Part 1: Professional Development (PD) Session Planning

Consider the vision of your school, state curriculum standards, school improvement goals, and student achievement data and integrate your own vision of student learning into a PD session that will help a selected group of teachers increase the academic gains of their students.

Get with the special education teachers that you feel would benefit from a PD session related to the following instruction and assessment topics:

• Incorporating curriculum standards into instruction
• Using assessments to measure student achievement
• Using assessments to facilitate school improvement

Create a needs assessment, electronic or written, and give to the group of teachers to determine the specific learning needs related to your preselected instruction and assessment areas.

Write a outline for the session that includes the following:

• Vision statement that integrates your vision of student learning with the school's
• Session objectives that align to the specific learning needs identified in your needs assessment and that address each of the instruction and assessment topics
• Additional materials to be accessed during the session, such as:
• Applicable curriculum standards
• Various assessment types currently used
• Assessment data collected
• Student achievement and demographic data
• Instructional content related to the preselected instruction and assessment areas
• Research-based activities for attendees that support the topics
• Formative and summative assessments for in-session or post-session use
• List of resources, and their locations, that support the topics of the professional development session and that you can provide to the attendees
• Plan for ongoing evaluation and monitoring