These reflect terms that have come to the attention of the Curriculum Coordinator which might serve the community to establish a common language of understanding. (*folder: indicates a compilation of information)

Action Plan

After setting a goal, the action plan is used to identify the steps necessary to complete the action and usually includes the necessary resources and a definition of how to determine if success is met.

Alignment

The congruency between the written, taught and assessed curriculum. Vertical alignment refers to agreement throughout the PK-12 system; horizontal alignment refers to agreement within a grade level or course.

ALL's

Approaches to Lifelong Learning. Strategies, attitudes and skills that bridge the content areas and help students become more effective learners. Through the ALL's, students gain a better understanding of how they learn and develop a range of learning strategies to use in different contexts. The four strands are Communication (including speaking, reading, writing and accessing information), Organizational, Critical Thinking and Social/Personal.

Anchor Papers

This is an activity and a process to aid teachers and students in the teaching and learning of writing. The Anchor Papers are used to demonstrate the students’ writing progress, as well as to inform instruction. The use of the scoring rubric may be used as a tool in communicating the expectations for writing.

Assessment

Assessment may be used in the following ways: (a) a diagnostic tool for the teacher; (b) a learning tool for the student; and (c) a grading tool. Colegio Maya advocates that assessment be used for more than a simple grading tool.

Assessment Terms (for common understanding)

• Traditional Assessment: Includes Pen and Paper & Multiple Choice;
• Alternative Assessment: Are forms of assessment that depart from traditional assessment that might include Multiple Intelligence opportunities;
• Standards-Based Assessment: Concerned with measuring the progress towards graduating student standards identified by the school;
• Performance Assessment: Combine content and process into a format that shows what students know
• and what they can do with what they know and Takes knowledge to the 'doing'level;
• Portfolio Assessment: Emphasizes student self-assessment and its Purpose is to facilitate classroom learning and instruction;

Authentic Assessment

• Authentic assessment asks students to apply their skills and knowledge in meaningful ways such as reporting the results of an experiment, writing a letter that is meant to be sent, evaluating their learning or writing a poem.
• Students are required to develop responses, not select the appropriate response from a list.
• Students are required to synthesize the information they have encountered and to evaluate their learning as well an demonstrate knowledge and comprehension of the curriculum.
• Allows the students to work on holistic projects that allow them to create a context for their learning and see the relationship among different pieces of information. For instance, playing the role of a historical figure requires the student to think about what each individual fact learned means to the figure.
• Includes a wide variety of assessment techniques that can reveal students’ abilities in many dimensions such as oral, visual, and kinetic through the use of performance, portfolios, journals and projects.
• Allows for formative evaluations and that can encompass many learning objectives such as attitudes and presentations skills that are difficult to evaluate using written tests.
• Students can be involved in evaluating their own work which prompts them to think about their learning (metacognition ) and develops metacognition strategies. 

Benchmarks

Descriptions of measurable skills, content or processes that follow from PK-12 standards. Benchmarks may be grouped by grade bands (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) or by grade level. An example of a benchmark statement in mathematics would be: "The K-2 student draws pictures to represent problems."

Best Practice

A best practice is a technique or methodology that, through experience and research, has proven reliable in leading to improved student learning. Employing best practice in teaching involves using research, knowledge, methods, materials, technology, etc. to increase student success.

Colegio Maya Learning Community Forum

This is an email forum (listserv) set up for our community made up of parents, teachers, administrators and students to share discussion of topics pertinent to the Colegio Maya Learning Community.

Content Area

A body of related knowledge, also referred to as a subject area or discipline.

Core Instructional Practices

Talents Unlimited, Multiple Intelligences, and ESOL in the Mainstream are all expected knowledge for instructional practices by Colegio Maya faculty.

Critical Thinking Skills (folder)

1. Focus on a question
2. Analyze arguments
3. Ask and answer questions of clarification and/or challenge
4. Judge the credibility of a source.
    a. Expertise
5. Observe, and judge observation reports. (The next three involve inference.)
6. Deduce, and judge deduction
7. Induce, and judge induction
8. Make and judge value judgments: Important factors:
9. Define terms and judge definitions. Three dimensions are form, strategy, and content.
10. Attribute unstated assumptions
11. Consider and reason from premises, reasons, assumptions, positions, and other propositions with which they disagree or about which they are in doubt -- without letting the disagreement or doubt interfere with their thinking ("suppositional thinking")
12. Integrate the other abilities and dispositions in making and defending a decision
13. Proceed in an orderly manner appropriate to the situation. For example:
14. Be sensitive to the feelings, level of knowledge, and degree of sophistication of others
15. Employ appropriate rhetorical strategies in discussion and presentation (orally and in writing), including employing and reacting to "fallacy" labels in an appropriate manner.

