GAEL UnscriptED S2:E18 | From Standards To Student Impact

Your ELA standards aren’t “new” anymore, but the way they show up in classrooms still depends on leadership choices made every week. We sit down with Georgia DOE leaders Amy Denty and April Aldridge (with support from Dr. Sarah Welch in the chat) to get brutally practical about how to move from page to practice with Georgia’s Now ELA Standards.

We dig into the alignment advantage and the four levers leaders juggle every day: standards, curriculum, time, and support. Then we walk through the three drivers of instructional alignment that keep the gears turning: clarity, coherence, and consistency. That means knowing what the standards actually require, using learning progressions to strengthen vertical alignment, and understanding today’s broader definition of “text” including digital, visual, auditory, spoken, and multimodal texts. We also talk about why situating text by author, audience, purpose, and context changes the quality of student thinking.

From there, we move into the hard part: checking alignment between standards, high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), and real classroom tasks. You’ll hear what to watch for during learning walks, how to avoid over-scaffolding that lowers rigor, and why “engagement” can’t replace cognitive demand. We break down an eight-step planning process for PLCs that helps teams identify priority standards, deconstruct expectations into skills, write transferable learning targets and success criteria, align assessments, and fill curriculum gaps consistently without burning teachers out.

Subscribe for the rest of the series, share this with an instructional leader who owns the schedule and the PLC agenda, and leave a review if it helps. What’s one alignment move you’ll try this week?

Please note: this is Session #1 of the 2026 GAEL Spring Webinar Series. 

Transcript

Welcome And Series Overview

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Gale Unscripted, where leadership meets learning and real conversations drive real impact. I'm Ben Weggins, Executive Director of Gale. Join us as we go beyond the headlines with Georgia's top education leaders. Let's elevate the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

So welcome to the first session of the Gale Spring webinar series where we partner with our experts and friends at the Georgia DOE. The focus for all three of the sessions this time is from standards to student impact, leading ELA and literacy now. And I had to ask April and Amy this morning. I said, Does NAL stand for something? Is that an acronym? And they said, no, it is not. It's just that we're not talking about the new standards anymore because they're not new. They're the NOW standards. So that is why it's literacy now. And so today's focus, um, you will be together from nine o'clock until 10 o'clock. We want to be mindful of your time. And uh Amy and April are fast talkers, so they're gonna send you, give you lots of information, put your seat belts on and hang on for this ride. Um, and today's focus is on from page to practice leading curriculum decisions for the now ELA standards. So I'm gonna stop sharing my uh screen and allow Amy uh and April to go ahead and get their presentation up and we'll get started.

The Alignment Advantage Framework

Three Drivers Of Instructional Alignment

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Well, good morning, everyone. Amy and I are excited to be with um Gail and with all of you again for another series of spring webinars. So as Cindy um did mention, both Amy and I talk quick. So we are going to fill this hour, we hope, with information that you can use right now to support your ELA and literacy work. We also have um Dr. Sarah Welch is on with us as well, and she's gonna be helping us to add some items to the chat. And while your um cameras and your video mics or your camera and your mics are disabled, the chat is alive and well. So we encourage you to um drop your thoughts or drop your questions into the chat um while we are um talking and sharing with you today. But we're gonna get we're gonna get started. But I am going to give you one reminder before we jump into our um ELA in Literacy Now series. Last week we released our March edition of Teacher Connections. And in that um Teacher Connections, there was some very specific information that could be utilized to help your teachers finish the year strong, go for the cold, and get across the finish line, certainly in ELA, but in our other content areas as well, math, science, and social studies. I know you're busy. I know your email is flooded with um with emails just like ours are. But if you haven't taken time to look at that teacher connections, please do so. But even more importantly, help us get it into the hands of your teachers so that they can select items that really support their instruction right now as they're finishing out the year. But with that, we're gonna move on into the alignment advantage. And as a principal, I just want you to start thinking about small shifts, strategic alignment for the ultimate big impact. And when you look at this slide here and you think about these four components: standards, curriculum, time, and support, lots of things probably go through your mind. You're probably thinking, maybe I've done a great job at standards, maybe I've not studied the standards as much as I should. Maybe our curriculum is on point. Maybe I have concerns about curriculum and the choices and what's available at my school time. That's probably a commodity that none of us ever get enough of. And sometimes it's not how can I get more time? It's probably more thinking about how do I maximize the time that we do have available to us. And certainly support can have many layers of meaning. Where is the support happening? Where is support needed? Where do I, as an instructional leader, need support? Where do my teachers need support? And the truth of the matter is when all of these things aren't working together, even good, strong hard work, it feels harder than it should. So, you know that saying, you want to think about working smarter, uh, you want to think and not harder? That's really what we hope we will walk away with this series from. So, in the next series, the three series that we're gonna be sharing in the next couple of months, we're gonna be looking at in session one, we're gonna be talking about aligning what's taught. And then in our second session, we're gonna be talking about aligning time and support. And in the third session, we're gonna be focusing on aligning people and practice because we know, and you know this, but often it's good to just hear it said out loud time and time again. When our systems are aligned, we can certainly drive literacy outcomes. And so with that, we're gonna dive in and get started this morning, and we're gonna start moving from page to practice, and let's start focusing, Amy, on let's start talking about those three drivers of instructional alignment.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

