Common Planning
Connecticut's K-3 Literacy Strategy recommends several actions to support evidence-aligned literacy classroom instruction and intervention. One of these critical moves is to protect time for monthly district-level and grade-level literacy planning and implementation meetings. Protecting this time in the master schedule and in the district calendar builds capacity for accurate and sustained implementation of instructional practices and systems.
Check out what districts have to say about the value of common planning while using a CT-approved, evidence-aligned core comprehensive model, program, or compendium:
“We were given time for summer curriculum work to deepen our rubric expectations for shared reading responses in grade levels and across a vertical continuum. We will continue to develop and revise the rubrics this summer based on our experience with full implementation of the program this year.”
“We met with grade levels weekly and the teachers were encouraged to bring questions about pacing, about the flow of certain lessons, anything at all that they had a questions about and we let them know that we were going to work through it together and having that support has made it a huge success for us.”
“Our curriculum specialist worked with our grade level teams to help develop weekly routine planners to help with the “Have-Tos’ of each day using Wonders.”
“Teachers also had opportunities at weekly PLCs to plan and use new curriculum, review student work and revisit high leverage instructional strategies.”
“As we ventured into CKLA, we quickly found that grade level partners were essential for planning collaboratively, thinking about each unit with the end in mind, and also discussing successes and challenges. Grade level partners found that keeping pace with one another allowed for meaningful co-planning to take place and also some spectacular end-of-domain celebrations to be put together! In my position, I saw partners talking together enthusiastically before school, during planning time, even at lunch. This was a group of piloting teachers that was clearly excited about what they were teaching!”
“One of our areas of focus in the coming years is really building that leadership team, and using that team to guide the collaboration within and across grade levels to work on pacing guides, aligning with our content area standards through Wonders as we can, and also looking at all of those assessments to really guide that instruction.”