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Adapt, Advance, Achieve: Connecticut’s Plan to Learn and Grow Together
Start of the School Year
• Build Community with the New Class: Some students may have experienced family
issues, health emergencies, grief, and/or trauma due to the pandemic. Therefore, it
is especially important in 2020–21 to take time at the start of the school year to build
community and establish norms in the new class through fun and engaging activities.
This will prepare students mentally to engage with the learning and any assessment.
As mentioned earlier in this document, part of building community must include
robust communication and engagement with families as learning partners, and these
relationships should continue to be nurtured so if remote learning resumes, relationships
between teachers and families will be strong. Without such community building
at the outset, any formal assessment may artificially depress student achievement.
• Deliver the First Unit: The first unit should not only be engaging, but also allow
students to have a high probability of success in learning the material. This will
help students to ease into learning in the new school year and experience success
early. Teachers should differentiate instruction and utilize formative assessment
practices to gauge the impact of their teaching and adjust instruction as necessary.
To minimize student anxiety at the start of the school year, this unit should not require
the administration of a separate test. For certain students, Tier 2 supports can be
embedded within the classroom to accelerate learning and advance equity.
Rest of the School Year
• Shift fully to on-grade instruction with scaffolds and supports as illustrated in the
infographic on page 31. The same cycle then continues for each instructional unit for
the remainder of the year.
End of the School Year
At the end of the year, the student is administered an on-grade summative assessment
(which may be the state assessment for students in Grades 3–8 and 11) to evaluate overall
achievement on the state standards.