OakwoodElementary School Improvement Team Minutes

13 January 2014

The 2013-14 School Improvement Team met in the media center. Mr. McCreary opened the meeting at 3:30. Present were: Mr. McCreary, Principal; Jane Burdecki, Bambi Ebert, Amy Phillips, Gina Sain, Liz Morris, Laura White, Adina Ruff, and Beth Shoffner, faculty members; Mary Frances Comer, Classified Staff Representative.

Mr. McCreary and Team Approach: Mr. McCreary distributed an article from Leadership by Terry Wilhelm titled, “A Team Approach to Using Student Data.” Those present read the article and related the points made to practices among PLCs at Oakwood - specifically related to vertical alignment. Each SIT member told the group some of their current practices and identified strategies that they would like to try:

  • Kindergarten: With the change in faculty the three are making a concerted effort to ensure that each child in each classroom is receiving equal opportunities.
  • First Grade: Teachers communicate well, share resources and ideas and feel comfortable giving each other suggestions on what to do or how to accomplish an objective.
  • Second Grade: Teachers work closely and like the idea from Wilhelm’s article of bringing samples of student work to PLC meetings to more clearly be “on the same page” when focusing on how students are demonstrating what they are learning. Their centers vary to accommodate the broad range of ability levels among the three class groups.
  • Third Grade: Because of the Read to Achieve effort, these teachers have an extra PLC meeting each month at which they collaborate with third grade faculty members from the other schools.
  • Fourth Grade: These teachers also like the idea of sharing student work samples with each other. After benchmark testing, they will do remediation with the lower scoring children. They will analyze student work samples to identify the “Toms” and “Judys” on the same levels in each class before preparing lesson plans to address the needs of those students.
  • Fifth Grade: These teachers – on the topic of math – discuss the easiest way to see how and where to move forward – like looping ideas between adjacent grade levels.

Mr. McCreary summarizedwhat two common themes from all the groups. Most said something about the importance of and ways they accomplish communicating and collaborating to improve student learning. The groups highlighted the importance of viewing student work among the classes in a grade level.

Mr. McCreary wants all team members to be able to articulate “what we’re learning now”in regard to professional learning. For example, within grade level teams or individually teachers could read and discuss books/articles, research and implement a new teaching strategy, or watch and discuss videos/webinars together.

Pre-assessment and Post Assessment Mr. McCreary encouraged pre- and post-assessments for every level. He encouraged grade levels to start with one subject area to try a pre-assessment/post-assessment approach. The grade level team would develop a brief pre-assessment in order to determine what the students already know and what the grade level should focus on during instruction. The grade level team would agree to implement 1-2 common strategies in order to address the student needs identified through the pre-assessment. After instruction has occurred, the same pre-assessment is given as a post-assessment in order to determine each student’s growth as well as the impact of instruction. This process would enable teachers at each grade level to focus on the same standards, discuss and implement one to twocommon strategies, and maintain the unique teaching styles of each teacher.

PLC Walk-Throughs Mr. McCreary will coordinate opportunities for each grade level to visit classes in other grade levels.

Next SIT Meeting Mr. McCreary wants to hear what new ideas were tried at the PLC level.

Vertical Alignment: Mr. McCreary wants to utilize some future faculty meetings to focus on vertical alignment. One idea is to have classroom teachers in adjacent grade levels to meet to view “VA” strengths/weaknesses to determine how to meet student needs.SIT members will help coordinate vertical alignment meetings.

Third Grade Reading Assessment: In accordance with the new Read to Achieve law, third graders are working on a Reading Portfolio in order to demonstrate proficiency in reading. Students read three passages per week with accompanying questions. They have to answer four out of five questions correctly in order to demonstrate mastery of a passage.

Think About: The SIT team discussed strategies to motivate students during End-of-Grade Tests. Mr. McCreary would like everyone to think about a way to motivate our students to do their best on the End-of-Grade tests. This could be accomplished in an event Thursday night or Saturday. He would like us to plan activities for the ten-day countdown to the end of school. Talk about it in PLC gatherings and send ideas to Mr. McCreary.

Adjournment Mr. McCreary adjourned the meeting at 4:45 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Beth Shoffner, Secretary