Mascoma Curriculum Newsletter

I hope you all had a relaxing summer filled with all of the things you love to do!

For those of you who do not know me. My name is April Guinness and I am the new Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment. Here is a little bit about me: this year begins my 22nd year in the Mascoma Valley Regional School District. I've held a variety of positions in the district over the years. I was a high school mathematics teacher for 18 years, Associate Principal & Athletic Director at IRS for 2 years, Interim Principal at CES for 1 year and now the Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment. I am looking forward to be working with you in this new role.

Have a wonderful school year and see you soon!

Please complete this form after you have completed all sections of the mandatory training slides, which includes all the trainings required by NH state law for any employee of a school district. These must be completed by October 18th, 2024.

If you utilize Frontline to collect professional development hours for your recertification (teachers, paraeducators, administration), please register for the activity in the catalogue and mark as complete when you have submitted the Google Form. Remember, as long as you are logged into your district email account the form should save even if you don't complete it all in one sitting.

If you do not use Frontline, your answers will be saved as part of your personnel file.

Check out our Mascoma Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment Google Classroom for professional development materials, Grit materials & new videos, K-8 math pacing guides, scope and sequence documents, and more. 📚 📏 📖

Course Code: cshmptt

Thank you to all staff who were able to attend some, or all, of the July Curriculum Institute! The MCIA group helped structure the institute again this year as a mix of professional development from content experts, facilitated curriculum development, and exploration of materials to meet in person at the HS on Wednesday, July 24th and Thursday, July 25th. Understanding by Design (UbD) units, Performance Based Assessments (PBAs), exploring Artificial Intelligence (AI), and problem-based math plans were all developed over the course of the two days.

• 🖍️ Kindergarten
• 📏 First Grade
• 🎲 Second Grade
• ⏲️ Third Grade
• 🧮 Fourth Grade
• ✏️ Fifth Grade
• 📐Sixth Grade
• 📊 Seventh Grade
• 📉 Eighth Grade

IM Professional Development slides by Jess Jacques

Working with Jess Jacques, the Merrimack Valley School District Math Coach, we have developed pacing guides based on Mascoma I Can Statements laying out the quarter by quarter plan for teaching the IM curriculum. Each document includes helpful suggestions and links.

IM has created many videos that give you a K-5 Overview and delve into different aspects of the curriculum. There are a number of features of IM K - 5 that were highlighted as especially helpful:

• Math Routines are embedded: act it out, choral count, estimation exploration, how many do you see (subitizing), notice and wonder, number talk, true/false, which one doesn't belong, etc.

• Center suggestions - actual new ideas that are clearly connected and engaging

• Worksheets can be customized to better align to your instruction

• Multiple strategies and ways to solve problems are utilized throughout the program

I recommend that you start the Registration Process to access the open source curriculum so that you can see the curriculum yourself when you're ready and have time. This won't happen all at once and everyone will need to start learning about the resources at their own pace. Here is a video from Jess Jacques on how to navigate IM Teacher Materials and one as an example of how to customize IM presentations & materials.