As spring break approaches, our team of Humanities coaches has been reflecting on the key work we've done this year. As we begin using this blog as a more active means of communicating with our teachers, we thought it'd be good to provide everyone with updates to the work that our department has done...
GCISD Curriculum Website
This year, all district curriculum resources were migrated to the GCISD website for ease of access. Currently, teachers can access all of the district's scope and sequence documents from this location (found by going to the GCISD web page, Departments and Programs, District Curriculum). As updates are made to curriculum resources, this is where teachers can find the most recent versions.
There are some new features of ELA and SS curriculum that teachers may want to see:
K-5 ELA TEKS Checklists aligned to Scope and Sequence Documents
K-5 SS Cornerstone Tasks (May be accessed in Elem. Curriculum, SS column for each grade)
Humanities Vertical Team
This team, comprised of K-12 ELA and SS representatives, has been working to develop a set of Common Instructional Expectations (CIEs) that will serve as the main expectations in all Humanities courses K-12. The original drafts of these documents were created in the December meeting of the Vertical Team. Since then, they've been reviewed/revised by curriculum revision teams and VALOR teachers. On March 3, curriculum review teams and the Vertical Team will receive a link to the most recent version of the drafts and will have the chance to provide feedback.
One accomplishment of the Vertical Team during their December meeting was the creation of a mission statement for our newly formed department:
The mission of GCISD Humanities is to instill a capacity for communication, empathy, and citizenship through critical thinking, reflection, and appreciation of diverse viewpoints.
These words should guide our thinking and decision making.
This year's final meeting of the Humanities Vertical Team will be the afternoon of 5/20/14. More information on this will be sent soon.
Benchmarks
This was the first year that GCISD has administered common benchmark assessments at 12 and 24 week intervals. These assessments were designed using STAAR released items and were correlated to district scope and sequence documents. The data from these benchmarks may be analyzed in DMAC. Teachers are encouraged to evaluate student performance using the "SE Performance" function. Doing this can reveal student performance on various Student Expectations in order to know where weaknesses exist in student performance.
