The Ohio Department of Education has rated Cuyahoga Falls City Schools as EXCELLENT for the third year in a row with the district meeting 24 of 26 state indicators.
Our purpose in the Teaching and Learning Department is to create a learning environment that helps all students meet or exceed state standards by providing rigorous student-centered curriculum based on real world learning experience. The Department of Teaching and Learning is responsible for the development of all district curriculum, courses of study and instructional programming. We focus on the development of curriculum, best practices in instruction, district and state testing and assessment and professional development for staff. Our Department is home to the Office of Technology, the Gifted and Talented Program (Project Excel), the Title One / Remedial Skills Program and Library Services.
This school year, our professional development, curriculum development and instructional focus will center on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. We will continue work in the four major content areas of mathematics, language arts, social studies and science based on the newly revised core standards. At the High School, we will continue implementation of benchmark assessments to monitor student progress and curriculum maps to pace our instruction; this will include adding clarity to the enriched levels of the core courses.
Our continuous improvement work this year will be in the area of "conditions for learning" with an in-depth focus on student ownership at each school. Continuing our work with implementation of the Response to Intervention process for academic and behavioral interventions K-12, we will focus on the integration of 21st Century Skills in district classrooms along with the utilization of Marzano’s nine instructional categories to enhance teaching and learning. We will also encourage teachers to utilize the FIP (Formative Instructional Practices) model, placing emphasis on providing clear learning targets for students. This promises to be a very busy and productive year for The Department of Teaching and Learning.