District leaders

Year-long PD plan

The format: teach the idea, practice it on a real lesson, and leave with something written. Four full days plus monthly follow-up.

When	Day	Teach (40 min)	Practice (on a real lesson)	Leave with
August	1. How learning works	Memory model; myths we retire	Add a three-two-one warm-up to next week's lessons	A week of warm-ups
October	2. Explicit teaching and checking	Small steps; worked examples; whiteboards	Rewrite one lesson in the lesson shape	One rewritten lesson
January	3. Spacing, mixing, quizzing	Review planners; mixed practice	Build a unit review planner	One unit planner
March	4. Knowledge and the curriculum	Knowledge-building; using the adopted curriculum well	Map one unit's text set and vocabulary	One unit map
Monthly	School-based follow-up	Coaching cycles and staff meetings	—	—

The curriculum link. A Virginia randomized trial found lessons plus implementation support improved scores, while lessons alone had weaker effects (J-PAL(opens in a new tab)). PD should be built around the adopted curriculum, not separate from it.

What to track

State test scores arrive once a year and too late to act on. Track what leads to them:

Measure	How	How often
Look-fors seen in visits	Share of five-minute visits showing each look-for	Monthly
Curriculum use	Visits confirm the lesson structure, review, and practice parts are taught	Monthly
Core block minutes	Scheduled vs actual	Quarterly
Screening results	Share of students at benchmark in reading and math	Three times a year
Tutoring	Attendance, weekly probes, decisions made	Weekly at school, monthly at district
Unit knowledge checks	Share of students mastering must-know items	Each unit
State scores	By school, grade, and student group	Yearly

Curriculum review rubric: math and ELA, K–5

Tutoring system: structure, accountability, data

Year-long PD plan

What to track

Listening path

District leaders

Principles

Sources