An East Texas district’s journey to HQIM
Principals from Woodville Independent School District, a rural district in East Texas, shared what it’s been like engaging with Instruction Partners to implement high-quality ELA and math curricula in grades K–5.
Watch or read their story below, and scroll down to access resources for supporting curriculum implementation.
Woodville ISD’s journey to implementing high-quality curricula began when instructional coaches observed a lack of materials alignment across classrooms in their schools. Allison Mosley, principal at Wheat Elementary School, recalls her experience conducting walkthroughs with the Instruction Partners team, “We noticed that teachers were doing the lessons, but they weren’t completing all of the sections of the lesson. They might cut a section here or substitute a different activity there . . . I knew that we weren’t using the same resources campus-wide, but once we sat down and really looked at our data from the walkthroughs, I saw the impact that was having on student success.”
District and school leaders committed to supporting teachers to fully implement the district-adopted instructional materials. The leadership team anticipated that teachers would push back on a loss of agency to supplement or substitute the materials. Bonnie Trammell, principal at Woodville Intermediate, reflects on the importance of keeping an open dialogue with teachers at the start of the process, “I always encourage our teachers to be open and honest with me and the administrative team. When I initially communicated the decision that we were transitioning to using one resource, I made sure I allotted time for teachers to share their concerns and voice their frustrations freely.”
The leadership team kicked off the implementation process with a full-day training session on the district-adopted materials. The goal of the training was to deepen teachers’ knowledge of how the curriculum works and set the foundation for strong instruction.
Following the upfront training, leaders set a vision for ongoing, collaborative planning time for teachers to continue to build knowledge of the curriculum and prepare to teach. Principal Mosley describes the vision for weekly teacher PLCs, “The teachers are able to do the lesson internalization process and really think ahead to what they’re going to be teaching, think about and address common misconceptions that might take place, and look at their weekly assessments. They then circle back to those assessments after they’ve given them, analyze the data, and make a plan to fill the gaps that their students might have.”
As Woodville teachers receive ongoing support to deliver high-quality curricula to meet all students’ needs, they’ve shared that students are achieving higher learning outcomes as a result. At the end of the 2021-22 school year, the Wheat Elementary School team saw at least 15% growth in students on grade level in reading and math in grades K–2 compared to the beginning of the school year.
Principal Trammell reflects on the first year of implementation support, “I’m proud to say we’re now in a place at the end of our school year where we are implementing resources campus-wide with fidelity. I’m confident that we’re going to be able to use what we’ve learned this year to influence our success next year with a fresh start.”
——
Resources for supporting the implementation of high-quality instructional materials:
- Curriculum Support Guide: An example of what systems can do to improve instruction and student achievement by selecting, launching, and supporting high-quality curriculum.
- Addressing Unfinished Learning toolkit: Practical, proven, content-specific resources to inform instructional planning at the year, unit, and lesson level, including:
- Professional Learning Conditions and Practices: Tools to diagnose, strengthen, and monitor two PL structures: 1) collaborative planning, and 2) observation and feedback.
