This week our District Instructional Leadership Team was fortunate to have Tom Rounds, a Northeast Ohio Field Specialist from the Ohio Department of Education, share his expertise on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) during our annual kick-off meeting. Although DOK is not brand new to us we are going to be looking at it through a different lens this year.
Over five years ago now, then Assistant Superintendent and now Superintendent Pat Ciccantelli, introduced DOK to support work with some of our K-5 teams while they were breaking down the standards. At that time we were just getting a handle on what was expected from the State and were using a backward design model which provided a target for some of our pedagogy. What is so exciting about revisiting the DOK levels is that we are now in a place that is going to allow the reverse. As an example, thanks to our Math and ELA frameworks, we have a stronger understanding of the pedagogy needed to put our young people in situations to allow them to make connections in order to support and nurture their growth and learning. We will be able to use the DOK levels , to not drive our instruction, but to instead help us assess if our pedagogy is having the positive impact we are seeing in our classrooms through anecdotal or qualitative pieces of evidence. Having appropriate leveled DOK formative and summative assessments in place, will allow teachers in the moment and within PLCs to have a better understanding of our young people’s learning.
This is the first step of many in revisiting the DOK levels this year, but by changing the lens through which we view these levels we are going to be able to provide even more opportunities to help our young people. The goal for us is to continue to find ways to nurture our young people’s “roots” through a culture which is designed to prepare them for life over one focused on the transfer of a curriculum. Using DOK levels as checkpoints, and not drivers of instruction, will help us to reach that goal.
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