Where in the World was KDSL?

MENA Common Core Conference New KDSL Intern Online Book Club

National Geographic/Cengage American Academy for Girls AL Khaleej National School KDSL Collaborates with IDP

ASCD Welcomes Gulf Cooperation

KDSL serves as Thought Leader

Smart Education Clarion School

Real Men Read UAE MidSchool Math

World Read Aloud Day Smart Education

KDSL Freelance Team About KDSL

IN THIS EDITION:

WHERE IN THE WORLD WAS KDSL THIS YEAR?

Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, USA

3RD ANNUAL MENA COMMON CORE CONFERENCE

The 3rd Annual MENA Common Core Conference provided professional development to American curriculum schools in the region on effectively employing and assessing the Common Core State

Standards (CCSS) in the classroom. On October 16 and 17, hundreds of schools, leadership teams, and teachers from across the region gathered in Dubai, to learn about the Common Core State

Standards, share curricula and best practices, and network with each other. This year’s conference featured Dr. Norman Webb and Nicole Zdeb as the keynote speakers. View photos from the

conference here: http://menacommoncore.com/mena-pics/index.html

NEW KDSL INTERN

Nadine Sibai is a senior at GEMS Wellington International School. As an aspiring software developer and mathematician, Nadine brought these subjects together in her Extended Essay as part of the IB Diploma Programme, which revolved around the development of an alternative algorithm to com-pute the solution to a Sudoku puzzle. She has had a large online presence spanning various social media platforms and is experienced with (micro)blogs, podcasts, web series, and more. This expo-sure led to her inclination towards the fields of web development and design, through which she has learned HTML5 and CSS3 to a professional degree. Over the past few years she has consistently tak-en part in extracurricular activities including the World Scholar’s Cup, in which she was declared the second best debater in Dubai, a feat amongst others that qualified her for participation in the 2015 Global Round in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In her free time, Nadine enjoys horseback riding, playing musical instruments, and competitive video gaming. She currently runs two Q&A-style blogs cen-tered around helping students other students with mathematics and physics, and feels that this in-ternship acts as an opportunity to use and extend these skills at a professional level.

ONLINE BOOK CLUB

Having Hard Conversations is written by Jennifer Abrams and was the focus of our October-November 2015 Online Book Club with the author.

Having Hard Conversations provides an interactive, personal approach to mastering the art of chal-lenging conversations. The author's step-by-step strategy addresses a wide range of situations, in-

cluding communication with supervisees, peers, and supervisors.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC / CENGAGE LEARNING: ISTANBUL, TURKEY

National Geographic / Cengage Learning partnered with Alison Burrows of KDSL Education to train teachers on Reach, a product to teach English to English Language Learners. This teacher training took place in Istanbul and was attended by over 40 teachers from the Doga group of private schools. The training focused on best practices in English language instruction for early elementary school students. In particular, teachers were provided with methods to implement academic vocabulary into their English classes to enhance students’ ability to recognize tier two words when speaking and listening across all content areas. Teachers were also given instruction on how to enable students to understand and use vocabulary words throughout the course of the school year.

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AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR GIRLS: KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT

Alison Burrows and Kevin Simpson went to Kuwait City and worked with teachers at the American Academy for Girls as part of their back to school professional development.

Alison instructed K-12 on aligning reading and writing instruction to meet the requirements of the Common Core State Standards. Much of the workshop to support reading instruction focused on

Close Reading. Teachers were provided with an overview of what Close Reading is and how to im- plement it appropriately while aligning it to the Common Core reading strands of “Key Ideas and

Details,” “Craft and Structure,” and “Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.” Next, the workshop shift-ed to best practices in writing instruction. The Common Core calls for implementation of the writing cycle and integrates the language of the “6+1 Traits of Writing” into the writing standards as well as the language standards. Teachers reviewed the steps of the writing cycle and how each step can be

supported with various mini-lessons and through a writing workshop style classroom ap- proach. Finally, the “6+1 Traits of Writing” were reviewed in depth and teachers were presented with ideas

for mini-lessons in teaching the traits.

