Learning Loss Guide

Session One: Re-Aligning Scope and Sequence

Step One: Determine students’ level of experience with previous years’ standards and merge into current year’s scope and sequence.

Teachers should be placed in groups comprised of members from their current grade level AND the prior grade level (e.g., the second grade group should include current second grade teachers and prior year first grade teachers). This step will take two rotations so that each teacher can participate as a focal grade teacher and a “prior grade” teacher.

In this session, teachers should focus on the following questions.

1. What standards were not taught AND/OR were not assessed at mastery learning? These standards would be considered incomplete from the previous school year.

2. How do these “gap” standards connect to the current scope and sequence?

NOTE: What are the on-grade-level standards that would be impacted in the current grade level and where do they occur in the current grade’s scope and sequence? OR Where are the connected standards that would naturally provide a connection to “missed standards”?

3. How can the current grade level’s scope and sequence be modified to include co-requisite instruction for the gap standards? Teachers should modify the current scope and sequence. (This step will take the majority of the PLC time and instructional coaches and supervisors should actively collaborate in these conversations).

4. Are there any necessary (and only necessary) pacing shifts that need to occur as a result of the adaptations to the scope and sequence?

5. Are there adaptations to materials, assessments, and benchmarks to ensure that students have high-quality instructional experiences and master the merged content?

6. How will on-grade-level teachers monitor students’ progress to ensure that merged content continues to help students master concepts and skills at on-grade level expectations?

Session Two: Initial Assessment of Student Learning Gaps

Step Two: Assess students’ mastery of prior year’s content to determine what skills and concepts to include as focal areas within the scope and sequence, additional remediation sessions, or focal areas for intervention.

In this session, teachers should focus on the following questions.

1. What did the benchmark/checkpoint identify as major gaps
   • For my class?
   • For groups of students?
   • For individual students?

2. Where are students in their understanding of the pre-requisite standards, skills, and concepts for the current grade-level standards focusing on major work of the grade?

3. How do I need to support the whole class with lost learning as identified in question one??

4. How do I need to support groups of students with lost learning as identified in question one?

5. How do I need to support individual students with lost learning as identified in question one?

6. Each section of missed learning (whole group, small group, individual) needs to be aligned to and identified in the modified scope and sequence from PLC session one. Will this scope and sequence meet all the needs identified? Or do additional supports need to be structured?

Note: In this sections, districts and schools will need to ensure teachers can analyze benchmark results that they can identify concepts that the whole class struggled to master, small group challenges, and individual student challenges. The school will need to identify structures and supports that will allow teachers to support groups and individual learners with identified needs. These supports can include intervention time, additional time included in learning blocks, “push-in” classroom support, etc.

Session Three: Monitoring Student Progress

Step 3: Monitor students’ learning closely to see if students are effectively mastering both new and prior content by assessing current grade-level standards.

Session 3 should become an ongoing session throughout the academic year, ideally occurring at the end of units of study especially those units that focus on major standards within the grade. As teachers collect more data on student progress, they will need the opportunity to ascertain the learning of each individual student. Teachers should be grouped in grade level teams for this PLC session.

In this session, teachers should focus on the following questions.

1. What did the assessment of learning for this unit identify as major learning gaps
   • For my class?
   • For groups of students?
   • For individual students?

2. What misconceptions do my students have? How can I address those misconceptions?

3. Guiding questions when thinking about the whole class:
   • When is the most appropriate time to address the learning gaps identified for my whole class?
   • What does my instruction need to look like/sound like?
   • What resources are available in my instructional materials?
   • Are there other members of the PLC group who didn’t have the same identified gaps? Was their instruction different?

4. Guiding questions when thinking about groups of students:
   • When is the most appropriate time to address the learning gaps identified for these students?
   • What does my instruction need to look like/sound like?
   • What resources are available in my instructional materials?
   • Are there other members of the PLC group who identified similar gaps? What do their plans look like/sound like?

5. Guiding questions when thinking about individual students:
   • When is the most appropriate time to address the learning gaps identified for these students?
   • What does my instruction need to look like/sound like?
   • What resources are available in my instructional materials?
   • Are there other members of the PLC group who identified similar gaps in individual students? What do their plans look like/sound like?

Note: Teachers may need assessment literacy strategy support to understand the differences between skill-based diagnostics and standards/knowledge-based benchmark data and how to effectively use different types of data. Further, teachers may need additional resources and professional learning around intervention vs. remediation.

Session 4: Reaching All Students

Step 4: Identify additional scaffolds and supports needed to ensure students are receiving the appropriate intensity and duration of remediation.

This PLC session is designed to help provide clarity to participants and then provide the opportunity for teachers to discuss supports for students beyond core instruction time. This session should occur for the first time after there is enough significant data to indicate that just-in-time instruction is not enough to meet the learning needs for a group of students.

Districts need to be prepared to provide the following information for participants at the beginning of the first time this session occurs:

• How/when do we decide that inline instruction is not enough? At what point is the decision made that the needed intervention for a student needs to happen outside of the core instruction window?

• What team helps make this decision?

What data needs to be evaluated? Discussion questions for PLC participants:

• What structures and supports are available to support both groups and individual learners with identified loss of learning needs that extend beyond what can be covered in the core instruction window?

• How is intervention time being utilized to support students’ learning needs?

• What are the communication channels between each student’s teacher and their teacher for intervention?

• What resources are available to be used during intervention?

Additional Topics for Districts

In addition to the topics covered in these PLC sessions, the district may want to consider providing additional guidance on the following topics related to addressing loss of learning.

• A deep dive into the instructional materials available
• Vertical coherence in the standards progressions
• Prioritizing instructional time
• Effective instructional practice in both traditional and virtual learning environments
• Unique challenges in each content area to be addressed in digital learning environments (e.g., manipulatives in mathematics)
• Small-group instruction in a digital learning environment