ASAS Institute Training Process Overview

District Samples Curriculum Project (DSCP): Phase IV

Instructional Shifts Overview

This overview, and the steps it delineates for creating lesson plans reflecting key instructional shifts, is written as a compilation of the processes used by the Standards and Instructional Support team and Colorado educators during the 2016 Summer Institute to develop lesson plans complementary to the sample instructional units. This work is intended to provide high level support with two important caveats:

First, like the sample instructional units, this process and the lesson plan samples are not meant to be definitive or exhaustive. Instead, the materials reflect the work of individual educators in their development of reflective lessons.

Second, though this overview is linear in layout, it is clear that the lesson planning design process is inherently iterative. Workshop participants and facilitators routinely revisited and modified their lesson samples prior to submission.

Phase IV General Training Resources

Basic Institute Training Steps

Review and discuss Instructional Shifts Overview and General High Impact Instruction Crosswalk resources (Refer to CDE ASAS Shifts in Instruction 2016 Video below)
- Understand instructional shifts occur on a continuum, moving from recall/facts level to high levels of analysis and application;
- Understand the similarities and differences between three leading professional development models in curriculum development.
Connect lesson planning to larger unit goals
Intentionally embed instructional shifts decisions around four primary pillars required within the standards: just-right challenge, building relationships, creating relevancy, and, as appropriate, fostering disciplinary literacy
Illustrate the context, planning, and decision-making process before lesson delivery
Deliver the lesson (Refer to Model Lesson video below)
Provide final lesson plan templates and artifacts following the Four Essential Elements structure (Refer to lesson plan samples found on content specific webpages)
Share personal and student reflections to illustrate the teaching and learning cycle elements (Refer to lesson plan samples found on content specific webpages)

Four Essential Elements

Participants of the "All Standards, All Students" Summer Institute provided sample lessons which included four essential elements:

Element 1: Classroom Context. To help other teachers understand the context of their lesson, participants were asked to provide their content area, grade level, and class size; to describe their student population (without any personally identifiable information); and to discuss relevant features of their school environment (e.g., access to instructional materials, aspects of the school culture that influence instructional decisions).

Element 2: Lesson Planning with Rationales for Your Decisions. The lesson plan needed to reflect the teachers' metacognition: not just what they planned to do in the lesson, but why they were planning to do it. Educators were also asked to be explicit and intentional in their decision-making process, with phrasing like, "I plan to use Instructional Strategy X so that students will engage in Practice Y, and here is how I predict this will happen in the lesson." They could use the metacognitive questions in the CDE Concept-Based Lesson Planning Process Guide template to help them through this process, along with any other planning guides or tools they received from their CDE content specialist.

Element 3: Description of the Lesson Implementation. Participants were asked to give a straightforward synopsis of the implementation of the lesson, focusing on what actually happened, without relying on inferences or interpretations. They were asked to consider the lesson from a student's point of view, or the perspective of an observer who didn't know the lesson plan ahead of time. They could also include artifacts of student work.

Element 4: Reflection. Whereas the description of the lesson focuses on what happened, the reflection needed to focus on why things happened, and how the lesson plan did or did not work as intended. Participants were asked to describe the effect of instructional choices on students, and their perception of the effectiveness of their instructional strategies. In addition, they were asked to suggest revisions for the lesson, and how they might use and improve the instructional strategies chosen. Finally, they were asked to include a summary of student reflections of the lesson and/or student learning during the lesson.