David,

The Content Standards Warehouse is located at 
http://www.adultedcontentstandards.ed.gov.  It has Examples of standards
from various states,
a Guide for Establishing Standards, and Field Resources.  I especially
like the Professional Development Materials which are divided into
Start-up, Standards Development, and Implementation and Rollout
categories.  These resources include powerpoint presentations, word
documents and templates designed to
provide technical assistance to states.  I have recently been looking over
some of the materials as I develop a training specifically for our Program
Directors.

Oklahoma applied and was selected in PY2007-08 by OVAE to participate in
the Standards-In-Action project.  We are happy to say we will be
participating again in PY2008-09 in this project.  The focus is to field
test tools and provide support to states as they work to integrate content
standards into instruction.  The beauty of the project is that the tools
can be adjusted to further and/or fit into the work that has already been
started in a state.  States have such different approaches to standards,
are in such different stages of implementation, and are structured so
differently at the state level in regards to professional development,
that the SIA tools can be used in ways that work for the individual state.
 While we found all the tools to have benefit, the following are the ones
we are currently working to integrate into our professional development
process.

In Oklahoma, we will integrate the Unpacking Tool into a newly developed
beginning introduction training.  In our pilot SIA project, we found the
Unpacking tool beneficial in helping teachers and directors understand
what was actually being addressed in each teaching and learning objective
(TLO) at each learning level by breaking the TLO's into the concept(s)
being addressed and the thinking skill(s) required to address these
concepts/skills.

Another tool we hope to share in training is the Alignment of our standard
(by the way, we only worked with our math standard in this project) to the
TABE.  The value we have found in having this information is that it shows
teachers that if they teach to the standard, they are not only addressing
skills measured by the TABE but much, much more.

The final tool I would mention is the Alignment to Materials tool.  The
two local programs that worked with me on the first year SIA project are
still working to complete a document that aligns the EMPower math
materials to our math standard.  We believe this will give programs a
valuable reference tool as they teach the math standard.  These two
programs plan to have this work completed by early fall in the form of a
document we can produce and have on our website.

There are other SIA tools that address designing lesson plans and coherent
units of instruction that states would find very beneficial.  However, in
Oklahoma we had already been involved in so much work and training around
the EFF Teaching/Learning Cycle and the development of a lesson plan
template to be used in training and for sample lesson plans for our
website, that we did not feel those tools were as important to us at this
time.

Our second year SIA work will focus on tools for teachers and directors to
use in evaluating how well standards are being integrated into instruction
in the adult education classroom.  Oklahoma is excited to start this work
in August.

Pam





Pam Blundell, Assistant Director
Lifelong Learning Section
Oklahoma State Department of Education
2500 North Lincoln Blvd. Room 115
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4599
405-521-3321
1-800-405-0355
pam_blundell at sde.state.ok.us