Conference Day 1: Aligning Tasks to Standards

As part of my reflection process from the Maryland College and Career Readiness Conference, I am recording my thoughts and goals following each session. This session focused on using four main protocols meant to aid instructors, publishers, and curriculum specialists in determining how well curriculum materials are aligned to math and language arts common core standards. 

The tool that I worked on dissecting was the EQuIP tool. This process was structured as a rubric meant t measure the enxtent to which lessons and units effectively incorporate appropriate depth, conherence, rigor, differentiation, and assessment. The main goals are to make sure that materials are aligned with an emphasis on performance based assessment as evidence if effective lesson design. 

The five steps of the protocol are to review the materials, analyze the purpose as determined solely by the directions presented, compare the content to the standards, diagnose student work looking for patterns, and making suggestions on how to improve the materials. Through those five steps the EQuIP has a nice overall evaluative tool for units and lessons. 

The other tools discussed were primarily mean for entire assessments, individual assessment items, and supplementary materials. I am very glad that I was given access to the entire toolkit, a hefty phone book sized document. 

My goals after attending this session are to use the tools to evaluate materials that I am using in my own instruction, and I want to make administrators and supervisors aware of the tools  in case they are not already, so that they can a way of making sure materials are appropriately aligned.