This page will capture the professional journey of CTL and the team for this academic year. By maintaining the contents shared with this one school Mara hopes that it can inform the practice at others’. All the material shared here will be trialed with CTL and know that Mara is available for consultation, facilitation, and supporting other schools to engage in the transformation process. To learn more about CTL please do check out their website along with previous blog posts highlighting the steps they have taken so far.
CTL is an amazing pre-K-12th grade American curriculum with African spirit and culture school located in Abuja, Nigeria. They have achieved excellent results so far with their first two graduating classes earning 100% university acceptance and 75% pass rate with a 3 and 4 on their AP exams. Their elementary and pre-K program also achieve with students acquiring reading fluency and numeracy skills while they cultivate a caring and inclusive culture.
Road map of 2022-23 Professional Development around the theme of VUCA
17Feb: Backwards Design for Lesson Plans: For this training we set a ‘self directed learning task’ following a Backwards Design Model that leads teachers to create their own backwards design lesson plan. Here is the link. After 2 weeks of processing this playlist on Backwards Design and not getting anywhere I lead a session to address the lack of follow through. Here is the slide deck I used paralleling fine dining to unit planning. This metaphor I must credit to my sister who used a similar one in a PD she planned recently for her staff. Guess food is on the mind.
1February: Homework Practices. Less of a typical PD- we had an email exchange about homework. Really key is thinking about the Learners’ experience and when they are tasked with assignments from 4-6 different teachers. How are the learners equipped to deal with the assignments and what is really the point of the tasks assigned. My favorite calculus teacher never assigned homework. Her students studied but only what and when they needed to based on her feedback and their questions. Here is article we shared with the team about homework.
28October: VUCA is in full motion. All within one week’s time, no notice 20% of the student population vacating in-person schooling due to the nature of being an international school in a more vulnerable location due to political strife. This week we discussed transitioning to a hybrid model to provide students with a consistent learning experience. Here is the slide deck.
21October: This meeting followed a half-term break and it gave us an opportunity to take stock. Check in on VUCA and see how the 2nd PBL is going. Here is the link to the slide deck.
30September What to expect regarding homework? This question came up in our last session so I have put together this blog to help address some of the concerns.
16Sept22: Effective feedback strategies + designing the next interdisciplinary project together.
One of the most significant ways to increase student achievement is via powerful feedback. Feedback requires two parts: 1) comments from teachers/ peers aligned to rubrics; 2) time and support for students to act on the feedback and improvement being tracked. Here is the slide deck I will be referencing for feedback. Dylan Williams provides a good 10 step method for looking at the impact of feedback.
After looking at some work samples each teacher will set up a target of what to work on with their students on feedback.
Then we will move on to planning a secondary school PBL task for autumn. For the PBL plan we will use material from PBL page.
2Sept22: Review of Depths of Knowledge and PBL rubric elements.
For a DOK review read the article and complete the ‘quiz’ by end of day 2Sept22. Here is the link. (For those outside of CTL interested in learning more please reach out to: mara.simmons@edumenteach.com.
Part 2: PBL rubric elements- refer to the PBL Works website and identify how you will assess your student progress on upcoming projects. Be ready for our next meeting: 16Sept22 to shape your next co-designed project proposal with the appropriate rubric selected. Between now and then consider engaging your learners in giving you feedback on which rubric to select.
Summer Professional Development plan 2022
Here is the CTL PD plan Mara used as a living document to guide my work with the school. She worked with the teachers for a full week and then a two week follow up once the school year started.
Feel free to reach out with any questions or needing further access to: mara.simmons@edumenteach.com
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