Instructional Minute

• Scroll through the Amplify CKLA Knowledge Scrapbook for culminating events and celebration activity photos and videos that will create valuable moments for your students in the remaining months of school!

• View student writing samples in the PD Library to see how other CKLA students have developed writing skills across each grade.

• Simplify your bulletin board planning using images that align to each CKLA Knowledge Domain in this downloadable and printable Canva collection.

• Manage students’ attention and progress with the Start Class and Eyes Up features built into the platform.

• Conduct a quick check using the interactive Poll feature. Polls often lead to rich discussions and help extend student thinking! You can access poll results by clicking on the Poll icon built into the lesson cards.

• Use the Spotlight app to highlight examples of your students' work and project excerpts for instruction or for student appreciation.

Explore these tools HERE

Interested in learning more about what disciplinary literacy can look like in mathematics classes? Check out this episode of the All About Literacy podcast!

Using keywords in mathematics can be problematic because it can lead students to rely on superficial clues rather than developing a deeper understanding of the problem, often resulting in incorrect solutions when faced with complex or non-standard word problems, hindering their critical thinking and problem-solving skills; essentially, it teaches them to find quick fixes instead of reasoning through the situation.

Key reasons why keywords can be problematic:

Keywords don't work with multi-step problems.

Multi-step problems often require a deeper understanding of the problem structure and relationships between quantities, which keywords fail to address.

Consider the following problem: A fruit stand sells apples for $0.50 each and oranges for $0.75 each. John buys 4 apples and 2 oranges. He pays with a $5 bill. How much change does John receive?

Kindergarten Block Teams-Building Math and SEL Skills Through Purposeful Play

March 20, 2025 I 7:00-7:30PM ET

Are your block centers gathering dust, or have they become places where kids just knock things down? Learn how to transform them into hubs of learning and creativity! Join us for an interactive session where we'll explore how you can use block centers to teach math and social-emotional learning (SEL) through purposeful play. Inspired by NCTM's Building a Tower problem, you'll explore Block Teams- weekly activities where students engage in math practices and collaborate to design and build structures inspired by landmarks around the world. Open to all!

Sign Up Here!

Please note that this professional development opportunity is entirely optional, and additional hours will not be compensated.

CER, as a model for writing, stands for Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning. This writing strategy can be used in any subject matter and shows up on the PSAT and SAT as a recommended argumentation model for written responses. Decoding a CER model is also a great comprehension and critical thinking skill.

Steps of CER

• Claim: Students answer a question or make a statement
• Evidence: Students provide data or examples to support their claim
• Reasoning: Students explain how the evidence supports their claim

When to use CER

• In science classes to help students think like scientists
• In argumentative, persuasive, or analysis essays
• To develop analytical thinking and argumentative writing skills

Example of CER

• Claim: Water in a wide, shallow dish evaporates faster than in a narrow, deep glass.
• Evidence: In a classroom experiment, the wide dish's water level dropped faster over a week.
• Reasoning: The wide dish has a larger surface area, which allows for more evaporation.

Create custom targeted question sets to improve instruction. This resource has thousands of real test questions, allows the user to filter questions, and then export into a PDF if needed. Follow the link below for access!

SAT, PSAT 8/9, PSAT 10 Educator Question Bank

Dive into a quick video and discover how much you can learn in just a few moments!

Click on the above title to view the evaluation documents for staff!

Below you can find the new, updated required instructional minutes by grade level and content area. Each grade level also includes a sample schedule.

Teachers are encouraged to monitor student progress regularly using formative assessments and adjust pacing as needed based on classroom data. However, teachers should aim to stay within two weeks of the pacing outlined in the guides to maintain alignment with district-wide goals. While we do not adjust pacing for snow days, the pacing is a guide and the expectation is to stay within the established two-week time frame.

The documents attached outline K-8 curricular resources, standards and pacing. This can also be found by clicking here on the LSD website.

The document attached outlines 9-12 curricular resources, standards and pacing. This can also be found by clicking here on the LSD website.

A resource to use as you see fit.