Kevin focused on mathematics and introduced the teachers to the mathematical practice standards and the content standards. Each math practice standard was reviewed, questions connected to

each practice standard were shared and sample videos of these standards in action were viewed. Time was also spent examining the major shifts in teaching and learning mathematics. Teachers

were engaged in rich tasks to push their math thinking and to consider how this might apply to their students. A wealth of math resources from K-12 were explored which align to the Common Core

State Standards.

AL KHALEEJ NATIONAL SCHOOL: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

As part of the back to school professional development for teachers, Alison Burrows and Kevin Simpson worked with teachers of English Language Arts and Math at Al Khaleej National School. Workshops were divided into two sections: Common Core implementation for Elementary School and Common Core implementation for Middle and High School. In English Language Arts, sessions guided teachers to climb the staircase of text complexity by appropriately matching readers to text and implementing Close Reading practice as part of their reading instruction. In addition, teachers were shown how to integrate reading selections into writing lessons and how to incorporate text-dependent questions into their writing assignments.

In mathematics teachers were introduced to the math practice standards and the content stand-ards. The main focus was on shifts in teaching and learning math, rich tasks, assessment and imple-menting the math practice standards.

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KDSL COLLABORATES WITH INTERACTIVE DATA PARTNERS (IDP)

KDSL is collaborating with IDP to ensure best practices in effective use of data. This includes:

· Data audits · Data marts · Data management · Comprehensive student and teacher snapshots that display internal assessments, report card grades, external exams and more side by side on a single page · Scorecards to monitor the overall health and progress of your school

Visit www.interactivedatapartners.com for more information.

ASCD WELCOMES THE GULF COOPERATION CONNECTED COMMUNITY

We are proud to welcome the Gulf Cooperation Connected Community as our newest addition to the ASCD Connected Community family! The GCCC will serve educators from the United Arab Emir-ates, Ku- wait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Oman with the mission of utilizing ASCD’s global community and resources to improve the quality of teaching and enhance student achievement in the region. This effort is led by the KDSL team.

KDSL SERVES AS THOUGHT PARTNER

According to Thinking Collaborative, “A Thought Partner is someone who:

1. Challenges your thinking.

2. Causes you to modify or change your paradigms, assumptions or actions

3. Has information or a way of thinking that provokes you to innovate or otherwise leads to value creation in your business, career or life.”

http://www.thinkingcollaborative.com/stj/thought-partners/

The KDSL team has served as thought partners with the following organizations: BEAM, School of Mod-ern Skills, Al Zuhour Private School, Education Intelligence Group, Collegiate American School and the

American United School of Kuwait

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SMART EDUCATION: QATAR, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES AND SAUDI ARABIA

Smart Education invited teachers from schools across Qatar to a workshop entitled “Reading and Writing: Skills for the Common Core.” This professional development was designed specifically for heads of departments and coordinators at American and English curriculum schools as a refresher work-shop on Common Core State Standards and best practices for English Language Arts and literacy. The event was led by Alison Burrows and was attended by over 50 educators.

Smart Education invited math and science teachers across the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to workshops focused on the Common Core State Standard and the Next Generation Science Standards. These sessions were led by Kevin Simpson and Dr. Sudha Sunder and attended by 200 educators in the United Arab Emirates and 400 educators in Saudi Arabia. To learn more about Smart Education please visit http://smarteducation.ae/

CLARION SCHOOL: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Alison Burrows was invited to join the advisory board of the Clarion School set to open in Dubai in Sep-tember 2016. The Clarion school endeavors to be the leading US curriculum school in the region, nurtur-

ing each student’s potential so as to take full advantage of life’s opportunities as collaborative, produc-tive and responsible members of a global community. Clarion School offers a challenging, engaging and

supportive educational program, enriched by the innovation of Dubai, strengthened by collaboration with parents and external partnerships and delivered by the highest quality of faculty. Clarion will culti-

vate inspirational and creative opportunities to develop each student’s potential. They will nurture intel-lectual curiosity, reflection and higher order thinking through experiential and meaningful learning and

innovative applications of understanding and skills.

