Teaching, Learning & Assessment
The Department of Teaching, Learning & Assessment is responsible for the development, implementation, instructional technology support, and assessment of the district's instructional program. The department's major goal is to provide support to the schools, learning for staff to implement and improve student success.
District 15 is committed to ambitious instruction that is responsive to the needs of our students. Our instructional approach is grounded in a commitment to all students can and will learn as a result of a District 15 education.
Our instructional framework is rooted in the following five dimensions of powerful classrooms:
- Content: All students work on core content issues in ways that enable them to develop conceptual understandings, develop reasoning and problem solving skills, and use content concepts, tools and methods in relevant contexts.
- Cognitive Demand: All students have opportunities to make their own sense of important ideas, developing deeper understandings, connections, and applications by building on what they know.
- Equitable Access to Content: All students are supported in access to central content and participate actively in the work of the class. Diverse strengths and needs are built on through the use of an extensive repertoire of strategies, resources, and technologies that enable all students to participate meaningfully.
- Agency, Ownership and Identity: All students build productive disciplinary identities through taking advantage of opportunities to engage meaningfully with the discipline and share and refine their developing ideas.
- Formative Assessment: Every student’s learning is continually enhanced by the ongoing strategic and flexible use of techniques and activities that allow students to reveal their emerging understandings and provide opportunities to rethink misunderstandings to build on productive ideas.