Wayland Union High School has been awarded an Apple Professional Learning Grant that will support the high school in its digital learning environment.

The grant will create a personalized professional learning plan for high school staff that supports differentiated, professional growth for instruction.

“Our goals for the professional development grant are to learn additional ways that technology can simplify the assessment process and learn effective methods of formative assessment using the iPad,” said Director of Instruction Teresa Fulk.  “This would provide students with individualized instruction and a variety of options to showcase their learning in order to demonstrate proficiency. Additionally, we want to learn how to better use the iPad in order to support Tier 1 interventions in the high school classroom setting.”

“The grant was written to work with the high school social studies department,” said Cheryl Wilson, District Technology Teacher Consultant, “we envision our Social Studies Department teachers working in collaboration with the Apple Professional Development Facilitators in learning new innovative technology tools and practices to support core instruction, intervention and enrichment for the essential standards. In addition, they will work on formative assessments that measure whether the student has learned the standard.”

Wilson also said more activities will be created that will help differentiate instruction based on whether the student is proficient in the standard or not. New, interactive activities regarding the standard will help students that are not yet proficient receive additional instruction and support. It will also help students who demonstrate proficiency be challenged with other enrichment activities.

The teachers in the Social Studies Department can share the strategies, activities, and ideas with the rest of the staff. This practice, along with support from Wilson and Amy Huyck, High School Technology and Media Specialist, will help Wayland High School further invest in the school improvement plan, sustain the momentum gained by participation in this grant as well as the 1:1 initiative, and better implement the RTI (Response to Intervention) and MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) process into our everyday practice.

Grant activities will begin after the first of the year.