Professional Development
 We provide a highly experienced team of professional development consultants who partner with your school and/or district to implement a highly successful curriculum improvement program. Our consultants are all former educators with extensive experience in curriculum, mapping, and assessment. We provide flexible onsite and online resources to support your needs and work within your budget.
We have the broadest, deepest catalog of professional development courses on instructional planning, explaining the standards, and curriculum alignment and improvement. View our Professional Development offering below by clicking on the path in which you are interested.
IP101: Customizing Instructional and Planning Needs
Overview: A comprehensive understanding of the essential functions and features necessary to begin using Instruction Planner as a design and management system. Includes how elements, blocks, and templates are used in both Unit and Daily Plans to monitor and track instruction, an understanding of how Reality Check is used, and how to populate Curriculum Mapper 2010.
Objective: Learn Instruction Planner terminology and how to navigate the system.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP102: Managing the Process: Instruction Planner
Overview: Administrators define how Instruction Planner will be implemented, how to make reports operational, as well as how to develop a plan for communicating objectives and timelines, and develop a feedback system to balance instruction design consistency with needs of students.
Objective: Design a plan to support teachers as they plan instruction, as well as to balance district non-negotiables with specific data needs of the school.
Who should attend: Building Administrators
IP103: Deconstructing Standards
Overview: Identify learning targets within standards, classifying targets according to learning outcomes, developing a common understanding of expectations, and translating targets into specific skill statements. Learn how to transform skill targets into quality, day-to-day classroom indicators of achievement.
Objective: Develop specific statements, in language that can be used to make instruction more
specifically correlated to state standards.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP104: Deconstructing Common Core Standards
Overview: With new standards comes the necessity to understand the learning targets embedded in the standards, the levels of rigor associated with the standards, and transferring learning targets into appropriate types of assessments and skills. This session will help participants understand the process of deconstructing standards to know how to take standards from general statements to specific skills.
Objective: Identify the learning targets and levels of learning, categorize the types of learning, and create specific skill statements the build mastery.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP105: Designing Curriculum and Instruction: A New Genre
Overview: Translation of instruction into Content, Skills, and Assessment statements that can be efficiently and effectively used to analyze and refine curriculum, instruction, and assessments. Introduces the Templates and Curriculum Guidelines used in creating Unit and Daily plans in Instruction Planner, and used to analyze and refine curriculum in Curriculum Mapper.
Objective: Begin the design of unit-plans with content, skills and assessment statements that follow specific guidelines.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP106: Instruction Planner: Program Training
Overview: A comprehensive understanding of the essential functions and features necessary to begin using Instruction Planner as a design and management system. Includes how elements, blocks, and templates are used in both Unit and Daily Plans to monitor and track instruction, an understanding of how Reality Check is used, and how to populate Curriculum Mapper 2010.
Objective: Learn Instruction Planner terminology and how to navigate the system.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP201: Understanding Best Practices of Instructional Planning
Overview: Introduces a system for standardizing information placed in instructional plans to ensure consistency across grade levels and subject areas, based on school needs. Instruction Planner provides a unique and powerful structure for analyzing key components of instruction. To fully utilize this system, teachers develop a process for analyzing plans; sharing units and providing constructive feedback.
Objective: Develop guidelines for determining what is needed in each component of an instructional plan.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP202: Correlating Assessments with Skills
Overview: As an instructional management system, Instruction Planner provides a mechanism for collecting, tracking, and analyzing information. This session focuses on two major
components of instruction: skills and assessments.
Objective: Develop an understanding of how assessments can be aligned to skills in order to collect actionable data and to ensure that assessments accurately measure with the proper level of rigor, the skills being developed
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP203: Analyzing Skills taught with State/Local Standards
Overview: The Daily Plans and standards analysis reports are used to determine which standards have been addressed and how much emphasis in skill development is associated with the
standards. Teachers use reporting features to determine the frequency and duration of specific
standards addressed during Units and/or over periods of time.
Objective: Provide an understanding of how to utilize reports to provide evidence of standards coverage and plan for future instruction.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP204: Using Instructional Data to Drive Teaching and Learning
Overview: Instruction Planner has the ability to collect real time data on various elements of instruction. In this manner, the software allows teachers and administrators to use this information as formative instructional data. This session will focus on the various reports available to teachers and administrators
and how to use those reports to make important decisions.
Objective: Investigate and create Instructional Planner reports as well as determining what the data means and what types of decisions can be made to drive teaching and learning.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
IP301: Curriculum Refinement, Part Two: Implementations
Overview: Follow-up session to Basics Workshop: Continuing process of curricular refinement practices as participants develop the improvement process to ensure consistent use of data. Materials will be generated for documenting findings, as well as for communication and
monitoring of the next steps in the refinement of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Objective: Improved refinement practices to enacted curriculum to better support the development of instructional units of study.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM101: Organizing and Executing Priorities
Overview: Key decision makers establish a plan for implementing products, develop a timeline, identify individuals responsible for specific tasks, and clarify what teachers and administrators need to know and be able to do to ensure success. Important factors needed to build capacity and ensure long-term sustainability are determined.
Objective: Establish map formats, learn reporting features, and set administrative features.
Who should attend: Key Decision Makers
CM102: Managing the Process: Curriculum Mapper
Overview: Administrators define how Curriculum Mapper will be implemented, how to make reports operational, as well as how to develop a plan for communicating objectives and timelines, and develop a feedback system to balance instruction design consistency with needs of students.
Objective: Design a plan to support teachers as they map curriculum, as well as to balance district non-negotiables with specific data needs of the school.
Who should attend: All Building Administrators
CM103: Deconstructing Standards
Overview: Identify learning targets within standards, classifying targets according to learning outcomes, developing a common understanding of expectations, and translating targets into specific skill statements. Learn how to transform skill targets into quality, day-to-day classroom indicators of achievement.
Objective: Develop specific statements, in language that can be used to make instruction more specifically correlated to state standards.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM104: Deconstructing Common Core Standards
Overview: With new standards comes the necessity to understand the learning targets embedded in the standards, the levels of rigor associated with the standards, and transferring learning targets into appropriate types of assessments and skills. This session will help participants understand the process of deconstructing standards to know how to take standards from general statements to specific skills.
Objective: Identify the learning targets and levels of learning, categorize the types of learning, and create specific skill statements the build mastery.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM105: Documenting Your Operational Curriculum
Overview: Introduction of the Style Guide and Curriculum Guidelines that will be used to analyze and refine curriculum. Curriculum maps are developed to track relevant and meaningful data. The Read-Through Protocol, a formal process for providing constructive
feedback, will be applied.
Objective: Translate implemented instruction into Content, Skills, and Assessment statements that can be efficiently and effectively used to analyze and refine curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM106: Curriculum Mapper: Program Training
Overview: Addresses process for documenting and reflecting on the enacted curriculum on a monthly basis, regarding who teaches what and when, so that teachers and administrators can make critical decisions about the essential elements of their teaching in order to improve student learning.
Objective: Comprehensive understanding of the essential functions and features of Curriculum Mapper.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM201: Improving Quality, Consistency, and Reliability
Overview: In order to examine and improve the curriculum, it is imperative that the data going into the maps is consistent in how it is entered, maintains a high level of reliability, and is clearly written. This session will involve examining specific aspects of the maps, using a common rubric, and editing maps to improve their quality.
Objective: Ensure the quality, dependability, consistency of map data to facilitate the curriculum refinement process.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM202: Analyzing Map Data Through Peer Collaboration
Overview: Use data to collectively analyze student strengths and weaknesses though professional dialogue, plan units of instruction according to results. Using specific reports
available for a variety of purposes, learn how to interpret data within reports and how to use data to drive the instructional process.
Objective: Encourage ongoing professional dialogue across grade levels and subject areas to improve teaching and learning as well as the vertical alignment of curriculum.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM203: Developing Curriculum-based Assessments
Overview: Assessments are the key indicators of instructional rigor and should be directly related to the types and level of skills found in the curriculum. This session examines the enacted curriculum as well as the skills associated with instruction (what was taught) and develops assessments that are match to the rigor of skills.
Objective: Develop assessment types and categories of questions based on the curriculum and what was taught.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM204: Basics of Curriculum Refinement
Overview: Introduction to the process of curriculum refinement: 1. identifying revision points(relevance, gaps, redundancies, etc.), 2. investigating data, and 3. making adjustments to refine curricula, instruction, and assessments. Provides best practice guidelines for determining a focus for curriculum investigation, review, and decisions.
Objective: Revise enacted curriculum to better support the ongoing development of instructional units of study.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
CM301: Curriculum Refinement, Part Two: Implementations
Overview: Follow up session to Basics Workshop: Continuing process of curricular refinement practices as participants develop the improvement process to ensure consistent use of data. Materials will be generated for documenting findings, as well as for communication and monitoring of the next steps in the refinement of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Objective: Improved refinement practices to enacted curriculum to better support the development of instructional units of study.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS101: Essential Elements for Success
Overview: Key decision makers establish a plan for implementing products: develop a timeline, identify individuals responsible for specific tasks, and clarify what teachers and
administrators need to know and be able to do to ensure success. Important factors needed to build capacity and ensure long-term sustainability are determined.
