Using the South Dakota Blueprints for Learning

Perhaps you have heard of these blue prints but never really understood what everyone was talking about or you saw them once at a common core training, then conveniently forgot about them. Its understandable with all the changes that are happening. Lots of schools are in the middle of adopting, or recently have adopted new curriculum materials, so perhaps you have been trying to figure out how that fits into the Common Core. No worries! We all know that teachers just dont have enough time! So to day, we want to give you an overview, and also some TIME! To access the blue prints, you will want to go to sdccteachers.k12.sd.us Your screen should look like this:

Youll notice there is a lot of other useful information on this page as well, such as the Disaggregated Standards, which if you havent had a chance to look at, you might take some time to do. They contain where your kids are coming from and where they are going to transitions to help you as a teacher, as well as your students, understand the standard. I would suggest book marking this page for future reference.

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Over on the left hand side of your screen, you will see a panel with Suggested Blueprints. Find the ELA K-12 Blueprints or the Math K-12 Blueprints, depending on your area, and click the corresponding link. Once you have selected your area, you will be taken to a list of blueprints by grade. If this is the first time you have looked at the South Dakota Blueprints for Learning, you may just want to view them, however they are designed to be flexible. You can also download them after you view, then you can change the order of the blueprint to fit your personal or district preference.

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Go ahead and open your desired grade level. The first page that comes up is going to be your friend when it comes to searching myOER.org. This first page has the Instructional Focus

Codes (IF codes) that you will want in order to search for lessons that have been approved by SD teachers for the myOER website. These codes become your search terms. This would be a good page to print out for future reference.

If you opt to download the blueprint, you can do so by going to File and selecting download as and choose your format. Otherwise, you can just continue on to the next screen by scrolling down.

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The next page you will come to if you scroll down is the beginning of the actual blueprint. There are varying Instructional Focus Areas by grade and subject, but all of the South Dakota Blueprints for Learning cover all of the Common Core Standards, so as long as you cover the blueprint, you will cover the Common Core Standards. Each instructional focus area tells you which standards are covered and also provides an approximate time frame for how long it should take to cover that Focus Area. If the Standard is written out, this is the first time the students see that standard in the progression of the blueprint. (Keep in mind if you change the order of the blueprint that may not still be the case.) If the standard is listed, but not written out, it means the standard was already covered earlier in the blueprints progression. This is the first Instructional Focus Area for 8th grade Math.

Notice in the right hand column there is a spot where notes have been added this is where you will find some quality resources in the myOER.org website to assist you in teaching this particular

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Instructional Focus Area. When you are on the webpage with the South Dakota Blueprints for Learning, you can click right on the link and it will take you to that resource in myOER.

Every Instructional Focus area should have suggested lessons for all grades and each discipline (currently Math and ELA). Keep in mind, while these lessons from myOER are in the blueprint because they have been found to be exemplary examples, they are not the only lessons available in myOER for that Instructional Focus Area. To find additional lessons in myOER related to that Instructional Focus Area, use the codes for the Instructional Focus Area from the beginning of the blueprint as a term to search. This will guarantee that the lesson or activity that comes up has been approved by teachers in South Dakota. While searching for lessons to use with the blueprint, it is important to keep in mind that what one educator finds valuable may not be the same as the next. You do not need to use the suggestions, you may find your own activities and lessons that work with your interpretation and comfort level with the Common Core Standards.

For English, the instructional focus is just one of the ways to search. There is also the availability to search through fiction, non-fiction, informational text, and biography. As always the author and/or title of the literature can also be searched. Make sure to try more than one way for a specific piece of literature, as each SD teacher entered the lessons differently for key words into myOER.org. Time for some question and answers over the SD Blue Print:

After working with the blue prints, we noticed some gapswe needed lessons to fill the gaps. Where do you go to find good lessons that already align to SD Common Core? Our answer: myOERa site that houses resources and lessons. Your standards/blueprint should drive the content coming from myOER.

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Now lets go to myOER.org to see how you can supplement your curriculum with lessons that are aligned to the SD Common Core.

