Mary Barton
Public School 236 – The Mill Basin School
6302 Avenue U
Brooklyn, New York 11234
Move high achieving students to a continuously higher level on standardized exams using enrichment activities.
· Move those students in level 3 to a higher score in level 3 or to level 4 and for level 4 students to an even higher score within level 4. Not an easy feat!
We examined data from:
o Practice New York State ELA in October
o Practice New York State ELA and Math tests in December
o ELA and Math tests in January and March
o Culminating activities with our enrichment offerings in May and June.
o Results of the Acuity testing after each round.
§ (all conducted by the school’s Inquiry Team as well as by teachers meeting at grade conferences.)
Enrichment activities included:
o Puppetry in Practice
o Arts and Technology Program for third, fourth and fifth graders created by one of our Arts partners in conjunction with the Principal and other faculty
o Music Memory and Chorus for third, fourth and fifth graders
o LEGOs Program for fourth graders
o Odyssey of the Mind for fourth and fifth graders.
§ (Activities took place primarily during the school day with culminating activities taking place on a particular evening or weekend day depending on the activity.)
Process
o Secure funding
§ Galaxy budgeting system was used to carefully tailor the school budget so that funds would be used to purchase enrichment activities, teacher training, and teacher services.
§ The P. S. 236 Parent Association contributed monetarily to our work.
§ Our local City Councilman Lewis Fidler funded a portion of the Puppetry in Practice Program as well as a portion of the funding for Odyssey of the Mind Program, and purchased new computers for the programs’ use.
§ P. S. 236 won a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts this school year to fund a portion of the arts and technology program partnered with Puppetry in Practice, one of our Arts partners. Students in grade 3 created large scale puppets which will culminate in a puppet parade through the school yard. The puppets represent characters/persons from their Social Studies curriculum – World Cultures. Students in grades 4 and 5 are working on claymation and stop motion animation creating short movies using information from their Social Studies curriculum, Colonial America and Western Hemisphere respectively.
o Gain staff willingness
§ Parents, teachers, other staff and community members were involved through:
· Meetings
· An all day retreat with parents and staff
· Performances at school and at local civic and district sponsored forums
· Student competitions
§ Discussions were held monthly at School Leadership Team meetings and at Parent Association meetings
§ Planning and coordination meetings took place with the Assistant Principal, teachers, the Parent Coordinator and other staff members.
Data Collection
o Relevant information was collected through discussion with teachers, service providers, teaching artists, students and student performances
o Data was studied at Inquiry Team meetings, grade conferences and at meetings with the Assistant Principal.
Obstacles
o Shortfall of funding and time due to many new mandates from the New York City Department of Education. It was a challenge to accomplish everything and to do it well. We also suffered budget cuts mid year, which caused a shift in funding sources.
OUTCOMES
o More positive feelings from students about school and learning
o Increased self-esteem from the work and success in it
o Students comfortably using technology to create stop motion animation features.
o Stress of the importance of teamwork and cooperative learning.
o Opportunities for multiple performances for enrichment activities both at school and at local and district sponsored events
o Increase (to date) of student performance on the 2008 ELA test for P.S. 236 as a whole. (Awaiting 2008 Math results).
o Success with the Odyssey of the Mind teams (1st and 2nd place finishes at the New York City regional competition in March 2008 as well as a 3rd place finish for one team at the New York State Odyssey of the Mind statewide competition, also in March 2008).
o Music Memory students competed at citywide competition sponsored by Riverside Symphony in May 2008. The fifth grade team placed 1st citywide and the third/fourth grade team placed 2nd citywide. The school placed 2nd overall at this competition.
Lessons Learned
o It is critical to secure funding from outside sources to continue and to enlarge our enrichment offerings for our younger students.
o It is vitally important to have buy-in from teachers, staff, parents and students
o The School Leadership Team will be asked to form a sub committee next school year just to research grants that we may be eligible to apply for and to write and apply for them.
o We won’t know if our solution was successful with regard to student progress on the standardized exams for sometime to come. A careful analysis of the ELA and Math scores of each student must be done to see if they have made a year’s progress.
o Many of our enrichment activities are new to us and we still need to carefully sit down with staff and students for some reflection on our activities.
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