Novel Request Information 2021/2022
In preparation for the curriculum adoption, no new purchases will be made with district funds and buildings are highly encouraged to reserve funding to support new course creation. Requests for transfer of existing novels from Central Stores can be initiated by completing the form above. No teacher should initiate a Transfer of Materials Form (in IC) to request novels personally. Those requests must be processed through the office of Teaching & Learning only after completing the request form below.
The spreadsheet is updated quarterly and may not reflect daily requests or transfers. Novels are moved on a first come, first serve basis with all attempts made to maximize and share resources equitably.
Requests needed for Unit 1 should be placed by 8/24. Deliveries are made on a weekly rotation from Central Stores. Check with your Office Manager about when deliveries are expected for your building. When novels arrive in your building, be sure they have been scanned in by your textbook manager or library associated.
The spreadsheet is updated quarterly and may not reflect daily requests or transfers. Novels are moved on a first come, first serve basis with all attempts made to maximize and share resources equitably.
Requests needed for Unit 1 should be placed by 8/24. Deliveries are made on a weekly rotation from Central Stores. Check with your Office Manager about when deliveries are expected for your building. When novels arrive in your building, be sure they have been scanned in by your textbook manager or library associated.
High School Curriculum Adoption 2021-2022
The Des Moines Public Schools is committed to ensuring the highest quality educational experience for all students in our system. We are actively reviewing high quality curriculum resources that will implemented beginning in the 2022-2023 school year. Core courses will be addressed first and elective offerings will be rewritten in response to student request, obvious genres or styles missing from the core experience, and state requirements.
District directed time during the 21/22 school year will be dedicated to the process of adopting common curriculum, developing and/or enhancing elective courses, and establishing necessary supports for differentiated instruction.
Instead of meeting in our traditional grade level PLCs, teachers will be placed in 1 of 4 sessions:
Core Curriculum Development
Elective Curriculum Development
AP Lit/AP Lang Alignment and Collaboration
ELL/SPED Considerations for Differentiated Instruction
District directed time during the 21/22 school year will be dedicated to the process of adopting common curriculum, developing and/or enhancing elective courses, and establishing necessary supports for differentiated instruction.
Instead of meeting in our traditional grade level PLCs, teachers will be placed in 1 of 4 sessions:
Core Curriculum Development
- Continue work begun in Spring 2021 to calibrate around criteria of high-quality curriculum
- Collect and examine student feedback around desired student experience
- Explore possible curriculum options
- Develop and approve new grading topics/scales to align with curriculum selection
- Develop Canvas materials for comprehensive school use (teacher facing resources/synchronous student resources)
- Develop Canvas materials for asynchronous school use (FLEX/Virtual)
Elective Curriculum Development
- Develop structures to collect student voice at the building level to fill gaps in our current course offerings and redesign the ELA pathway
- Collect and examine student feedback around desired student experience
- Determine elective offerings to retire, to rebuild, and to create
- Develop and approve new grading topics/scales to align with curriculum selection
- Develop Canvas materials for comprehensive school use (teacher facing resources/synchronous student resources)
- Develop Canvas materials for asynchronous school use (FLEX/Virtual)
AP Lit/AP Lang Alignment and Collaboration
- Continued learning of newer AP structures/rubrics
- Collaborative scoring
- Alignment of pacing and topics
- Text alignment (possible text set options that would support multiple novels of exploration)
ELL/SPED Considerations for Differentiated Instruction
- Needed supports for students in a gen. ed. setting to access grade level text
- Needed supports for students in a self-contained classroom
- Progress monitoring implications/development
Each of the courses of Language Arts and English that secondary students in Des Moines Public Schools can take are outlined on specific pages unique to each course. On these pages you will find the curriculum documents, teacher resources, and additional information for each level of Literacy instruction.
These course-specific pages can be accessed in the menu above (by hovering over the Courses tab) or by clicking on any of the following links.
These course-specific pages can be accessed in the menu above (by hovering over the Courses tab) or by clicking on any of the following links.
High School Core Courses
