Northside & WOW

Rock Hill School District Three and Northside Elementary School will provide all students with challenging work that authentically engages them in the learning process and prepares them for successful futures.

Our faculty & Staff have undergone staff development and training to use the WOW framework for designing units of student learning. Read below to understand our purpose and goal for using WOW.

How can I tell that my child's teacher is using the WOW framework to design lessons?

WORKING ON THE WORK
DESIGN QUALITIES SUMMARY

CONTENT AND SUBSTANCE	•Is the content – the facts, opinions, cultural artifacts, books, and materials – rich and culturally relevant? •Is the content that students are expected to work with aligned with the content that is given emphasis in mandated testing programs and other measures of student learning? •Are the ideas, propositions, facts, and insights that are presented consistent with those generally agreed upon by scholars in those disciplines? •Is the content appropriate to students’ maturity level, experience, and background, and is it packaged and presented in a way that is highly attractive to students?
ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE	•Are the information and knowledge organized in ways that make them accessible and inviting to students? •Is the knowledge presented in a way that encourages students to see the connections among disciplines? •Are students provided opportunities to develop the skills needed to access the knowledge and information they are expected to process and master?
PRODUCT FOCUS	•Is the work assigned clearly linked to some product(s), performance, or exhibition? •Are students aware of the product toward which the work or activity is directed, i.e., do students understand the connection between what they are doing and what they are expected to produce? •Do students care about or see meaning in the product they are being asked to produce?
CLEAR AND COMPELLING PRODUCT STANDARDS	•Are the standards by which the products or the performance are to be assessed clearly articulated? •Are students provided with concrete examples, prototypes, or rubrics that illustrate what the finished product or performance should look like? •Are students able to assess their progress throughout the project?
NOVELTY AND VARIETY	•Are the tasks students are expected to perform varied in kind, complexity, and length of time anticipated for completion? •Are the tasks that students are expected to perform designed so that students are called on to use new skills as well as new and different media, approaches, styles of presentation, and modes of analysis? •Is the information students are to process, consider, think about, and command presented in a variety of formats and means?
CHOICE	•Are students provided with wide choice in the means they will employ to produce the product and the performance as well as choice of the time, sequence, and order of the completion of tasks? •Are students provided optimum choices with regard to the product to be produced or the nature of the performance to be presented?
AUTHENTICITY	•Are the products to which the tasks are related perceived by students to be "real?" For example, do students perceive that the quality of their product will have consequences for them, and do these consequences have meaning and significance to them? •Are conditions under which the work is done similar to the "real" world?
PROTECTION FROM ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF INITIAL FAILURES	•Are students provided feedback throughout the project other than at grade time? •Are persons other than the teacher invited to give feedback on the students’ work without their feedback affecting the students’ grade? •When a student fails to meet the standards, is the student offered additional opportunities to complete the goal without the first effort affecting his or her grade?
AFFIRMATION OF PERFORMANCE	•Are the products made sufficiently public, i.e., observable by persons other than the teacher? •Do persons other than the teacher inspect and affirm the worth of the products?
AFFILIATION	•Are the tasks designed in ways that encourage cooperative action among students and adults? •Are the products difficult enough that they require cooperative action to complete? •When individual work is required, is the result of the work linked to products that require cooperative action for completion?

There are five levels of engagement that students might go in and out of during a lesson. The more compelling the lesson is and the work associated with it the higher the likelihood that students will stay engaged. There are other reasons why students will stick with a lesson and work assigned or abandon it. Dr. Schlechty has defined all five levels of engagement

Engagement – High attention and high commitment ---Authentic, willing and purposeful attention and true commitment to the demands of quality work.

Student engagement should be the central concern of all teachers so that student achievement will increase. The core business of Rock Hill School District 3 is to create challenging, engaging, and satisfying work for every student, every day; therefore, staff engagement is seen as attention and commitment to designing such work.

Students who are engaged learn at high levels, retain what they learn, and can transfer what they learn to new contexts.

There is learning occurring but the reason for the work is not the reason the students do the work. When strategically compliant, the students substitute their own goals - such as grades, class rank, college acceptance, parental approval - for the goals of the work.

Students who are strategically compliant learn at high levels but have only a superficial grasp of what they have learned, so they do not retain what they learn for very long and usually cannot transfer what they learn from one context to another.

The work has very little meaning to students, but they will do just enough to get by.

The ritually compliant students do the minimum amount of work in order to avoid confrontation and negative consequences. There are no substitute goals for them.

Students who are ritually compliant learn only at low levels and do not retain what they learn, so seldom can these students transfer what they learn from one context to another.

The students who are retreating are disengaged from current classroom activities and goals. They may feel unable to do what is being asked, may be thinking about other things, and/or may be emotionally withdrawn from the action of the classroom.

Students who are in retreat do not participate as they see no relevance to the work and, therefore, learn little or nothing from the task or activity assigned.

Negative learning occurs as rebellious students abandon the learning we offer them and replace it with their own agenda. These students learn little or nothing from the task or activity assigned. They may even bring others along in their diversion as they encourage others to rebel or they provide too much of a distraction.