Students will be challenged to high expectations and engage with the world as collaborative, productive and responsible members of a global community. They will be prepared for acceptance into competitive universities in the United States and across the world, as well as for future success in work and life. The Clarion School delivers the curriculum framework developed in collaboration with The Bank Street Col-

lege of Education. Aligned to meet US Standards (including the Common Core +15), Clarion school’s pro-gressive American education offers learning that is interdisciplinary, engaging and challenging. Visit

http://clarionschooldubai.com/.

REAL MEN READ UAE

On March 1, Real Men Read UAE will start in the UAE. This month long reading campaign will be sim-ilar to the program from the United States. In the UAE males are encouraged to read to students at school, home or in the community. Organized by Kevin Simpson this literacy initiative was a response to His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, declaration that 2016 is the Year of Reading in the UAE, under the guidance of Sheikh Khalifa.

Read more here https://kdsl.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/real-men-read-uae/

MIDSCHOOLMATH

Kevin Simpson collaborated with the MidSchoolMath team on their 3rd Annual conference held in Sante Fe, New Mexico. This year Simpson had the opportunity to facilitate a preconference session focused on asking legitimate questions, moderate a panel from the local business community who shared their per-spective on the growth mindset in the workforce, and co- lead a group of educators to think about math

at The Georgia O’Keefe Museum. Visit http://midschoolmath.com/ for more information.

WORLD READ ALOUD DAY

World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words and creates a community of readers taking action to show the world that the right to literacy belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day is celebrated by millions of people in more than 100 countries thanks

to people like you who participate and spread the word across the globe!

Kevin Simpson participated in World Read Aloud Day in Washington, D.C. at John W. Ross Elementary School with The Global Sleepover. First grade students listened to the interactive story called Sleepover

at the World Cup in Brazil. Visit http://www.globalsleepover.com/ to learn more about this story and others from around the world.

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Smart Education to Launch Alpha Publishing at TESOL Arabia

Smart Education is set to launch its range of books and teaching aids produced exclusively within the GCC

and MENA regions at this year’s TESOL Arabia conference.

Teachers and Educators will have the chance to examine Alpha Publishing’s educational resources, which

have been specifically tailored to meet the needs of the local region while simultaneously offering a state-of-

the-art teaching curriculum comparable with the best in the world.

As the exclusive distributers of Alpha Publishing in the GCC and MENA regions, Smart Education will be on

stand to launch and promote Alpha’s range of ELT products which include primary school–focused publica-

tions Super English and Go For English, middle school title English Leader and Target English, which is orien-

tated towards the upper / adult age group.

The content in Alpha Publishing’s materials is designed for the GCC and MENA markets, carefully observing

local and cultural sensitivities and presenting top-class learning with a level of cultural attention-to-detail

which has not been available in the educational publication market until now. The educational basis of Al-

pha’s wide range of ELT content and resources is derived from the widely-respected guidelines of the Com-

mon European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

TESOL Arabia is the ideal platform on which to launch Alpha’s ELT products and the company intends to use

the opportunity to spread the word that Educators in this region now have access to books and resources

which have been produced with local teachers and students in mind. Both Smart Education and Alpha Pub-

lishing are 100% based in the GCC and MENA regions, distributing education and learning products from in-

ternationally-recognized publishers as well as from the Alpha Publishing portfolio.

Alpha Publishing’s vision is to become the region’s leading publisher in the education domain by producing

the highest-quality programs for K–12 Education and English Language Teaching and Learning courses. The

company is proud to be the only educational publisher within the GCC and MENA regions which is solely

dedicated to these territories – all staff are based here and use intimate local knowledge to ensure their

publications accurately speak to their learners’ challenges, aspirations and reflect the level of local customi-

zation required by GCC and MENA-based teachers.

