Standards Work Update

December 18, 2015

To: Elementary Teachers and Principals
From: Eric Melbye, Assistant Superintendent
During the 2014 Summer Leadership Academy, teachers and administrators representing their
buildings, voiced a need for a more focused understanding of the requirements and design of the
Minnesota Common Core State Standards and their implications on learning. In response to this
need, principals and district support leaders began crafting a plan to lead professional learning
communities in unpacking the standards. Principals learned an unpacking protocol and shared
that protocol with teachers, who then began the process of unpacking their grade level
benchmarks.
During this process, questions and concerns about the goals of this work, its volume, and the time
and resources needed to do it were raised. In response, a team of principals, teachers, and other
district support leaders began a process to assess how to continue the standards work that was
initiated during the 2014-15 school year. This team has made the following recommendations:
1. Honor the prioritization work of the Literacy Steering Committee in determining
Bloomingtons Essential, Important, and Enhancing Standards. Merge the
prioritization document commonly referred to as the orange book and the MN
Academic Standards in English Language Arts K-12 document published by the
Minnesota Department of Education. This new document will allow teachers to
see the Benchmarks identified as Essential, Important, and Enhancing for their
grade level in addition to the vertical alignment of Benchmarks across grade
levels.
2. Provide teachers with student-friendly learning targets for all essential standards
in each strand of the K-5 English Language Arts (ELA) Standards. The purpose
behind standardizing learning targets across the district is to create a shared
understanding of the knowledge and skills required by each Benchmark, and to
provide opportunities for common assessment and reporting practices.
3. Assemble teacher representatives from each grade level and building to
collaborate on writing common units of study that include standards from all five
ELA strands. District support leaders (i.e., Special Education, EL, Intervention)
will also be involved in this process. The unit components will be tight enough to
provide consistency in what is taught at each grade level across sites but loose
enough to let teachers exercise creativity in their instruction and be responsive to
the needs of students.

4. Establish common standards-based grading and reporting practices. This work

will begin once units are created.
With respect to the three authorized release days originally provided to teams to engage in
standards work, the focus of Day 2 will be on digitizing lessons related to Unit 1:
Reading
Workshop: The First 20 Days of Teaching
. Media directors, digital learning coordinators, and
instructional specialists will support this work at individual buildings. The funds and subs
assigned to provide teachers with the third release day will be used to allow representatives from
each grade level team at each site to meet in the spring to create the common units of study
referenced above.
Elementary principals will share more information and details regarding this plan at the Staff
Development Day on Monday, Jan. 25.
Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to create a plan that is aligned,
reflective of the needs of our school district, and incorporates teacher leaders into our collective
work.