Curriculum Connections

These are cross-content connects made between two or more content areas intending to help the student reinforce her/his learning and to provide a more complete understanding.

Curriculum Cycle

This refers to our formal five year cycle of content curriculum development:
1st Year = Formal Curriculum Guide Development
2nd Year = Implementation and Refinement (Step #1)
3rd Year = Implementation and Refinement (Step #2)
4th Year = Implementation and Refinement (Step #3)
5th Year = Evaluate and Explore in Preparation for the next year

Curriculum Mapping (folder)

Curriculum mapping is a process of articulating a student’s educational journey in the K-12 system. Teachers map the curriculum that is actually being taught to the students. It is a process where teachers collect, share, and edit data about essential questions, content, skills and assessment that is aligned with the school’s curricula standards.

Efficacy

In all of our practices, the hidden "f"word, reflects the constant question if we are truly efficient in what we are attempting to do, given the current reality.

Essential Agreement

The 4 Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz: "In these agreements we tell ourselves who we are, how to behave, what is possible, what is impossible."

1. Be Impeccable with your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstances, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Essential Questions

EQ identify the key concepts students are to learn and remember years from now and that. engage the learner.

Experiential Learning/Active Learning (folder)

Association for Experiential Education Definition (this is typically difficult to define)
Experiential education is a process through which a learner constructs knowledge, skill, and value from direct experiences."

Principles of experiential education practice

• Experiential learning occurs when carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, critical analysis, and synthesis.
• Experiences are structures to require the learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results.
• Throughout the experiential learning process, the learner is actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning.
• Learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, socially, soulfully, and/or physically. This involvement produces a perception that the learning task is authentic.
• The results of the learning are personal and form the basis for future experience and learning.
• Relationships are developed and nurtures: learner to self, learner to others, and learner to the world at large.
• The educator and learner may experience success, failure, adventure, risk-taking, and uncertainty, since the outcomes of experience cannot be totally predicted.
• Opportunities are nurtured for learners and educators to explore and examine their own values.
• The educator’s primary roles include setting suitable experiences, posing problems, setting boundaries, supporting learners, insuring physical and emotional safety, and facilitating the learning process.
• The educator* recognizes and encourages spontaneous opportunities for learning.
• Educators strive to be aware of their biases, judgments, and pre-conceptions and how they influence the learner.
• The design of the learning experience includes the possibility to learn from natural consequences, mistakes, and successes.

Experiential Learning Cycle

• Experience – This is a structured first step, considered as data-generating. Today’s first step is the guiding question of “How do we know where our kids are right now?” and ­your response and dialogue with peers.
• Reflection – The second stage of the cycle allows you to look back and examine what you saw, felt and thought during the event. This also may be actively done through peer sharing.
• Processing – In this stage you begin to conceptualize the information, looking to connect and link to your similar occurrences and settings. You use a critical eye to evaluate the value of the information for personal and professional effectiveness.
• Application – This stage is the primary reason for reflecting and processing. You focus on the “Now What?” You look to apply what you have learned. It is time to make specific plans (SMART).

*The Cycle represents the return to the initial step to continue the process as progress is made! 

Facilitate

The literal definition means "to make easier". For our purposes, it means the enabling to get from one point to another (usually read as progress), utilizing various personal soft skills. An interesting point for consideration is to decide where facilitate falls within a spectrum that includes manage, teach, direct, lead and supervise.

