Blogging Some "Moore"

Shelley Moore was the speaker at the Divisional PD Day held today. I must admit that I was apprehensive about how this was going to go; I had been following along with the #lesswithmoore and #moorewithmore debates occuring on Twitter and hadn't experienced enough of Shelley's message to know which side of that debate I fell on.

After spending the entire day listening to her, I did not get the impression that her message expected teachers to do more work with less supports at all. What I understood her message to be was one of change; the current education system is not doing what is most effective or most efficient. Teaching has morphed into something where more and more students have variations of IEPs which in turn means teachers are designing multiple versions of curriculum in every class in order to meet student needs.

Moore suggests a better way. Curriculum that is adjustable and designed to meet a range of diversity in the classroom. She has also somehow incorporated some of the most significant educational acronyms into a model that actually makes a lot of sense. The model is Self-Regulated Learning and includes RTI (Response to Intervention/Instruction), UDL (Universal Design for Learning) and UbD (Understanding by Design).

At the end of the afternoon, Moore spoke about creating access points to curriculum for all students and choice/options as to how they will demonstrate their learning and how complex that learning will be. This had me thinking about the Layered Curriculum model. I wonder if there is a place to incorporate this into Moore's Self-Regulated Learning model. I think that they way Dr. Nunley organizes and explains the different levels of achievement and complexity might make the work more concrete for teachers who are still trying to wrap their heads around this shift in educational philosophy.