Thank you, April. And y'all, uh Sarah has dropped a new link into the chat. I think there was a problem with the first one, and so Sarah dropped a new link in. And so you're gonna have all of these slides. Many of these slides have links and QR codes on them, but you will have them as a PDF so that you'll be able to access those at will. And so don't worry about having to have your camera ready and those kinds of things today. Um, so today we are gonna be talking about instructional alignment, and the three drivers that we're really gonna concentrate on today are clarity, coherence, and consistency. Because we know that when these three drivers are aligned and all of the little teeth of the gears are just right, instruction moves. But even when one thing is off, it can cause things to stall or there's too much friction there. And so we want to make sure that we're aligned and not misaligned. Instead, we want to um make sure that for clarity we know the work. For coherence, we are checking to make sure everything is in alignment, and then for consistency, it's our job as leaders to lead the conversation. So those will be our three drivers today. So that driver one, knowing the work. So, what does that look like in your ELA classrooms right now? And not just in your ELA classrooms, but across the curriculum. Well, for our now standards, it means that you've got to understand the instructional shifts in the standards. You've got to know how your HQIM, we abbreviate that, high quality instructional materials. Um, you have to know what materials are aligned to our now standards, how they line up. And then you also have to be able to recognize rigor versus activity. I think that that last one is the hardest one. Sometimes when we see students that may be highly engaged, we think, oh, this is great. But we also have to look at that rigor and um make sure that it's not just a fun activity or an engaging activity, but that the rigor to get to the depth of the standards is really there.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

And Amy, when we're thinking about what this information looks like, then as I shift and I think about as a building or district leader, what are the questions that I should be asking myself around the work, around how I know the work? So questions like what should students be thinking, saying, reading, and writing when you look at those standards? What is it they're actually asking those students to know and be able to do? And what does this look like in a strong lesson, not just a compliant one? And would I recognize aligned instruction if I saw it? And so those are really some driving questions as instructional leaders that we should continually ask ourselves as we move about the work. And maybe you're thinking, well, April and Amy, I'm not sure. Well, that's why you're with us today, because we're gonna move on and start talking about some of the key components to help make sure that you know the work so that when you ask those leadership questions, you're able to drive that work in your organizations.

