CCS Faculty Lead Summer Curriculum Projects

Several Carondelet teachers are working on exciting summer curriculum development projects, including:

• Mary Kay Carney, Eileen Moening and Meghan Pote are working to expand the maker space curriculum and resources, utilizing a STEM grant we received from the MISF.
• Eileen Moening is developing a primary literacy curriculum aligned with principles of Orton-Gillingham and influenced by a successful model used at Groves Academy.
• Meg Pilsner, Meghan Pote, Araceli Pastrana and Jill Zastrow are developing a social-emotional learning (SEL) program based on the Top 20 curriculum to be used school-wide.
• Laura Adelman is updating our library/media curriculum to align with the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) standards and the Information Technology Educators of Minnesota (ITEM) standards. She is also updating resources to meet the needs of classroom teachers for specific units of study.
• Andrea Dyrhaug-Ralston and Emily Torgerson are working to update the 3rd grade ELA curriculum, creating common assessments aligned with MN ELA standards.
• Kristen Rafferty is working to create cross-curricular science and social studies units of study for fourth grade
• Ali Maeser is reviewing our K-8 science curriculum after MN released new science standards last year. The MN standards were influenced by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which Carondelet was already utilizing. Once again, we felt ahead of the game!
• Alex Rome is revisiting/reviewing our middle school social studies curriculum after one year with new curricular resources to make sure we do not have any gaps/overlaps in curriculum and instruction.
• Mary Wozniak is developing a small group literacy curriculum for the work she will be doing at the Upper Campus next year.

Four members of the Faculty, Mary Wozniak, Vicki Paine, Melanie Aylward, and Andrea Dyrhaug along with new Principal Mary Yamoah, attended a workshop on identifying and serving gifted and talented students with school-wide programming and in individual classrooms. They came away feeling validated about much of the work already happening at Carondelet, and with many new ideas and additional tools for their toolboxes. The middle school teachers were excited to learn about using ethical dilemmas to inspire critical thinking as part of the advisory programming and Top 20 work next year.

We're grateful for the dedication, enthuiasm and time of our Carondelet faculty and look forward to learning more about these iniatives this fall!