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Curriculum Standards

Janet’s work with our district was very well received. Both veteran and new teachers greatly appreciated the opportunity to dive into our state’s mathematics standards and learn how to prioritize them for consistency across our schools. In an engaging and supportive manner, she provided worthwhile professional learning to all our teachers PK to High School.

—Sean Feeny, Port Washington Union Free District, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment

Curriculum Mapping & Curriculum Design

Janet Hale's curriculum design work for The Dewey Schools has been transformative. Her expertise in creating engaging and effective educational frameworks has significantly enhanced our students' learning experiences. Her contributions have been invaluable in shaping a dynamic and robust curriculum that meets our diverse needs as an international school community.

—Laurie Whiston, The Dewey Schools, English Program Director

Curriculum Mapping & Curriculum Design

Janet led a multi-year curriculum mapping project designed specifically for our student population. As a low-performing school with high teacher turnover, curriculum unit guides for Mathematics and ELA became essential for ensuring learning and teaching cohesiveness. Janet was instrumental in listening to our concerns and interweaving our school’s founding principles surrounding culturally responsive teaching into each unit. She guided our administrative and teacher teams through the process of developing unit guides that identify key content, skills, and anchor texts aligned to our state standards and social justice outcomes.

—Stacey Howard, Z.E.C.A. School of the Arts and Technology, Founder and CEO

Curriculum EDiting

Many thanks go to Janet Hale, a bestselling author, educational consultant, curriculum expert, colleague, and friend. Her careful evaluation, honest critique, and helpful advice have made my book, TrustED: The Bridge to School Improvement, a more thoughtful and engaging read.

—Toby Travis, Author

Curriculum EDiting

I have hired Janet multiple times as an educational consultant for our best-selling line of workbooks. Janet ensured that the content in these workbooks aligned perfectly with curriculum standards. She meticulously revised and edited lessons and activities, significantly enhancing the quality of the workbooks. Her expertise and attention to detail gave me complete confidence in the content and its impact on children's education. Janet is great to work with and I highly recommend her for your educational publication needs!

—Courtney Acampora, Senior Editor, Silver Dolphin and Studio Fun

Curriculum EDiting

When I embarked on a bold plan of writing a series of children's books for our organization, I truly didn't know what I didn't know! Janet has been consistently beyond patient in ensuring I understand the do’s and don'ts involved in good storytelling, formatting, and editing, which has enabled us to produce age-appropriate and fun books that convey our purpose and intended message.

—Kevin Schwieger, Luke5Adventures, Founder and President

    Making curriculum decisions related to students' learning needs is on every administrator's and teacher's mind—both addressing prioritizing standards-based learning and the need for innovation. To discuss your needs and concerns, contact Janet to schedule a free virtual meeting.

    Standards Alignment

    Prioritizing and aligning standards to learning expectations aid in improving content, instructional, and assessment choices.

    Accurate Alignment to Standards

    Educators often struggle with developing units of study that are accurately aligned to standards expectations. Common problems include, but are not limited to:

    • Aligning After Development: Sometimes, educators align a developed unit of study to the standards they think best fit, leading to the selection of too many standards.
    • Misalignment Despite Pre-selection: Even when a unit of study is developed with thoughtfully pre-selected standards, there can still be misalignments between the standards’ expectations and the unit’s learning requisites.

    Designing standards-based curriculum, assessments, and instruction is a learned art. Here are key steps to achieve accurate alignment:

    1. Standards Literacy: Being able to interpret the explicit and inferred expectations of standards is crucial for accurate interpretation.
    2. Prioritizing Standards: Collaboratively determining prioritized standards across grade levels aids in guiding instructional and assessment choices.
    3. Standards-Resources Gap Analysis: Learning expectations must be clearly stated, explicitly taught with current students in mind, and authentically assessed.

    Prioritizing Standards

    Larry Ainsworth notes in Power Standards (p.13), “What is necessary is to make the distinction—which standards are critical for student success, and which ones can be given less emphasis.”

    Janet has perfected a distinction process called “bullseye prioritizing standards”, which aids educators in systemically identifying critical, need-to-know, and still-need-to-know broken apart standard statements through a step-by-step collaborative process. This prioritization positively influences curriculum design, assessments, and instructional practices.

    By analyzing each standard statement individually and then collaboratively through asking questions such as, “Does learning this standard aid our students in lifelong learning or learning readiness?”, educators use a review process to finalize their bullseye standard statement percentages. Teachers then create or revise grade-level or course-specific learning focuses, units of study, and assessments based on their prioritized standard statement results.

    Standards-Resources Gap Analysis

    Educators are often surprised when they compare their grade-level or course prioritized standard statements to their standards-based resources. The gap between the desired learning and what current resources offer may initially appear small but is often much greater than first perceived.

    With the ever-expanding resources available through artificial intelligence (AI), open educational resources (OER), and purchasable resources, educators need to be adept at conducting standards-resources gap analyses.

    When there is a collaborative and robust agreement on grade-level or course standards- based learning expectations followed by a standards-resource gap analysis, teachers and students can truly own their resources, rather than the resources owning them!

    To contact Janet about your learning organization’s standards alignment needs, 
    please call her at 520.241.8797, or email her using this contact form.

    Read More About…

    Curriculum Standards Overview
    Standards Literacy
    Standards Gap Analysis

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