School/Program-Wide Instructional Planning

Plan rigorous, interactive, and meaningful core curriculum, lessons, activities and approaches to meet learning goals and objectives.

Teacher coaching, modeling, and on-going support are an integral component of intervention design (Walqui, 2011) and critical components of a sociocultural approach to professional learning. Furthermore, educators who employ a generative theory (Ball, 2009) of designing school/program-wide instructional planning are capable of connecting their personal and professional knowledge with what they learn from their colleagues and students in order to implement their instruction and meet students’ educational needs, interests, and inquires. To do this, schools should embed school/program-wide collaborative teaming to plan for curriculum, instruction and assessment through study groups, coaching/mentoring models, lesson study and/or professional learning communities (PLCs).

For example, teachers across New Mexico meet in PLCs to develop instructional plans by using the district level curriculum pacing guides and relating it to New Mexico’s language standards and common core in order to meet language, literacy and content goals. Furthermore, through these PLC gatherings, teachers can share their expertise and experiences about implementing approaches essential toward meeting content and language objectives aligned with multiple learning standards.

Indicators of School/Program-Wide Instructional Planning

The administrator/leadership team:

  • assigns students strategically to classrooms and programs, and
  • collaborates with teachers to develop instructional guides,
  • collaborates with teachers and stakeholders to design, develop and align the school curricula, and
  • structures and often leads productive and accountable PLC meetings.

The educator:

  1. plans interactive language and content objectives and activities that are measureable by teacher and students connected to multiple languages, such as:
    1. journal-writing,
    2. rubrics (students measure own learning),
    3. feedback (can be oral and in multiple languages),
    4. exit cards (in assigned language),
    5. data notebooks (students keep their own, track progress in assigned language, and write goals for the day), and
    6. differentiation of instruction (in which the teachers use a common language when talking about instruction and know when to adapt).
  2. develops meaningful, content-relevant language objectives by recognizing students “funds of knowledge” and language abilities, such as:
    1. practicing presentation skills in multiple languages;
    2. preparing students for the state writing assessment by explicitly modeling the expected format, structure, and content, including voice, and
    3. maintaining the target language if relevant to the goals of the school’s bilingual program model.
  3. arranges language and literacy learning through teacher-led and/or student collaborative groups, such as:
    1. teacher repetition of language and content objectives, and
    2. peer-to-peer coaching in multiple languages;