discusses three important questions parents can ask to know more about the quality of their children's materials. (edreports blog)
Access: Three Questions Parents Can Ask about Instructional Materials
Purpose of the Tuning Protocol — Since its trial run in 1992, The Tuning Protocol has been widely used and adapted for professional development purposes in and among schools across the country. It is best suited to look at a piece of work (from a student, teacher, administrator, etc.) in order to “fine tune” or improve it in some way
Access: Tuning Protocol
This protocol for vertical alignment is the work of Kris Jakicic.
Chalk also provides steps in looking at the vertical alignment of curriculum.
Example of a K-12 Vertical Alignment for English/Language Arts
Texas Education Association Association provides vertical alignment charts for K-2.
What do I do if my school does not have vertical team planning? If your school does not have vertical team planning, try one of these five ideas:
- Communicate with your building’s administration to see if they can arrange a time for educators across grade levels to meet.
- Create a questionnaire for educators to fill out to identify what is being taught in their grade.
- Initiate 1:1 conversations with the educators in the grade below the one you teach.
- Talk to the educators in the grade above the one you teach to inquire about what foundational skills they would like to see students enter their classrooms equipped with.
- Create a Google Sheet with columns for each grade level to fill in. This will show at a glance what content is being taught.
Access: Vertical Alignment
The Source is Iowa ASCD's newsletter that is published the first and third Friday of each month, except July.
Write an article for an issue and receive a year's membership.