Objective: Determine important factors needed to build capacity and ensure long-term sustainability
Who should attend: Key Decision Makers
SS102: Managing the Process: StandardsScore
Overview: Administrators define how StandardsScore will be implemented, how to make reports operational, as well as how to develop a plan for communicating objectives and imelines, and develop a feedback system to balance instruction design consistency with needs of students.
Objective: Design a plan to support teachers as they move to standards-based assessments, as well as to balance district non-negotiables with specific data needs of the school.
Who should attend: Building Administrators
SS103: Deconstructing Standards
Overview: Identify learning targets within standards, classifying targets according to learning outcomes, developing a common understanding of expectations, and translating targets into specific skill statements. Learn how to transform skill targets into quality, day-to-day classroom indicators of achievement.
Objective: Develop specific statements, in language that can be used to make instruction more specifically correlated to state standards.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS104: Deconstructing Common Core Standards
Overview: With new standards comes the necessity to understand the learning targets embedded in the standards, the levels of rigor associated with the standards, and transferring learning targets into appropriate types of assessments and skills. This session will help participants understand the process of deconstructing standards to know how to take standards from general statements to specific skills.
Objective: Identify the learning targets and levels of learning, categorize the types of learning, and create specific skill statements the build mastery.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS105: Moving to Consistent Grading Practice
Overview: Beginning development and implementation of fair grading policies that will be consistent across a school or district, as well what flexibility can be used in a classroom. Critical decisions are made to reflect what is truly being measured and reported, in fairness to the students.
Objective: Develop a consistent grading practice as promoted through research
Who should attend: Key Decision Makers
SS106: Program Training - School User
Overview: Introduction to steps necessary to begin using StandardsScore as a standards-based,comprehensive data management/communication system that provides parents, teachers,
administrators, and students with real-time formative data.
Objective: Explore data analysis features to substantively enhance the teaching and learning processes.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS107: StandardsScore: Program Training - Teacher User
Overview: Introduction to steps necessary to begin using StandardsScore as a standards-based data method that is a comprehensive data management/communication system, providing parents, teachers, administrators, and students with real-time formative data used to
substantively enhance the teaching and learning processes.
Objective: Explore data analysis features that will be used to analyze student learning data.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS201: Standardizing Grading Practices
Overview: To ensure that grades are a true reflection of student learning and those report cards are accurate in their representation of learning, it is imperative that teacher establish norms in their grading practices. Standardizing these practices establishes a system teachers can understand and make grades more consistent across grade levels and subject areas.
Objective: Develop a systematic set of grading practices based on current research and best practice.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS202: Using Student Progress Data to Adjust Teaching
Overview: Formative assessment data provides an opportunity for teachers to constantly monitor student progress in relation to instruction. Using that data to inform instruction is critically important to improve both teaching and learning.
Objective: Utilize the reports in StandardsScore to identify strengths and weaknesses in student learning in order to adjust teaching methods and strategies.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS203: Tracking Student Progress Toward Standards and Providing Feedback
Overview: Standards are targets which students are expected to master. StandardsScore has the tools necessary for teachers and students to track their progress towards specific standards mastery. Research indicates it is important for teachers to provide feedback to students so that they can see their growth and understand what they need to work on to hit the standard.
Objective: Create student and teacher reports, determine strengths and weaknesses and develop response statements which provide specific feedback. Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS204: Building a Communication System
Overview: Assists the understanding of how various modes of communication can be used to provide more informative data to parents and students, eliminating the report card as the sole means of communicating student progress.
Objective: Develop a communication system that ensures all stakeholders have access to timely information necessary for helping students achieve specific learning goals.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
SS301: Curriculum Refinement, Part Two: Implementations
Overview: Follow up session to Basics Workshop: Continuing process of curricular refinement practices as participants develop the improvement process to ensure consistent use of data. Materials will be generated for documenting findings, as well as for communication and monitoring of the next steps in the refinement of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Objective: Improved refinement practices to enacted curriculum to better support the development of instructional units of study.
Who should attend: Teachers and Administrators
To download our complete catalog as a PDF, click here.
Take advantage of our free Webinars designed for school and district leaders who want to successfully implement curriculum improvement, curriculum mapping, and/or standards-based grading. To view our current Webinar schedule, click here.
Click here to request more information or to schedule a session!
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