Playbook Tools And Key Resources

SPEAKER_03 9:11

All righty, so I'm gonna go through these next slides pretty quickly because I think that these will be a review for you. But I do want us to look at both our instructional shifts and our structural shifts. And so you all are probably already aware that our structural shifts in our now standards are the hierarchy and layout, the grade banded standards, learning progression, and those integrated modes of communication. So we're gonna take a quick look at each of those right now. So you know that our now standards are arranged by domains, and then within those domains, there are big ideas, grade banded standards, and so students have multiple years to meet the full standard, and then our expectations outline those skills and concepts for individual grade levels. And so here is a picture of what the framework layout looks like. You have your big idea, your standard, and your standard code here, and then you have the grade level expectations there as well. Um, we'll look at this in one of the other shifts, but you with every standard, we are talking about interpreting texts and constructing texts, and so we always see those reciprocal parts of reading and writing in every standard. And I should have populated all of this. Um, I'm gonna show you a different slide for this learning progression here. Here's our interpreting and constructing. So here's the learning progressions. And during the creation of the standards, this was one of the um, this was a really technical thing that happened, but it is genius. And the people who created the committees, many of you may have served on some of our committees that did this, really did a great job. But there, you see the progression of the standards all the way from kindergarten to grade 12. And so if you're in an elementary school, you can easily view those grade level progressions from kindergarten to fifth grade. If you're in a middle school, you can easily see six, eight, but you can also easily go back and see what was happening in fifth grade and go ahead to see what needs to be happening in ninth grade. And so these pieces of um these um knowledge progressions are very important and really make that vertical alignment um a lot easier for us. I went too fast. So those were the structural shifts, and you probably know that just even looking at the PDFs of these standards look a lot different from our previous standards, but our instructional shifts are important too, and probably the things that we want to talk about the most with instructional shifts are four domains of instruction, how we have redefined what we think of as texts, and how we need to situate text. So these are our four domains. Um, K-12 has language, texts, and practices, but K5 has a special domain that belongs to them, which is the foundation's domain. And I love the thoughtfulness of this, you know, the science of reading is really speaks to us about the importance of building this strong foundation. And I love the idea that we can compare this to a house. And if we build this strong foundation in those K5 years, just how strong it's going to be for the students as they continue through 612 engaging in these things, and so I love the intentionality of our four domains. So redefining text. We're looking at text a little differently these days, and so a text is anything that communicates a message to an audience, and we also know that context matters when we're thinking about a text because texts are produced and understood through unique context. Texts are constructed by authors, interpreted by audiences, and created and consumed for specific purposes. And y'all, sometimes the purpose that the author have is not necessarily the same as the purpose that the audience has for reading it. And so you have to really connect all of those things together, and that helps us think more deeply about the text that we're engaging with. Text can be designed using a variety of techniques. That's been another really big shift and their access through a range of genres and modes, and so we are we're less rigid in thinking about the genres now than we used to be, because we know that even when we're writing um an expository text, that sometimes pulling in a narrative technique is how we're going to engage our audience. And so we're really asking students and teachers to um think about these things. And here's the real clincher: text may be print, digital, visual, auditory, spoken, kinesthetic, or multimodal. And um, all of those texts are ways that we get information about the world and that we build knowledge, and so it's important for us to honor all of those. If you've not been to a teaching and learning summit um or heard Dr. Nick Fillman do his quad text sets um presentation, it's an Inspire, by the way. You can access that. Um, I would encourage you to do that because it really talks about the kinds of text, the types of text that we should be exposing students to. And so finally, this idea of situating text, situating text um in within the context, author, audience, and purpose. And we talked about this a little bit on that last slide, but I was thinking about this earlier this week when I was doing some reading for my college work. And so you know how you'll get those books that are um articles that have been pulled together and edited by somebody in the book. And so I had read one of the articles separately, and then I got this book that had been pulled together more. All of those pulled together more gave me a lot more context. I was able to place that single article and the ideas of that single article that I read into a bigger picture, a bigger context. And it struck me of how important that was. It's important for our students to be able to situate text like that as well. And we and when we're situating text, each of these components interacts with the others in distinctive ways to help us construct and interpret the text that we're reading. So we have some tools for you that will help you with um understanding these structural changes, both the structural changes and the instructional changes. And so if you aren't familiar already and if you don't have our ELA playbook um marked, bookmarked in Inspire, I would encourage you to do that because this is the place where every time there's a new resource, we add it to the ELA playbook. It is long, but you'll see here that you will just be able to go to page 8 for the structure and alignment document, page 11 for the situating text document, page 26 for learning progressions, and 27 through 34 for those evidence documents by domain. Y'all, those evidence documents by domain are so rich, and we're going to revisit those again in um just a second. So, April, anything about that driver one of really knowing our now standards before we move on to checking our alignment?

Checking Alignment In The Classroom

SPEAKER_02 18:15

I just think that some of the tools that and resources that we've highlighted today help us as instructional leaders to really know the standards and know the intent. And I think by taking some time to dig in, maybe it's the first time you've seen the resource, maybe you saw it, but it's not something that you're using on a daily or weekly basis to drive instruction. I think it's good to just have a moment to remind ourselves of those core documents and core pieces to help us really help our teachers understand the now standards so that it will drive instruction towards success. So I think now as we move into it, we're gonna shift from that focus to really talking about now how do we go about checking the alignment? So, Amy, tell us a little bit more about what this looks like when we're focused on checking alignment.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

