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Hello Families and Happy Spring!
The teachers at RSD have been hard at work this school year to strengthen our curriculum program. In a collaborative effort with Audra Schmitt, the consultant working closely with us, and the school leaders, we have provided training and guidance for our teachers to accomplish this critical work. The Strategic Plan has led the work this year and helped us to focus time and energy to address Student Success and Employee Excellence, Engagement, and Support. By supporting teachers to better plan and execute instruction and materials, we are confident that we will see a positive impact on student learning.
Because there are no curriculum programs developed specifically for Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing students (with the exception of those designed to address literacy), a great deal of work needs to be done to adapt materials. Once teachers of Deaf/HH students find curriculum materials they assess to be best to use, they need to review and modify the instruction and activities to ensure students can access them fully. Curricula are developed for general education, where students do not typically face the same challenges as Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing students of lacking vocabulary knowledge and background information needed to access instruction. Our Middle School and High School teachers are continuing their work of adapting and modifying curriculum during their monthly sessions. They are also completing our curriculum map, which is a roadmap of topics taught each year, in each subject, and is aligned with New York state standards.
The Elementary teachers have had professional development in using Reading Milestones, Bedrock Literacy Program, and Fingerspelling Our Way. These programs and approaches are specifically designed for Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing students, and we are excited to see progress with the implementation of consistent literacy instruction. This spring, they will also engage in professional development in the Eureka Math curriculum.
Our plans for next year include continuing the work for all teachers to modify curriculum. The Elementary teachers will work on adapting social studies and science curricula to create accessible instruction for our students. We will also continue completing the school-wide curriculum map that will act as our road map to ensuring Student Success.
And lastly, as we are approaching the final quarter of this school year, we will begin training for the Bedrock Grammar Curriculum (BGC). Training will start at the end of this month for the core team, and those teachers will have the opportunity to become familiar with the curriculum before we begin using it for instruction with students in September 2023. BGC is a comprehensive program designed for Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing students to develop grammar structure in both ASL and English, which research has shown is necessary to establish the foundation for written language skills.
It has been a very busy yet rewarding process thus far, and I am pleased with the motivation and effort our teachers have put into this incredible work! The school leaders have recognized that our curriculum and instructional program needed improvement, and having the Strategic Plan to guide this initiative has provided us with a shared blueprint of how to do that.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions about our Strategic Plan, and as always, teachers are happy to discuss ways to support your child at home.
With kind regards,
Susan
Susan Q. Ogden, Principal
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