School Designs Benefits of a Unified Curriculum

A Strong Foundation for LearningA unified curriculum supports quality teaching and learning by providing first-class curricula to educators and students. It presents EdisonLearning® School Designs partners with research-based programs with flexible resources for addressing the needs of all learners, a consistent instructional design to support teacher individual and collaborative planning, and more robust, program specific professional development.

Consistent Instructional FormatA highly structured, interrelated curriculum will help teacher’s present lessons consistently and thoroughly. Teachers will have more time to perfect their presentation skills, monitor students’ progress, and keep parents informed of their child’s progress and advised of their own role in their academic development.

Improved Planning, Teaching and LearningBy providing instruction to students from Pre-K through each ascending grade with a unified curriculum, teachers, advisors and administrators will know more about each student’s educational progress, his or her strengths and weaknesses, and how to address each rather than through a mix and match approach to planning and teaching. The unified approach affords greater consistency across curricula and across grades.

Supplementing the Student Support ModelUnified curriculum programs are beneficial to the Student Support Model and Response to Intervention (RtI). The RtI system is a preventive, solution focused, school-wide intervention process. Unified curriculum programs and their flexible resources and assessments, make it easier to identify students facing issues that are affecting academic achievement. This type of continuity provides teachers with a rich array of tools and resources for differentiating instruction and lends itself to more productive teacher-parent collaboration surrounding areas of academic concern - the first step of the RtI process.

Enhanced Professional DevelopmentImplementing aligned curricula and integrated professional development with focused training greatly benefits teacher practice which results in enhanced student achievement.

Pursuing a Strategic Partnership with a publisher to provide more uniform curriculum complements EdisonLearning’s robust Professional Development. This comprehensive approach to professional development was purposefully designed in response to partner feedback and to meet the needs of all partner school personnel so that they can better support students’ academic success.

Houghton Mifflin HarcourtEdisonLearning, in concert with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is committed to providing high-quality, research-based curriculum offerings to our partnership schools. These programs support improved instruction, assessment, and professional development as well as bring greater efficiencies in implementation.

ImplementationUsing a unified curriculum streamlines instructional program implementation for EdisonLearning partnership schools because together we are working with only one publishing partner.

• Best practices surrounding instruction will be universal; from year-to-year and from campus-to-campus as more schools adopt the unified curriculum program.

• As needs arise and change over time, EdisonLearning and HMH can respond more quickly together because the foundation for a consistent message has already been established.

• Formative student achievement data will have greater validity due to a higher level of consistency throughout execution.

Instruction and Student AssessmentA consistent instructional model better supports effective lesson planning. This guarantees lessons reflective of standards, learner outcomes and student needs because teachers, administrators and parents are better able to measure fidelity of lesson implementation.

• Lesson plans reflect more differentiated instructional strategies because the message of differentiation is consistent.

• Greater formative and summative assessment opportunities as a result of regular preparation and a bird’s eye view of resources across the curriculum.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is recognized globally as the preeminent educational publisher - offering best-in-class instructional materials.

The HMH goal is to help tailor learning to individual styles and preferences - ensuring success for all.

• Uniform criteria and a consistent instructional model provide support for new teachers and a common language and resources for mentoring and professional development.

• Standardized lesson planning and assessment cycles make it easier to determine effect on student achievement.

Professional Development and Training ServicesWith an HMH unified curriculum there is a mutual investment in efficacy. Professional Development and implementation training is complemented by HMH resources allowing for cross-referencing of best practices and classroom materials.

• The link between core and specialized curriculum resources and intervention materials will be referenced and demonstrated through all professional development and training.

• Multiple professional development delivery methods such as webinars and online learning will address the individualized needs of schools.

Find Out MoreFor more information about EdisonLearning® School Designs please call us at 1-877-I-CAN-LEARN (1-877-422-6532), e-mail us at schooldesigns@edisonlearning.com or visit us online at www.edisonlearning.com/schooldesigns.

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Offering details are subject to change, and may vary by individual client engagement. Student and school performance depends on many variables; as such, specific results are not guaranteed and may vary.

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