What protocols might you use to look at student work as a staff? as a team? as a department? as partner teachers?

What aspects of lessons will teachers co-construct?

What level of the curriculum maps (what students will learn and when) will be adopted from other sources and what will be created by the teachers?

Where will your "Power Standards" (those most salient, high leverage, enduring standards) come from?

What instructional practices regarding opening a new lesson, concept, topic, idea will you use school-wide?

What instructional practices will you use to teach vocabulary school-wide?

What is the stance of the school around the importance and role of spelling?  What battles will you pick here?

What will define appropriate homework assignments and when will homework cross the line?

What learning styles or modalities will be viewed as non-negotiable when it comes to lesson and unit planning?

What uniform practices for stating objectives, posting class agendas, and listing assignments should be in place?

How will oral language development be assessed school-wide?

What incentives, rewards, and recognition will the school provide beyond those taken up by teachers in the classroom?

How will math instruction ensure students are not just prepared for real world applications, but are infact applying math in the real world?

How will Academic English be developed in Science and Math class?  What will be the expectation around comprehension, use, vocabulary development, and accuracy?

What role will word walls play school-wide?

What strategies for configuring students to co-construct meaning will the school expect from teachers in terms of pairing, grouping, and teaming students?

What study skills will be considered essential and therefore taught in 6th grade and reinforced year after year?

What will be the most important Habits of Mind that the school will explicitly teach, nurture, assess and evaluate?

What reading comprehension strategies will be the staple of every teacher's toolbox to which they will turn to often?

What role will classroom libraries play in not just adorning rooms, but operating as resources to instruction?

What should a highly effective lesson, differentiated for a diverse classroom, with mixed ability levels, and structured to ensure both emerging mastery of the objective/s and motivating to adolescent the students include?

What emphasis will be placed on test prep for students in terms of standardized testing?

How will reading (decoding and comprehension) be assessed periodically to determine individual student growth and areas of need?

What will be the performance measure for students' readiness to move on to the next grade?  What will the "be able to do?"

What role will learning exhibitions and portfolios play in your assessment plan?

How will you assess students writing?  What role will the development fo students' writing skills play in all content areas?

What capacities should students master in writing upon completion of each grade level?

What strategies will be employed when students appear to be falling short of promotion requirements?

What would be the toolbox for effectively addressing defiance in the classroom be?

How would students be expected to reflect and demonstrate growth within the context of discipline?

What would be your alternatives to suspension?  When would suspension occur unilaterally?  Would it?

How will students be explicitly brought to believe the adults in the building care about them?

When should a teacher send a student on a referral to the office or another adult on campus?

How will dignity, respect, and understanding play a role in the consequnces students receive for misbehavior?

What behaviors, while having more appropriate times to manifest than others, be considered normal adolescent behavior, to be explected and addressed?

What non-negotiables (knowing there should only be a few) will the school have campus-wide?

What strategies will the school promote for building classroom community?

What agreements will the school operate from school-wide?

MANY MORE TO COME...