Curriculum Development and Assessment

Baselines and Ideas


This is my strongest area as a teacher. I have one master's degree in curriculum supervision and one master's degree in curriculum and instruction. During my career, I have been involved in writing curriculum, standards, benchmarks and common assessments. I have also helped to develop strategic plans, mission statements and goals. Finally, another colleague and I designed new report cards for the third and fourth grade students in our district. For a while, it become the template for other grades, too. Unfortunately, we have noticed a trend that after local teachers develop materials, they are replaced by commercially purchased materials. For instance, we spent two years writing math and reading curriculum and benchmarks. Then, the district administrators mandated that we use and follow all the material presented in our math and reading textbooks.
How can we remain professionals who decide what are the best methods for teaching our particular students?

Smart Goal

By the end of the first quarter of the fall 2011 school year, I will have completed and implemented standards based grading and reporting of grades for the entire 6th grade mathematics curriculum.

Best Practice Pedagogy

Baselines and Ideas


Best Practice Pedagogy is a never-ending area of knowledge to pursue. Our teaching methods are constantly evolving as our society changes. In addition, new research is always being conducted and published. Every year when I review best practices, I find things I have been neglecting or forgetting as a teacher. Staying current with educational literature through journals and classes is the main way I try to stay current
What are the best practices for teachers of middle school aged children?

What goals could I set for myself to improve my current practice?

Smart Goal

By January 2011, I want to see my students' positive attitudes increase towards the subject of mathematics as result of implementing the best practice of cooperative work.

Educational Research - Baseline

Baseline and Ideas


When I am taking classes, I enjoy reading and conducting educational research. At other times, I subscribe to educational journals and read back issues like other (normal) people read popular magazines. For many years, I chose to complete action research studies in place of formal evaluations. Past studies have included reading differentiation, multiple intelligences, asking questions, and science instruction. In addition, I completed a narrative inquiry graduate class and learned how to write a narrative research study.
What type of research would be best for pursuing my questions as a teacher?

How have research methods changed since I last conducted research?

What is a good journal for math instruction?

Smart Goals

I will conduct a review of the literature on creating standards based curriculum and grading in mathematics Specifically, I would like to read Marzano's and Wormeli's books and conduct action research to find the best methods for implementing standards based curriculum and grading to increase student achievement of MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) Goals in mathematics. I would like to finish reading the two books and an article on using cooperative math groups to achieve standards by January, 2011. Then, I would like to find at least three more articles to support my research and meet with a teacher in Beaver Dam who has conducted similar research in social studies by June 2011. Finally, I would like to read at least 3 more articles after I conduct my final research project during the Fall of 2011 and compare my results with others conducting similar research.

Learning in Community - Baseline

Baseline and Ideas


I like reading the comments and posts from colleagues in our DL2 Community, but it is helpful to have another person, Mary, in the same building, too. Many of my closest friends (and my husband) are educators. Almost all my team-teaching experiences have been positive, and I enjoy sharing common planning time with my colleagues (but dislike meetings). Our grade level teachers meet four or five days a year, and that helps keep us connected. Over the years, I have also tried to develop both social and work related groups. For instance, a group of teachers in my current district meet socially the last Tuesday of the month at a local restaurant. We call it our "Treasures" Meeting based on the meetings we used to have when we were piloting the Treasures' reading book series. I have also organized education book discussion groups and staff get togethers and student get togethers in my home.
How can we improve the communication in our DL2 Community?

What are other ways we can increase communication with others?

Smart Goal

My goal is to implement math cooperative groups in my class and create an algebra learning community on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school with the result that I will have ten students complete a pre-algebra self-study course and at least three students complete an online pre-algebra course by the end of the 2010-2011 school year.

Reading List

For the South Dakota trip, I bought The Killing of Crazy Horse to read on my IPad because it was related to our travel destination, and because it won The National Book Award. (I have never been disappointed by a book on that list). Even though I didn't finish more than a 100 pages before my daughter, Sasha, and I returned, I did eventually finish the book, and it was worth reading.

After skimming through Mindset and The Penderwicks, I am now reading The Greater Journey mainly because it's a new book by David McCullough and because it has to do with France. When my daughter, Sam, leaves for France in July, I'll be picturing the country described in the book's pages, the memories I have from my own travels in Paris and all the new adventures Sam might have!

Today, I spent some time putting together my own Summer Reading List. Nooooo, I won't read them all, but Phil and I decided to have another Book Club this summer. We usually like the same books so I combed a number of blogs and reviews, and I'll let him pick the actual books we read.

Book List
.Guns, Germs and Steel
.The Master and the Margarita
.HMS Ulysses
.The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
.The History of Danish Dreams
.Norwegian Wood
.Cloud Atlas
.Wiseguy
.Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
.Klondike:The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899
.A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
.A Walk in the Woods
.The Song of the Dodo
.Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
.Georgiana: The Duchess of Devonshire
.The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat
.Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science Faith and Love
.Surely, You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
.Harriet Lane: America's First Lady
.Brother to a Dragonfly
.I Married Adventure

Yearly Goal at Rusch Completed

Goal: Differentiate math instruction to extend the development assessment approach to 6^th grade. Create remediation lessons and finish with quick assessments. Provide some algebra enrichment and readiness skills to the higher end (230+).


Steps for Achieving Goal:

• I set up my grade book based on standards achievement during the 3rd and 4th quarters of the school year. Students also completed self-assessments and self-tracked achievement of standards during units 7 and 8. 
• I created remediation lessons for students who had difficulty on the quick assessments. Lessons were taught by a parent volunteer, peer tutors or me.
• Algebra enrichment and readiness skill sessions were held every Tuesday and Thursday after school from 3:05-3:50 until 4/22/11.
• YouTube lessons and computer games were added to my class website.
• I completed two action research studies to study the effects of differentiation in mathematics and wrote a literature review.

Narrative Statement for Next Year's Research

Research Study - How can I differentiate content, lessons and standards-based assessment in mathematics classes so all students make academic growth?

1.  I will be researching the effects of differentiation in mathematics classes. The purpose of this study is to meet the needs of all 4th grade mathematics students in my school. I will begin collecting data from the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year until the second MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) test is completed in early February 2012.

• My plan is to create binders for each math unit using three levels of content and instruction for each lesson.
• Standards-based assessment charts will be used to help students monitor their achievement of each standard.
• Opportunities for reteaching and retesting will be available for all math standards.
• ALEKS (Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces) online computer instruction will be provided for students who achieve at the 95th-99th percentile on the MAP test.
• After the first MAP test, Enrichment Math Parties will be held on Tuesday and/or Thursday nights after school. These parties will be open to all students who accept an invitation to complete packets of individualized instruction.
• Online instruction in the form of YouTube lessons will be made available on my class website.
• Class practice tests, problems and explanations will also be available online and in hard copy form.
• Everyday Math Games, games related to RIT (Rasch Unit) scores, and other online instructional games will be available on my class website.
• Questionnaires will be given to students at the beginning, middle and end of data collection period.
• I will add a weekly reflection regarding math instruction onto my lesson plans.

2.  Data from classroom testing, MAP testing, student questionnaires and teacher reflections will be used to form results. My students are 9-and-10-year-old fourth graders. There are currently three students with learning disabilities out of 46 students. Most students are Caucasian.

3.  My parent/guardians will not receive a written notification of informed consent since I will not complete the research for publication.