Lee jumps into core curriculum

LEE – Under the leadership of Curriculum Director Kerry A. Burke, Lee Public Schools are moving forward in adapting the Common Core State Standards.

“Many districts in Berkshire County are [trying to figure it out],” she said.

The CCSS, which define grade-level knowledge for English language arts and math, have been adopted by 45 states and three territories. In Massachusetts, schools must be fully aligned with the CCSS by June 2014.

“The intent is to prepare for college and career readiness,” Dir. Burke said.

She said the changes for Lee in aligning involve not harder standards, but deeper standards. For example, one of the ELA goals for learning is to “build knowledge through content-rich non-fiction.” This means using non-fiction writing of use in non-English classes such as science and social studies to improve ELA learning.

To incorporate these standards, teachers at Lee Elementary School are utilizing journal mapping, which entails documenting learning experiences with the standards after they’ve been taught to create a curriculum/instruction timeline.

More information about the CCSS can be found online at corestandards.org.

School choice assessment moving forward

Superintendent Jason P. McCandless presented the Lee School Committee with a draft of a survey for parents whose children have choiced out of the district. The survey asks respondents to indicate the reason(s) why they left the district and if they’d be interested in having a further discussion with a school committee member about the decision.

“This is about us gathering information to make us better,” he said.

The survey is part of a larger push by the superintendent and the school committee to help Lee retain its own students and attract others. Superintendent McCandless said a similar survey would be crafted for parents and students who choiced into the district.

Posted by Catherine M. Krummey on October 11, 2012. Filed under Education News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry