Summer SIT
August 8, 2011
Attending: Mr. Hall, Mrs. Cotton, Scott, Howard, Lickfeld, Moody, Schuett, Hicks, Allen, Sparks, Patterson, Church, Parent representatives Debbie Kiger and Criseida Blancas
•First Baptist Church in Stanleyville would like Rural Hall elementary teachers to attend their back to school service on Sunday Aug 14th at 6:30pm. There will be a reception following the service in the Family Life Center.
•Workshops: List of upcoming workshops was passed out. SIT representative is responsible for getting names of who is going to what training. Especially when only one grade level representative is needed. Kindergarten will need to have all teachers at Imagine It!. Only one day. K-5 will need a math rep from each grade level to go to Standards for Mathematical Practice; this will cover new math materials. K, 1, 2 will get new math Visions and Investigations (workbooks) by August 25th. 3rd, 4th, and 5th will get math materials later. Multicultural education is optional. Everyone is required to attend some type of staff development during the RC workdays. PLC training is only for school facilitators.
•DATA Review: We are one of the few schools that made AYP. 5th highest school in the district for growth. We only missed “School of Distinction” by less than a point. Goals for this year are not going to be to make major changes, but work on small things like reviewing Guiding Reading Strategies, implementing higher order thinking skills, and understanding the new Core Standards.
•K-2 Assessment Data, attendance, and suspension data: reports have not yet been given back from district.
•Dibels Data: we are seeing improvements in the number of proficient students. In PLC meetings we need to look over areas of screening in Dibels and focus specifically on weak levels. K may want to look at Phoneme Segmentations Fluency and Nonsense Word Fluency, 1st may want to look at Nonsense Word Fluency and Oral Reading Fluency, 2nd only assess Oral Reading Fluency and needs to work on this area.
•EOG Data-All grade levels were over 80 percent in Math. Reading was 3rd 71.4, 4th 77.1, 5th 73.6 and Science 78.2. Overall we showed high growth and met AYP. In PLC look over the breakdown of proficiency and see what subgroups are having difficulty. Identify the subgroups that need to make improvements. Goal summaries are the most important data for PDP’s and PLC’s (use goal summary sheets). Teachers will get their individual goal summaries to discuss in PLC. It would be good for grade levels to look at upcoming students to see what subject goals need to be reviewed (Examples: 4th grade geometry and 3rd grade making connections).
•Student Surveys: We are unable to make major comparisons with the past surveys and the 2010- 2011survey because 3rd, 4th, and 5th students were all allowed to complete the survey this year and in the past only 5th graders completed the survey. This data is being passed to Mrs. White. Now that she is a part of the specials rotations, she will be able to better address many different areas.
•School Improvement Plan: Goal 1: increase attendance, Goal 2: increase the number of students who are at or above grade level in reading, Goal 3: increase the number of students who are at or above grade level in math, Goal 4: increase bully awareness. Did we address these goals appropriately? Get input from teachers on grade level and see what changes need to be addressed for 2011-2012. Our SIP is a two-year plan; if areas were not addressed in the 1st year, we need to focus on these goals for this upcoming year.
•Common Core Standards Social Studies and Science standards are being adopted this year. 5th will be tested on old science standards at the end of 2011-2012. Reading and Math will be changed 2012-2013 (and will be tested on at the end of that year). The new standards are good, but we are going to have to make some changes in the way we teach. Mr. Hall created a Wiki for the Common Core Standards. Includes (how to use, comment page, and grade level PDF files for all Common Core Standards). Majority of your time this year should be spent on unpacking the standards. In the past we had to do the unpacking of standards ourselves; now this has been already done for you and is listed within the standards with given examples. What do the Common Core Standards mean and how can we use assessments to learn? Grades and report cards are for documentation, but as educators we need to understand what the students know. We need to use common and individual formative assessments. School theme for this year is 4Q3T (4 Questions and 3 Truths) we are past the big things Guided Reading (only look on grade level and individually) and higher order thinking skills. Now we need to move onto the smaller details. 4 Questions: Are we teaching the right things? Are we teaching the right way? How do we know students are learning? What are we doing for students who are not learning? 3 Truths: rigor, relevance, and results. Common Core is based on Webb’s depth of knowledge. Essentials are based on the revised Blooms Taxonomy. This year: look at standards and look at how Common Core is going to change the way we teach. Focus on read aloud is to model text that is 2-3 grade levels higher. Blooms Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge is listed on Wiki (we will want to print a copy of Blooms terms to use in classroom). The Wiki has grade level lists of what should be discussed at upcoming PLC meetings (guides PLC discussions).