So here is what checking our alignment looked like. And um, you know how when you take your cars, your car so that your tires are rotated and aligned, and they have to lift it up on the jack and check everything out. I act like I know what that looks like, but I think it involves lifting the car up. But that's what we've got to do in our instruction. We've got to check the alignment to make sure that everything is lining up, and sometimes that means we're gonna have to get down and dirty to do that. So this looks like comparing standards to your curriculum or your curriculum resources, and then comparing your curriculum resources to what's actually happening in the classroom. And so you got to watch for a few things here. You're gonna watch for over-scaffolding that lowers rigor. Um, as teachers, we are always looking for entry points for our students, but sometimes we tend to over-scaffold and that lowers the rigor. We want to look closely for skipped components of the standards, and we also want to look to see if activities are replacing thinking in the classroom because we don't want that to happen. And my little example for this is y'all, when I first started teaching, it was a very long time ago, and we used to get a um magazine in the mail, it was called the mailbox, and it was full of teacher activities. I still have a lot of my mailbox magazines, and many times I would get my mailbox in the mail, and I would open it up and I would say, Oh, I'm gonna do this activity. My kids will love this activity. There is nothing wrong with the teacher's heart wanting to do things that kids are going to like and enjoy and be engaged with, but we've got to make sure that we're being intentional and reflective about those things and that we're not just doing something because it looks fun, we're doing something because it's going to make sure that our students achieve that growth that we're looking for. So you are so right.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, I was just gonna turn it over to you to look at these questions. And I was just gonna say, you were so right. And I can think back to my time as a district leader in my district before I came to my role at Georgia Department of Education. And this alignment work was some of the most difficult work that I ever have engaged in as an instructional leader, but it was absolutely some of the most necessary work. So, really focusing in on these questions when you're thinking about what is happening, what are the tasks in your classroom, right? What are the learning tasks? Um, you know, where is the standard actually showing? Showing up in the lesson. And this is really reflective. It's very rich conversation to have with your teachers when they're looking at what are they teaching from the standard and how does that activity or learning task align with the standard? And I would say that this is probably work that doesn't always naturally happen because we're all moving about instructional planning with the best intentions. But sometimes asking these tough questions can really help that alignment get tighter. And we know that when the alignment is tighter, the opportunity for students to know and be able to do what we want them to is likely increased. So also you would ask yourself this question: Is the task aligned to the cognitive demand of the standard? Is it asking the students to move about the standard at uh at too high a level? Or is it asking students to move about the learning of that standard at too low of level? And then are we using the curriculum as designed? Are we modifying it in ways that dilute it? So certainly don't expect you to answer those questions in the moment, but those are certainly really significant, important questions that should become kind of commonplace in your day-to-day, week-to-week instructional support and planning in your classrooms. And you may be saying again, well, April, I need a little more help with that. So we've got a couple of resources that we're going to share that we hope will help give you the tools and the knowledge so that you can lead your um teachers in really focusing on checking the alignment a little bit along the way, not just at the beginning of school, not just after the test, but as you move through instruction throughout the school year.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