Alpha Publishing’s content is research-based and can be delivered online and offline through the Alpha

Learning Content Management System (LCMS). The content featured on the platform aims to improve learn-

ers’ outcomes by being dynamic, rich and engaging. Through this innovative approach to regional publishing,

Alpha hopes to improve the education of future generations and communities, as well as improving employ-

ability within the region.

TESOL Arabia is devoted to the professional development of its members, who are mostly based in the UAE

and the Gulf region. It is a not-for-profit organization which is run by volunteers elected from its member-

ship. The 2016 conference will take place from March 10th–12th in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Smart Edu-

cation will be present throughout, exhibiting Alpha Publishing’s range of ELT products and the company is

looking forward to engaging with local teachers and educators there at the conference.

KDSL Freelance Team

for American Curriculum

Schools in the MENA region

Dr. Cory Bennett

Math

Carly Mutterties

Social Studies

Kathy Ward Cameron

Early Years

Dr. Craig Gabler

Science

Kelly Healey

English Language Arts

Mazen Al Sheikh

Arabic

Cory Wilkerson

Arts

To learn more about KDSL please visit www.knowdoservelearn.org

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ABOUT KDSL

About Kevin Simpson

Founder and Managing Director of KDSL (Know Do Serve Learn) KDSL is a global educational consulting company launched by Kevin Simpson in 2007 in the USA. In 2013 KDSL set up in the United Arab Emirates. The company partners with organizations worldwide to in-crease student achievement, teacher knowledge, and education leader-ship through strategic, sustainable and collaborative partnerships. Mr. Simpson has served 500+ schools and thousands of educators world-wide in 20 countries. The majority of his work in education has centered on American curriculum schools. Since 2008, he has been focused on education in the MENA region, assisted numerous schools with accreditation, training, and develop-ment and served as a thought partner on school start-up projects. Mr. Simpson is co-founder of the UAE Learning Network (one of the largest online network of educators in the UAE) and has partici-pated in numerous education panels and radio shows where American curriculum was the topic. In addition, he has authored two white papers on American curriculum schools in Dubai and recently co-wrote a bilingual document on American Education in the UAE. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education and a Master of Education degree in Curriculum and Teaching from Michigan State Uni-versity (USA).

About Alison Burrows

Alison Burrows is from New York City and has been in the field of educa-tion since 2004. She attended Bard College where she with a Bachelor’s

degree in Development Psychology. After college, Alison received her Master’s degree in Education from New York University. She has taught

in both public and private schools in New York City, Scarsdale NY, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE.) She has furthered her

studies by obtaining a certificate in the practice of Montessori education and is a member of the Columbia University Reading and Writing Pro-

gram.

Currently, Alison lives in Dubai and co-owns KDSL Education, an international education consulting company. She trains teachers at regional private and public schools in all aspects of teaching with a

focus on the English Language Arts Common Core Standards. Alison also works with schools in an advisory role on various projects centered on accreditation, curriculum, quality assurance, and

teaching and learning. In addition, Alison has partnered with the Emirates Festival of Literature, TESOL Arabia, Oxford University Press, Scholastic, Pearson Education, Garnet Education, and other

organizations on various education initiatives in the region and has been a speaker at several of these organizations’ events.

The Super Sprowtz, a multi-platform nutrition education company, is Alison’s latest endeavor. As di-rector of education, she wrote the Super Sprowtz school curriculum for early education classrooms

that is being used in schools across America and Puerto Rico.

Virtual Coaching

Quality Assurance

Education Advising

School Accreditation

School Development

School Improvement

Curriculum Development

Instructional Walkthroughs

School Walkthrough for Parents

Education Entrepreneur Start Ups

OTHER SERVICES AVAILABLE

GET CONNECTED WITH KDSL

Know. Do. Serve. Learn.

Facebook—https://www.facebook.com/pages/KDSL/130447243668881?sk=wall

Blog— http://kdsl.wordpress.com

Website—knowdoservelearn.org

Email: kevin@kdsleducation.org alison@kdsleducation.org

Twitter: @KDSL07 @AlisonJBurrows

KDSL Winter/Spring Newsletter 2016—Page 11