•PDP is all online. Mrs. Cotton will go over this at the beginning of the year.
•Report Card: We will have training at the beginning of the school year. It will be an easy transition for K-2 because they are already used to the report card spreadsheets. 3-5th will have more training around the time of report cards. 3-5 grades will need to be in by a certain day so that Bev can print them out for you. K-2 will do VIP’s on the typical school VIP schedule. Mr. Hall understands that these dates sometimes fall back-to-back with report cards, but this is because we are given a extra week after the end of the quarter to complete report cards. 3-5 will not send home progress reports unless it is requested in writing to have a hard copy sent home. Parent Assistant allows parents to see grades at any time. A computer will be set-up in the office so that parents who do not have access to Parent Assist can access it at school. Note will be sent home at the beginning of the year to make sure parents understand this. Tuesday folders will continue, but 3rd, 4th, and 5th will not have to send a hard copy of a progress report. 3-5 grades are supposed to be posted by teacher weekly (by Friday). Mr. Hall gets a copy of teachers’ “grade book” on Mondays to see what has been uploaded. Grade levels need to go over how grades are weighted (percentages of: homework, classwork, participation, tests, etc.) and will want to discuss this at curriculum night.
•Handbook changes have been made and have been looked over to go over grammar and flow. Honor Roll will be recognized quarterly. Policy changes have been updated. Personal cell phones are allowed, but are not to be used. If student uses it at school, teacher is to give it to Hall or Cotton. PRIDE has been updated. This year parents will make money transactions online for field trips, yearbooks, pictures, etc. Description of online school payments was not added to the new handbook, but will be sent home in a separate letter. PTA calendar of events and PTA board members have been updated. Staff handbook is being given out as a hard copy this year. Updates will be given in the next year, but the entire handbook will not be reprinted each year. Staff Handbook changes will be highlighted at first staff meeting: staff cell phone use, first responders are listed (Schuett has a friend that will come in and do first aid/CPR training for $25.00 per person if we are interested), substitute folders will be kept in the office (Sub will always pick-up this folder. Plans will always need to be kept in this folder and sub will need to know if you would like them to use other plans.), school calendar (no more RSV days, staff vote is not required for school staff development).
•Master Schedule was handed out and some names may have changed from what was discussed in schedule committee, but the schedule should be pretty much the same.
•Lunch Schedule was handed out and duty free lunch must be provided 3 days for teachers unless SIT votes differently. Mr. Hall would like to hire Maria Rodriguez to come and do lunch duty 4 days a week and then pay her for additional translation time. Criseida Blancas has also offered to help translate as needed. There is a phone in the conference room that can have an answering machine for non-English speaking parents to leave a message for Maria or Criseida. We plan to have Maria in the lunchroom Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs. Mr. Hall pointed out that the specialists have more free time than before (because some grade levels only have 4 classes). One day out of the six days, specialists will have a lunch day rotation. There was discussion if Specialists could take over more time (since right now the schedule shows that they have an hour of lunch each day). Ran through a mock day for a specialist to see if they would be able to give more time to the lunchroom. Patterson brought up discussion on having teachers sit with students at the beginning of the year to set lunch expectations. Sparks said that it is beneficial to have teachers’ model expectations. We decided that teachers should sit with their students the first two weeks of school. The tables in-between the two cafeteria lines are now the teacher tables and the long tables are for guests or silent lunch. After the first two weeks, teachers should sit at these tables on Fridays and the one other day that is designated for their grade level, and any other time they choose to sit eat in the cafeteria.