Genres in Writing (From ESL in the Mainstream class)

Among the genres commonly used in schools (and more widely) are the following:

• Recount
  Purpose/social function: To retell events for the purpose of informing or entertaining a listener/reader.
  Types
  Personal recount (eg anecdote, diary entry)
  Factual recount (eg newspaper article, police report, biography, historical event)
  Imaginative recount (eg a day in the life of … , I thought things like that only happened in nightmares…)

• Narrative
  Purpose/ Social function: To project a world which unexpected things happen to individuals; exploring actual or imagined experience in ways that can be informing and /or entertaining.
  Types
  Adventure
  Fairy tale
  Horror story
  Epic
  Science fiction
  Romance

• Procedure
  Purpose/social function: To tell how something (a task, an aim, a product) is to be accomplished through a sequence of steps or actions.
  Types
  Recipes
  Science experiments
  Instructions
  Manuals
  Games rules

• Report
  Purpose/social function: To describe the way things are in our environment (natural / social / synthetic).
  Types
  An information report can cover information of various kinds.

• Explanation
  Purpose/social function: To account for why things are as they are or how / why something occurs.
  Types
  Explaining how something works or was formed
  Explaining why something occurs or is as it is.

• Argument
  Purpose/social function: To put forward a point of view or justify a position being taken by the author.
  Types
  Persuading that – arguing that a position / interpretation is the most valid
  Persuading to – arguing that certain action should be taken

• Discussion
  Purpose/social function: To present information about / arguments for multiple sides of an issue, concluding with a recommendation based on the weight of evidence.
  Types
  Finding from research, investigations and formal inquiries, eg an inquest, a commissioned report
  Essays or articles written to argue opposing viewpoints on an issue.

Instruction

The strategies and activities of educating or teaching; the methodology used by the teacher.

Instructional Leadership

May fall to, but not limited to, administrators (director, principals, curriculum facilitator) and certainly may include faculty who wish to share their areas of expertise.

Interdisciplinary Curriculum

Unit or lesson in which a theme, question or issue links to more than one content area, allowing students to see the interrelationships of subject disciplines and the interdependency between subject areas. Preparation of interdisciplinary curriculum requires careful planning among teachers and explicit statement of links between the content areas..

Leadership Tool Kit

What do we expect of our student leaders in terms of knowledge and abilities? The Leadership Saturday event attempts to provide some of the tools necessary to fulfilling the duties of the positions. So far, the event tool kit has included the topics of (a) How to run an efficient meeting; (b) Active Listening; (c) Decision Making; and (d) Action Planning.

Mission

A statement that describes the aspirations of the school.

MLA

The expected format for writing at Colegio Maya by the Modern Language Association.
Resource: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html#General

PK-12 Philosophy

A statement of beliefs about the kind of knowledge and skills that underlie each content area, the aims for teaching the knowledge and skills and the approach that is most appropriate for the content area and student population. It is important that this philosophy be a statement based on the realities and expectations for Colegio Maya.

PK-12 Standards

A set of well-researched statements that describe the broad goals of a PK-12 content area that tend to come from one or more highly respected organizations.

Professional Dialogue

A discussion (following the 4 Agreements) held by two or more educators about their practices which holds as an essential understanding that the goal of our work is to do what is ultimately the best for our students and that we are always trying to improve upon that.

School Improvement (folder)

This refers to our school’s "Catch the Spirit" mental model as our environment speaks of always trying to get better. On a more formal note, this also refers to two formal initiatives: (a) our School Improvement Committee and their efforts; and (b) our school’s participation in the SACS School Improvement Process for continued accreditation.

Scope and Sequence

A continuum which shows by grade level the order in which content knowledge and skills should be introduced, practiced and mastered.

Standards-Based Assessment

Assessment that is based upon and closely linked to the standards and benchmarks within a content area and grade level.

Strand

Typically these are the main elements of a particular discipline. Several strands may be interwoven to form the whole curriculum for that discipline. From these strands, the PK-12 standards and appropriate grade or grade level benchmarks are derived.

Teacher Best Practices Profile

To date, certain teachers have been interviewed to investigate what makes them successful in their teaching. The idea is through appreciative inquiry, to promote more of these successful practices.

Thematic Curriculum

Content area classes may include themes which are represented by large view perspectives of the learning content. At times, thematic curriculum endeavors include bridges of various content areas which is referred to as Integrated Curriculum

Timeline

A timeline is used to communicate the expected dates for completion of steps within an action plan.

Wellness

Wellness refers to a healthy "whole"person which includes the mental, physical and spiritual aspects. 'Healthy'in this case means actively living life, not absence of illness.

*A glossary from Colegio Americano was used as a base for this document. The rest of the information presented here is a representation of "work in progress"as the Colegio Maya learning community continues to move forward in articulating and providing "best practices"in instruction towards maximal student learning.