So we're going to camp out here for just a few minutes today. Um, and I am watching our time carefully, don't worry. But we are gonna camp out on this infographic a little bit today and break it down further. And this is explaining how to plan for literacy instruction with the ELA standards and your high-quality instructional materials. So much of our literacy legislation, and I know that the literacy legislation is focused on K3, but this process really aligns well to K-12. It our literacy legislation has put a new focus on our instructional materials, our curriculum materials. And um, and so that is an important place for alignment. You may be using materials that you had that you adopted before the now standards were implemented, and so that means that you've got to do some hard work there to bring alignment. You may have adopted some new ELA instructional materials to complement the new stand, the now standards, but that still means that you have to do a lot of hard work. And so I'm I see that Sarah has already dropped into the chat a document and a recorded webinar and a facilitator's guide for this, but we're gonna break down these eight steps and take a look at how you can plan for instruction and honor both the ELA standards and your high-quality instructional materials. So a lot of people say this is a shift, y'all. This is a shift in how we've been doing things for a little while now. And you might ask the question: do we teach the ELA standards or do we teach our high-quality instructional materials? Well, the answer is that we really teach both. Our standards are our center of gravity, they drive our instruction, but those instructional materials that you, your district, and schools have purchased are the vehicle that we use to move our students forward. Those high-quality instructional materials are also a way to reduce the cognitive load of your teacher's sum. If teachers are having to go hither and yon to find instructional materials to teach their standards to quality, that is a huge lift for them. And so a good quality curriculum resource can really reduce the cognitive load for teachers. And just keep in mind, this probably focuses a little more at that elementary end, but your instructional material should support both word recognition, those bottom parts of Scarborough's reading rope, but also language comprehension. Those two things support each other, and you have to have both. So our next step is to identify priority, and I'm going to come back to that word, priority ELA standards based on previous instruction and overall focus of upcoming of the upcoming lesson in the high-quality instructional materials. Y'all, we used to talk about prioritizing standards, and we had different codes for different levels of standards. That's not what I mean here by that word priority. Oftentimes in an instructional resource, they will list a lot of standards. If there is any little connection to the standard in that lesson or that unit, they will list it. What level of mastery is expected in this grade? Y'all, the alignment that we get from our textbook companies, our instructional resource companies, it is not always going to be one-to-one. And so when you're planning, you need to make sure that you have the planning documents that are available from your resources and also your standards and all of the things that are available for your standards. When Nick and I were developing this, this came up because Nick was working in a PLC with a second grade group and they were looking at poetic devices and they were just really running into a wall. And so when they started digging into these things, they really realized that what was in their instructional materials was not a second grade expectation. It was a third grade expectation. Now, that doesn't mean that you throw it away and that you don't address it, but they did it freed them up because they realized they didn't have to hold kids to mastery for that because that wasn't theirs to do. That was going to come up again in third grade. They exposed the children to it and then moved on. And so it's really important to be thoughtful and reflective and use all of your tools when you're doing this hard work. Um, finally, the Georgia Milestones Blueprints, that's another great document to have handy while you're doing this planning and alignment. Those are not intended to deprioritize any standards. And so just keep that in mind when you're using our assessment tools in your instructional planning because all of those things go hand in hand. So our third step in the process is to deconstruct selected ELA standards to identify key nouns, verbs, knowledge, and skills. If you have been in education for any amount of time, you probably have five different ways to deconstruct standards. And here's the thing: the process that you're using, there are a lot of good processes that you can use. And so you need to use the process that makes sense in your school and in your district. Um, we have provided some examples of some ways to deconstruct standards, but the important thing is that this process of deconstructing means that students are gonna teachers are going to know what students need to know and be able to do. And so you're looking at those concepts and those skills. Um, and Sarah is dropping lots of help things in the chat for you that you'll um you can consult later. So our next step is to consult relevant, elephant evidence documents to identify transferable learning targets, lesson-specific success criteria, and related ELA standards. So here's the thing: sometimes in our ELA textbooks or instructional resources, the essential question or learning target that is given is tied to a single story or a single text instead of being tied to a standard or a more transferable skill. And so that's something that you're going to want to line up, and that's really important. We're not teaching a story, we are teaching standards, and we are teaching we are giving students knowledge and skills that's going to that will let them interact with many different texts. And so you want your learning targets to be broader and focus on those transferable understandings and skills, and success criteria is so important here and should include observable and measurable outcomes. And so in this planning phase, when you're putting your standards and your high-quality instructional materials side by side, looking at those formative assessments and summative assessments that are part of it, and making sure you have tight alignment there is really important. And so your next step is to look at your upcoming lessons for alignment with the expectations level of the priority and related standards. So alignment with a standard is a start, but we also have to make sure that the lesson fully addresses the specific skills that are involved. And so we have to pay close attention to the shifts from one grade to a let to another. That I gave you an example of that with the poetic devices just a few minutes ago. And then we want to consider that there are parts in our instructional materials that we might have to de-emphasize because maybe that is going to align better with another grade level than the one that we're working with. And so you do want to use your instructional materials with integrity and fidelity, but you also want to be aligning them with the standards and expectations with fidelity and integrity. Um our sixth step is to identify any supplemental resources that you might need. No high-quality instructional material is going to be perfect. And none of them are aligned specifically for Georgia. And so there are going to be gaps. That is not knocking our vendor partners at all. But there will be gaps, but you can address those gaps by adding layers to the existing lessons or inserting lessons in a scoping sequence. But what you don't want to do is you don't want teachers to do that in isolation because otherwise, some students might get their those gaps completely filled, other students might get the gap filled halfway, and other students may not get the gap filled at all. And so these conversations are really important to happen during a combined professional learning community planning source so that we make sure that all students get those gaps that are part that are just going to be a natural part of those instructional resources, that we're able to fill those gaps appropriately for all students. And then our last two steps, um, it's important for folks to discuss the aspects of the lesson to emphasize or differentiate based on individual student needs. And teachers who are in their classrooms with their students know their students best. And so it is always important in this planning and alignment with the standards and our resources to make sure that you're keeping the needs of the students who are sitting in front of you in line. And so sometimes that is going to mean that you have to differentiate some things and to um it differentiate into small groups so that you can provide additional instruction for some students, that you can provide some students with a different activity or lesson, but that is very important. Um, no instructional materials will ever replace a teacher knowing their students and knowing the needs of their students. And finally, and this is probably the hardest one because we wrestle with time so much in our world, but there are going to be some components of the lesson or unit that teachers need to practice ahead of time. Um, Dr. Philman says, let's practice with other 48-year-olds before we practice with our eight-year-olds. And so when we're moving into these to our now standards, and many of us are moving into new instructional materials, if there are routines that we're not comfortable with, build in time in your PLCs to practice with colleagues before practicing with kids because that's going to help us address common misconceptions and little challenges that we might build in. When I was a middle school teacher, I always told my first period class that I was sorry they were first period, that I was much better by fourth period because I knew more. And so I just began to know as a teacher that I might have to go in and tweak some things the next day with my first period that I learned throughout the day. And so that's kind of the thing that we're talking about here. Those things that are hard, those challenging things to teach, we might need to practice those in a safe place with our colleagues before we go and present it with our kids. And so that might look like modeling with immediate transfer, role-playing with colleagues, and maybe you're going to have some live practice with some representative students. But don't forget, our we're always learning and growing as teachers, and so we want to be sure that we provide those opportunities for practice. So, and I love Bobby's comment. She says PLCs are a safe place to practice, and I so agree with that, Bobbi. Um, so here are some tools, and I can see in the chat that Sarah has already been busy dropping many of these things directly into the chat for us. Um, but you'll see that the instructional frameworks for ELA are included. And y'all, those instructional frameworks have there's an instructional framework and then there's a companion guide. Those companion guides to the frameworks are so good. And so I hope that you will make sure that your teachers are aware of those. And then we also have a larger webinar on those eight steps of planning with ELA and high-quality instructional materials available for you.

