Curriculum Development Users Group
October 9, 2014
9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Attendees: Dawn Alligood (Johnston), Lela Baldwin (Granville), Keith Beamon
(CCRESA) James Coon (DPI), Nan Danehower (Johnston), Leanne Daughtry
(Johnston), Charles Fuller (Franlkin), Kim Heller (Franklin), Robin Herridge
(Johnston), Catina Hoggard (Halifax), Rhonda Moses (Northampton), Ann Grey
Newcomb (Granville), Rebecca Russell (Johnston), Wendy Srinivasan (Johnston),
Brittany Taylor (Johnston), Tonya Thomas (Granville), Felisha Whitaker
(Northampton), Crystal Williams (Franklin), Stan Winborne (Granville), Jerry Jailall
(ESDB), Cheryl Olmsted (Pitt), Michael Myrick (Granville), and Neil Pedersen
(CCRESA).
Introduction
Neil Pedersen, the CCRESA Executive Director, opened the meeting, welcoming
participants and explaining the purpose of the Curriculum Development Users
Group. He reviewed the level of participation of each of the districts that was
represented. Dr. Pedersen clarified that although the User’s Group began as an
extension of the RCD work done by the CCRESA, it now had broadened its reach to
include all curriculum development models. He introduced Keith Beamon who is
serving as the consultant to lead the curriculum development PD and support that
the CCRESA will be providing this year.
Keith Beamon invited participants to introduce themselves and clarify their roles in
the district. Keith will coordinate getting out a list of who is in attendance so that
participants will know who their counterparts are in each district.
Presentation by Granville County
Stan Winborne and Lela Baldwin presented an overview of their district’s journey to
develop a clear and aligned curriculum for GCS. Their presentation will be posted
on the Users Group webpage. They emphasized the helpfulness of the RCD model to
organize their curriculum and the Haiku Learning Management System (LMS) to
maintain their curriculum documents and assessments. They also shared how they
initially had skipped the development of assessments, but then circled back to
develop assessments, using the PD that Keith Beamon and the CCRESA had
provided.
Resources used:
 Box.com (free)
 Haiku LMS
 GCS websites for sample curricula developed
o http://bit.ly/1sb8bIP (Biology)
o http://bit.ly/1ncTTan (English II)
o http://bit.ly/1scYDy7 (elementary curriculum Haiku)
Resources to explore further:
 School.Net
 OpenClass
Northampton County Schools (Keith Beamon)
Teacher turnover presents some special challenges in rural school districts such as
Northampton, but it also is a strong rationale for having thorough curriculum
documents, including down to the lesson planning level. Keith reviewed the
modifications that he made to the RCD model in working as a consultant to
Northampton County Schools. The modifications were targeted to streamline the
process and to further connect all elements of the unit development model back to
the standards. Emphasis was also placed on meeting the rigor expectations of the
new standards in the work done.
Resources Used:
 CCRESA.net
 CPalms – units, lesson plans, resources, assessment
 NYEngage – units, lesson plans, resources, assessment
 National Science Digital Library (NSDL) - https://nsdl.org/
 Pennsylvania Department of Education for assessment resources
 LearnNC
 SchoolNet- for both assessment and lesson plans
District Sharing
Northampton County shared that they frequently use the Howard County Public
Schools website in Maryland as a resource. Granville also echoed the praise for this
site (www.hcpss.org). Several of the districts expressed an interest in sharing
resources to vet each other’s curriculum units. Johnston County expressed a
frustration on the part of its teachers with the lingering skill gaps in math created by
the adoption of the CCSS for Math. The CCSS for Math expects more concepts to have
been mastered prior to entering each grade than the previous math curriculum. As a
consequence of this, and a lack of success in “catching students up” to the new
expectations, students continue to struggle with concepts for which they do not
have sufficient background knowledge. There continues to be the need for
additional work on improving student assessment – in particular the level of rigor
associated with the assessments. Districts did express an interest in having
templates listing the standards for courses and a space for assigning standards to
units created for subjects other than Math and ELA to facilitate unit planning.
Johnston County shared that it had one for American Studies II that they would
share. There was general interest in the CCRESA supporting districts in developing
units in areas other than CCSS ELA and Math.
Useful Resources
Resources on the CCRESA Website that Keith highlighted



EQuiP (good resource for evaluating lessons) – found on the Units/Activities
page
Linking Document showing which resources on CCRESA can be of assistance
for each step in RCD (found on the bottom of the table of contents page for
Curriculum Development for the CCRESA site)
School.Net could be an excellent resource but its operation is still
unreliable.
At the close of the meeting, there was some discussion and a request to respond to
the following question on each participant’s “ticket out the door”: “What would you
like the Curriculum Development Users Group to do in upcoming meetings?” Some
suggestions were:
 What are districts using to store resources?
 How do you roll out a curriculum development process to your teachers,
especially those teachers who are resistant to change?
 How do you bridge the implementation gap? (e.g. once units are developed,
how do you get teachers to use them?)
 What are some good ways to store all of the work that has been done?
 How do you deal with copyright issues?
 How do we implement the engaging learning tasks?
 What parts of this process should be released to teachers and when?
 Assessment training for teachers is needed. Perhaps have the training at the
CCRESA so teachers from different districts could work together.
 Need more training to guide teachers in developing engaging learning
experiences.
 How do you roll this out to teachers?
 How do you involve principals?
 Would like to discuss K-2 (and other grades too) standards based report
cards.
 Create focus ????/topics and whom to contact for help.
 Share by email the latest work done by schools / LEA’s
 Group members could serve as presenters in other districts.
 Districts could act as peer reviewers for other member districts’ units.
 More discussion on how to streamline the RCD unit template to best meet the
needs of teachers.
 More about assessment and engaging learning experiences
 Who do districts use as their “curriculum experts”?
 Help vetting units.
 More information about Haiku
 Sharing contacts for different responsibilities – district to district – to create
contact resources
 Possibly set up Google Folder to share resources, etc.


How can the group work together so that we all are not “inventing the same
wheel”? Can we agree to share units and other resources with each other that
we create??
Share how to move Science and Social Studies through the RCD process.
Next meeting: January 8, 2015, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. Durham and Person County will
share their curriculum development experiences.
Meeting Evaluation Comments:
 Enjoyed the sharing.
 Granville’s presentation was very good and it was good to hear their
struggles and successes with their process.
 It was great to hear where other counties are in this process and struggles
they had.
 Granville’s sharing was very useful.
 Presenters were well prepared.
 Shared many best practices in curriculum development
 Expertise of Mr. Beamon
 Great sharing of framework from Granville
 Send us the Granville presentation
 Agenda was focused
 Sharing was a plus
 Loved info from Granville and Northampton
 It was affirming to hear districts share similar steps and how to overcome
similar barriers.