Westwood Regional School District - Curriculum & Instruction
The mission statement of the Westwood Regional School District is "To provide excellence in education through rich and diverse learning opportunities, enabling students to exercise intelligent control of their future." Therefore, the district's curricula should provide students with varied opportunities to learn and show their learning in ways that develop independence, confidence, and critical thinking. Two years ago, the district redesigned our curriculum format with this end in mind.
Since that time, administrators and teachers have worked closely together to revise the district’s curricula K-12 to align with the newly released federal Common Core Standards (CCS). Additionally, although there is certainly test preparation embedded into curricular units, the district’s primary goal is provide students with content knowledge and skills in a way that is rich, authentic, meaningful, and thought-provoking. To learn more about the Common Core Standards, along with different academic areas covered in the district, please click on the links to the left of this page.
The district has also maintained a strong focus on utilizing research-based best practice instructional strategies, many of which are found in Dr. Robert Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works. The research indicates that using instructional strategies such as cooperative learning, similarities and differences, and setting objectives, will increase student achievement. To that end, the district has and will continue to focus on providing staff with professional development regarding these important instructional strategies. To learn more about these strategies, which serve as the bedrock for instruction in the district, please see the link to the left of this page entitled Classroom Instruction.
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