•Specials Schedule was handed out and a color copy will be give to all teachers at the beginning of school. Hall is checking with Gibson to see what we will be doing on days that we are out for snow. Guidance and Technology will be on a 12 day rotation; they pretty much flip-flop. McDermon will be put on a 12 day schedule to give her more time for distance learning and this will give White more time for her other duties. For common grade level planning time, teacher assistants will take students outside for recess on the one day that they have recess as a special. We will keep up with the days by using the school master schedule and the big TV’s. Mr. Hall will email us when the master schedule is ready to go over with grade level.
•ACE- we want to set-up school-wide expectations. Last year we came up with grade level ACE expectations, now we need to look at school expectations. We need consistent expectations. A-Attendance, C-Conduct, E-Effort. Attendance- we will have no more than 2 unexcused absences and 2 unexcused tardies/early dismissals. Attendance and tardies/early dismissals need to be consistent school-wide. Special cases need to be brought to Mr. Hall and Mrs. Cotton’s attention and they will be the one to make exceptions. Conduct- no office referral, D1, or bus ticket. No N’s or U’s on report card. Effort -work habits no N’s and U’s. AR was discussed as a part of effort and there was much discussion. AR expectations could be changed depending on the student’s ability. Kindergarten could still do this, but do the AR tests as a whole group (can be done on active board). As long as the point goal is individualized the goal can be included within Effort (work habits on report cards) teacher has the ability to change point number depending on the student. We would like to have Jan do a refresher on AR. Since these expectations were not covered in the new student handbook, they will be sent home as a school-wide contract and the student/parent can sign and return (Cotton will provide these for us). Teachers should also cover this at the beginning of the year.
•We need a tech facilitator to go ahead and begin shadowing Mrs. McDermon. This should be a staff member who is tech savvy. They would attend district training and they would be paid a small stipend.
•Budget- go ahead and give big needs to Mr. Hall soon. Can include playground, outdoor classroom, etc. Turn in board requests to Mr. Hall if you need white boards or bulletin boards moved (large white boards may be cut into smaller sizes, but this work order is taking longer).
•At Risk Money $10,485. Less than last year and will include tutoring budget. Duty free money is 19,680 that will go for lunch monitor and part of McDermon’s position.
•Local Assistant Position -Ayako was moved to 2nd grade in order to keep her here at school. We will need to plan ahead for copies and other duties. Teresa Bowers will be able to help with this, but her hours are limited. Hall asked for PTA volunteers to also help with copies. Teachers will be allowed to make copies and we will have training. To begin with, we will not have copy codes and teachers should only come in to make one class set quickly. Teachers can plan ahead and send to central office to have grade level sets made. Howard suggested having a baby monitor in the copy room to let office know when paper gets jammed, or trouble shoot. All of our computer printers are now set to monitor how much is being printed by each staff member.
•Committees one person on committee should be named as secretary to send minutes to entire staff. We will have committee reports at all staff meetings.
•Opening staff meeting. PLC will need to be on different days so that administrators can be available to attend the meetings (can be during planning or afterschool). Any day, but Monday afternoons.
•Schuett wanted to know about team teaching in the upper grades. In 5th Esser and Scott are going to team teach and McNamara and Parker. Howard and Carroll are going to team teach in 4th.
•Church wanted to know if anything about the dress code was changed in the handbook. Three-finger width wide straps for tank tops and the finger tip rule was added for shorts length. It was stated not to wear flip-flops on PE days or on outside recess days.
•Kiger wanted to know the hours that we are at school to see about moving SIT meetings to a different time; this would help her to not miss so much time away from work.
Another August SIT meeting is on the calendar, but we will meet only if needed. On grade level, review SIP and look at data to see what goals need to be changed or updated. We will plan to address these goals at our Sept SIT meeting.