Leading PLC Conversations That Matter

SPEAKER_02 39:55

April, did I? So we're going to be working on a new resource to add to that as a compliment. So April Doyle and I must have been thinking alike while you were talking. And I thought, man, if I was in the district leading or in the building leading this work right now, I'd really like those things to consider on a like a one-pager cheat sheet. So Sarah Welts and I have already been texting while Amy's been um sharing um and really breaking that information down. So pretty soon we will add an additional tool to help you keep the gears turning and we will turn those last three slides into a one-pager that you guys can use to um guide your instructional um leadership work in your schools and districts. So with that, I think that that's just a reminder of those resources that we need. Wow, I was thinking when um Amy was really talking about that one part where you said, Amy, we're we're not teaching the story, we're teaching the skill or the thinking or the standard. And I think I texted in the chat, and that is big. That is big work when we think about our reading and our ELA classrooms, is how we ensure that we honor and we value the stories and the text and all of that that's going on in our classrooms. Um, but that while we're doing that, we don't lose sight of the the purpose of the text, right? Um, we're we're learning to read and think critically and then to take that knowledge and apply it. But kids don't just do that because they read a great story. It really does take intentional planning, intentional task um creation. You know, it takes really designing the opportunity for a student to learn to think. And I that just those two components just resonated, just just it, they just resonated with me because that is hard work and it's it's something that we forget that that we have to teach kids how to really do that well. So thank you, Amy, for reminding us um of that. And um, so now we've we've done our driver one, where we've talked about do we know what we need to know? And then driver two, we're focused on alignment between the standards and your resources. Now we're really gonna get into the driver three, which is really important for you guys as the instructional leaders. How can you, how should you, are you equipped to lead the conversation? And I'm gonna add another word on there to lead the conversation well, right? So, Amy, let's start talking about what does this look like? How should I be leading the conversations in my buildings?

SPEAKER_03 42:40

So, hopefully, as school leaders and district leaders, you are engaging with your teachers during their PLCs. That is so important. I think it's so important for our classroom teachers to see our leaders as instructional leaders. And you can be a great instructional leader in those PLCs by asking really instruction-focused focused questions during PLCs and planning. And don't just use walkthroughs as compliance checks, but use those walkthroughs as a way to have learning conversations. Think of them as learning walks. Maybe you're learning what's happening great in some classrooms so that you can share it down the hallway. And maybe you're seeing some of those gaps that maybe are pervasive across your classrooms, and that's helping you as an instructional leader know where you need to fill in those gaps. And watch what's happening with the students, not just the teacher. And so keep your focus on student thinking. How deeply are we driving our students to think about the content, not just on what the student is doing?

