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Curriculum Standards

Janet’s work with our district was very well received. Both veteran and new teachers greatly appreciated the opportunity to dive into our state’s mathematics standards and learn how to prioritize them for consistency across our schools. In an engaging and supportive manner, she provided worthwhile professional learning to all our teachers PK to High School.

—Sean Feeny, Port Washington Union Free District, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment

Curriculum Mapping & Curriculum Design

Janet Hale's curriculum design work for The Dewey Schools has been transformative. Her expertise in creating engaging and effective educational frameworks has significantly enhanced our students' learning experiences. Her contributions have been invaluable in shaping a dynamic and robust curriculum that meets our diverse needs as an international school community.

—Laurie Whiston, The Dewey Schools, English Program Director

Curriculum Mapping & Curriculum Design

Janet led a multi-year curriculum mapping project designed specifically for our student population. As a low-performing school with high teacher turnover, curriculum unit guides for Mathematics and ELA became essential for ensuring learning and teaching cohesiveness. Janet was instrumental in listening to our concerns and interweaving our school’s founding principles surrounding culturally responsive teaching into each unit. She guided our administrative and teacher teams through the process of developing unit guides that identify key content, skills, and anchor texts aligned to our state standards and social justice outcomes.

—Stacey Howard, Z.E.C.A. School of the Arts and Technology, Founder and CEO

Curriculum EDiting

Many thanks go to Janet Hale, a bestselling author, educational consultant, curriculum expert, colleague, and friend. Her careful evaluation, honest critique, and helpful advice have made my book, TrustED: The Bridge to School Improvement, a more thoughtful and engaging read.

—Toby Travis, Author

Curriculum EDiting

I have hired Janet multiple times as an educational consultant for our best-selling line of workbooks. Janet ensured that the content in these workbooks aligned perfectly with curriculum standards. She meticulously revised and edited lessons and activities, significantly enhancing the quality of the workbooks. Her expertise and attention to detail gave me complete confidence in the content and its impact on children's education. Janet is great to work with and I highly recommend her for your educational publication needs!

—Courtney Acampora, Senior Editor, Silver Dolphin and Studio Fun

Curriculum EDiting

When I embarked on a bold plan of writing a series of children's books for our organization, I truly didn't know what I didn't know! Janet has been consistently beyond patient in ensuring I understand the do’s and don'ts involved in good storytelling, formatting, and editing, which has enabled us to produce age-appropriate and fun books that convey our purpose and intended message.

—Kevin Schwieger, Luke5Adventures, Founder and President

    Making curriculum decisions related to students' learning needs is on every administrator's and teacher's mind—both addressing prioritizing standards-based learning and the need for innovation. To discuss your needs and concerns, contact Janet to schedule a free virtual meeting.

    How To Get Started

    To foster and nurture the documentation phases and learningflow routine steps, four mindsets need to be cut:

    • Documenting learning is too time consuming.
    • I do not have any learning worth sharing or amplifying.
    • We cannot document learning using the share and amplify learningflow routine steps because of policy.
    • Documenting is about taking pictures or using technology.

    Finding the time to engage in meaningful learning opportunities must be a priority. If you ask or survey students, they will often reveal that they are disengaged and not finding purpose or connections in their learning. Providing authentic experiences where students and teachers mingle with and learn from people in the local and global community of learners and experts needs to slowly and steadily become just the way we do things. Participating in documenting learning opportunities strategically aids in cutting dated content and pedagogy.

    So, how can you and your colleagues begin documenting purposefully?

    Traditional understanding of visual documentation is ingrained in many educators’ minds as taking photographs of what is happening and posting them as what happened. No annotexting. No reflecting. No analyzing. This changes when Documenting FOR and AS learning begins, as reflecting becomes routine.

    Here is a getting-started strategy to elevate a documenting OF learning artifact to a documenting FOR learning artifact by using an annotating tool to record reflections that adds a depth to create visible thinking and sharing evidence of the learning taking place—for students, as well as educators as professional learners.

    Here are a few annotexted-image examples:

    Pre-schoolers in a private school

    Documenting OF Learning

    Documenting FOR Learning

    Annotating Tool: Skitch

    Teachers involved in curriculum revision analysis

    Documenting OF Learning

    Documenting FOR Learning

    Annotating Tool: PowerPoint

    Here is an annotexted video example that includes reflections from Grade 6 students who annotexted (in white font) their captured video segments they recorded during their literature circle discussions.

    Literature Circle Video Analysis – Annotexting

    Literature Circle Video Analysis- Annotexting from langwitches on Vimeo.

    Another strategy to get started is to begin blogging with a reflective tone to your documenting learning posts. If you have never blogged before, you can find out how to set one up by reading this helpful how-to guide. Then be brave and share your thoughts as you are learning, just like Melanie Mulcaster is starting to do, as she shares is her post “Letting off some #STEAM.” Notice that she included three reflective sections: what I noticed, what I wonder, and where we are going next. By using these types of metacognitive prompts (similar to Visible Thinking’s I See, I Think, I Wonder routine), it creates documentation artifacts that can be revisited over time AS learning, as well as FOR current learning purposes. 

    Do you have specific questions about getting started?
    Order A Guide to Documenting Learning

    Read More About…

    Documenting Learning Overview
    Documenting Learning Types and Purposes
    Documenting Learning Framework

    Contact Janet

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