Go to myOER.org and create an account

Choose a username and password that you will remember. Make sure to write it down as we all get a lot of usernames and passwords. I used one that I was given by my district as I use it a lot and this ties to my curriculum, so it seemed to work well for this site. After you log in you will see:

Now, decide what you want to search for, choose search by standard, browse by subject , or an advanced search..Lets start with a standard search. Click on the button or use the drop down at the top. Do Note that this is a Beta Version, so it is a work in progress.and we are still working to add more lessons to it all the time.

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Click on Math or English. Since, I am familiar with the English part. I choose English. It will open up to a page with more options to select. You need to know what standard you want to look for. This seems to work better with math as a lot of your lessons are standard based instead of literature based.

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First you need to select your grade level on the far right side of the screen. I chose 9-12 standards Then click on the down arrow on the right side of the Hyper-Bar. I chose Reading Standards for Literature Next, click on the down arrow on the right side of the Hyper-Bar to choose the standards to be displayed. I chose 01-03. Key Ideas and Details. Then click on the standard at the end where it looks like a T.V.
RL.09-10.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone). (101) Now your screen will look like:

Note how a box pops up in the middle and the rest of the screen is blued out.

Use the scroll bar on the right to scroll down through the lessons. If one looks interesting click on >> MORE DETAILS on the left side. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! More details shows you all of the basic information for the lesson. 8|Page

Note this tells a description of the lesson, resources, grade levels, and key words Farther down the page are the standards that the SD teacher thought would work well with the lesson. Some of the teachers chose many while others chose a few. Also notice the IFs

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Also notice a Curation Rubric Score. A 3 score means this is a good lesson with an assessment available. A curation score of 2 means that the lesson may not be in-depth or it may be missing an assessment.

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After reviewing >>More Details make CLICK on the TITLE at the top of the page. This will open another Window and bring up the lesson. The lesson is an electronic lesson that links out to other areas of the internet. Sometimes a link might be broken as a page could be renamed or moved.

There may be duplicate lesson names under the search. When you look at more details, one of the lessons will be aligned to SD Common Core and have a curation score. The other will not have that. Unfortunately, some of the contributors to the site kept putting in lessons, but instead of new lessons, they dumped everything in again. This caused there to be duplicate lesson. One that a teacher has looked at and one that was put in again. Sorry. We are working to remedy this situation. Now that you have found a lesson that you like, you need to save it in your favorites as well as print it out. To do that click the tab that says myOER.org-full resources. This will take you back to the >>More Details page. Click on Add to Locker

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My Resource Locker Saving resources for personal use

1. Bottom of lesson 2. Bottom of resource

Locate resources you might find useful based on the lessons you will be teaching. ELA find at least 3 informational text lessons

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This will keep a list of the sites that you like so you can quickly find them again. When you first log into myOER.org on the top of the blue area is Tools. Hover on Tools to get a drop down list. Almost at the bottom will be Resource Locker.

Now lets Browse Subjects. Click on the Browse Subjects Button

This will lead you to a list of Subjects to choose from:

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Of course I will choose English. Then a list of subtopics comes up

I cropped the page. The list is extensive. Click on the TV looking icon. Again click on the TV looking icon on the right to get a list of lessons that are under that area. Lesson may be under more than one area. I chose mythology.

Note the blue screen and pop out window. Just as before choose one of the lessons that looks good and click on >>More Details. Follow the procedure as before. Then click on Add to Locker to keep lesson where you can easily access it. I do suggest printing it out also! Finally, we will do an advanced search. So go to the tab that says Browse Resource and back arrow to the previous web page or click on Home. Now click on Advanced Search .

This is a great place for an IF search Choose the IF you need a lesson for and place in keyword search

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From Keyword search choose the resource types that you are interested in. Then choose your subject. Next is grade. Then I change the records per page to 20 at least. Now hit search button at bottom. This search can take a while so be patient. Now, you will get a new window with all your options in it. I had 96 lesson that I could look at.

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Just like the other times, Click >>More Details to bring up the information before going to the lesson. All of these lessons have been looked at by a SD teacher. The benefit of using IF codes for key words means that the lessons have been curated. If you just choose a keyword, the lessons may not have been curated, yet. We are still working on these. The first search, Search by Standard, will bring up lessons that have been curated by SD teachers.

Questions?

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