SPEAKER_02 44:00

And so I'm thinking as Amy, as I'm looking at this side where it talks about what it looks like, but I'm also thinking about these leadership questions. If I'm an instructional leader and perhaps my background is not in ELA, perhaps my background is math or in a CTAE area or it's in social studies. I really like this next set of questions because they allow me to be an instructional leader, perhaps without being the expert in the content. And the other thing is they don't really honestly require you as the leader to fully know the answer to every question. This actually puts some of the expectation and the conversation and the collaboration around how your teachers understand how the answers to these questions are reflected in their instruction. So simply asking things like where in this lesson do students do the heavy lifting and teachers being able to articulate where that's happening, or if we can't articulate where that's happening, that leads us to the conversations about where we can make modifications or changes so that students are doing more of the heavy lifting in that particular learning experience. How does the task reflect the intent of the standard? And that takes us right back to driver one, right? Like really knowing what those standards are asking students to know and be able to do. And then what might students struggle with and how will we respond without lowering rigor? And this makes me think about the exercise that I was doing this morning. I'm trying to get back on my healthy train. And one of the things she said is most of us know what we're doing right now, but we're not really focused on what we're going to do next. So we're we're in the moment and we're doing things well, but then the minute it ends, we're not sure where to go next. So just unintentionally, we get sidetracked or a habit that we had created just it just falls out of the way. And I think that happens too in instruction and learning, right? We know what we're doing right this minute, but if we're not already thinking about where we want our students to be learning next, we might miss an opportunity for a really strong transition. So helping our teachers and helping ourselves to ask this question so that we're prepared for what's next, or we're prepared for those little hiccups or those little side routes in learning that helps the teacher to be really confident to maintain the momentum of learning in the classroom. So, Amy, that kind of leads us into talking more about this last driver and talking about where we might find some of those common misalignments so we can be prepared for whatever the moment brings us.

Assessment And Coaching Tools To Use

Choose Your Gear And Takeaways

SPEAKER_03 46:43

Exactly. So as you are doing learning walks in your schools and working with teachers during your PLCs and planning times, watch for these alignment gaps. So sometimes teachers may have a standard posted, or maybe they have a learning target posted, or they've referenced their learning target or learning goals, but it's not really driving the task. And so sometimes there might be a mismatch there. That's probably a sign that somebody, an instructional leader, a coach, maybe needs to sit down to go back to that very first thing that we talked about today of really understanding what the standard is asking or what the expectation is asking. We want our tasks to be aligned with our standards and expectations. Also, watch for places where a really complex text is being used, but we're only asking simple questions. We need to be asking complex questions of our students when we're exposing them to complex text. That doesn't mean that you're not going to have some scaffolds there for students, but they need to be appropriate scaffolds. And so that leads us into having a lot of heavy scaffolds, but a very light cognitive demand. Being reflective on whether or not we're putting too many scaffolds in place because maybe that cognitive demand doesn't really require those scaffolds. And so you want to make sure those things are lined up. And let's think about our writing task. I've been so interested in learning more about um how we're presenting writing to our students. And I heard someone say not too long ago that sometimes we provide writing assignments, but we're not providing enough writing instruction. And so sometimes we're providing writing tasks, but they're not focused on having the students do a lot of complex thinking. They're really more focused on completion. And so we want to make sure those things are lined up. And finally, there's a curriculum present, and so there's some sort of resource present, but it's being used selectively or inconsistently. Well, I mean, we just talked about that there are times when teachers have to interleave some things because there are gaps within your instructional resources, but we can't say, oh, I have always taught this lesson or this unit and I love it, and so I'm going to continue doing it and put everything else to the side while we focus on something because it's the way we've always done things or something that we like to do. And so I also think about the fact that we are spending lots of money in our districts and schools, whether it's your local taxpayer dollars, state dollars, federal dollars, to provide instructional materials. And we want to make sure that those things are being used consistently and with integrity. And so keep that in mind as you're looking for those alignment gaps. And we have some tools that will help you with this as well. Um, y'all, our ELA assessment resources are so good, and this is not about teaching the test. Um, I worked in a Georgia system for a very long time. I was a testing coordinator. I'd been to some of those um committees where we were asked to work on things. I knew that curriculum and assessment at the state level were connected, but until I came to work at the department, I didn't know how closely they were connected. It has been one of the most um just such a piece of validation for me to see how closely our ELA team, all of our content teams, but our ELA team and our assessment team work together. And y'all, those folks in assessment, they want to make sure that those high-stakes assessments that we give at the end of the year are truly aligned to the standards and what is supposed to be happening in classrooms. And so use those ELA assessment resources as leaders to help you know what kinds of questions you're going to be asking as you're doing these learning walks and engaging with teachers. Um, I left a word off. Um, page 76 is achievement level descriptors, y'all, and I left my word off there. Um, but please use those. There are coaching tools as part of the Georgia Literacy Academy. There is a coaching tool with every course, and those coaching tools really help with some of the questions that you can be asking your teachers, especially in those K-5 classrooms, and another K through three tool is our structured literacy block screening tool that will also help you ask some of those important questions. So I want you to think about this for a minute. We've talked today about clarity, coherence, and consistency. And so remember, clarity was really do we in my school really clearly understand what the standards require? Coherence is all about whether or not your curriculum resources and your instruction is truly aligned. And consistency is do we see this across classrooms, or do I have a superstar here and everybody else is not quite there? And so if you had to think about this and you had to think about which of those gears you were going to pay attention to right now, which one needs the most attention in your building right now? And I'm not gonna ask you to come off of mute or anything, but I would ask you if you have a sticky note in front of you, to make yourself a note about which one of those things that you need to dive in deeply. Um our standards aren't new anymore. They're the now standards, but the way they show up in classrooms depends on us as leaders. Leadership matters, and alignment doesn't happen by chance, it happens because leaders make it visible, make it expected, but also make it supported. And so, as promised, um, here is a URL for today's slide deck and a QR code. And of course, we will get these posted in Inspire as well. Um, Sarah is given a shameless plug in the chat about the craft lab. I don't do that as well as Sarah. Um, the craft lab is an excellent opportunity for our 612 teachers, and there's a craft lab session today, and so check that out. And April, I'll let you finish us up and we did pretty good on our time today.

