In their WISELearn grant application, Bonduel School District wrote, “The teachers at Bonduel Middle/High School will create units to address our deficits in our curriculum and increase student learning for college and career readiness, including creating a new junior level English class. Our first step will be to look at our current curriculum and decide where we have gaps. Although we have worked to align our curriculum to the Common Core standards, we believe there are gaps which have led to lower test scores. We also would like to better align our curriculum in grades 7-12.” In order to meet their grant goals, teachers will be trained in the EQuIP rubric to assess the level of alignment and rigor in existing units. Then teachers will use the rubric to review and revise current units for English 9 and 10, embedding Open Educational Resources which were determined to be high quality instructional materials by EdReports to fill in gaps in the curriculum. In addition, teachers will be reviewing published high quality instructional materials from EdReports as they undergo materials adoption for grades 7, 8 and 11.

The Wisconsin DPI started rolling out the new Wisconsin Social Studies Standards (WISSS) during the 2018-19 school year. Districts are interested in learning about high-quality instructional resources for the social studies classroom; however, neither IMET nor EdReports has undertaken a resource review for social studies. In an effort to provide some direction for districts seeking to adopt aligned high-quality resources for social studies, CESA 8 led a collaborative team of Grades 6-12 social studies teachers from 6 of our 27 districts in creating a repository of social studies resource reviews which assess alignment to the new Wisconsin Social Studies standards, as well as focus on the shifts in pedagogy contained within the new standards.