Next Session Preview And Closing

SPEAKER_02 54:42

We did. We've got just a few minutes left, and I would just say, you know, as Amy was really wrapping us up and and helping us to focus on the three gears that we really had conversation around today when we think about clarity, coherence, and consistency. I was thinking how I might could take those three questions and actually use them in a PLC or a leadership team meeting, and really to get your your other teacher leaders thinking about or talking about where where do they see clarity and coherence and consistency in your buildings or where are there opportunities for that to be strengthened and for it to grow? So I think there's a lot of great questions in here. And I I would be remiss if I didn't didn't say this. We talk a lot to our teachers about what are the questions that we're asking students about their learning in the midst of our classrooms, right? And if all of those questions require a yes, no answer, or they can just simply give us a one or two-word answer, you know, is that really elevating the thinking? I would encourage us as instructional leaders that just as important are the questions that we're asking our teachers and the questions that we're asking the other leaders in our building, because those questions often are what help us to reflect on our practices, drive forward with the things that are going well, but then dig deeper for areas where we can go broader, we can go deeper, maybe we need to get more focus, maybe we need to have more clarity, coherence, or consistency. Whichever one of those Cs is relevant to your work, I think that's important for us as leaders to set the expectation. Strong questions can lead us to bigger impact. And so we just thank you for joining us today. And we invite you to come back in about a month and we're gonna focus more on how to align for time and support. And probably if I had a dollar for every time somebody had asked me about master scheduling and scheduling, um, I could probably go out to lunch or dinner. So join us back for this time because we are going to be sharing some information that could be relevant to you guys as you're really figuring out how to align time and support to maximize impact. So with that, um Cindy, we're gonna turn it back over to you and just thank you again and to Gail for allowing us to have this strong partnership so that we can virtually join together and continue growing to make max maximum impact.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Fantastic. I know if all of you were off your ahedromic zone, you would be clapping and cheering for everything that Amy and April have done to provide and make sure that you guys have the supports that you need. I mean, I was constantly taking the links that Sarah was putting in the chat and putting them in the in a in a location where I can find them very quickly. Uh, so I hope you will have an opportunity, take an opportunity to go back and review some of those because there's lots of information there and lots that can help you and support you in your role. As we are ending up our session for today, um just to help hold you accountable, think about all the things that Amy just went over and the tools and the links that were uh shared in the chat. What would be one next step that you will take as a result of participating in today's session? And when you think of that, just put it in the uh chat. It doesn't have to be anything that we understand, just as long as you understand what your next step is.

SPEAKER_00 58:21

Seeing you uh next time in April um at our next session.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

Thank you guys for joining us today.