March 28, 2008

Join the Circle of Knowledge
We would like to formally invite the Red Oak CSD School Board to join our “Circle of Knowledge” at the Red Oak downtown square on April 18th, 11:30 – 12:30. To celebrate National Library Week, WIS students will be eating sack lunches in the park and then reading their favorite books. All parents, grandparents, business people, etc. are invited to join them for an hour of eating and reading. The public may bring a sack lunch and a book and eat with the students for ½ hour, then read for ½ hour. If you would rather listen to a child read, you are welcome to do that. This reading event should be a fun-filled and enjoyable hour bringing school and community together to celebrate the contributions libraries and books make in all our lives.

Solo Try-Outs for Music Program
The following students will tried out for solo parts for the upcoming 5th grade music program on April 21st. They should be commended for their desire to give extra time, effect and dedication. Please join Ms. Mann and our 5th graders on April 21st, 7:00 pm, at the middle school gym.

Tatum Allensworth Gavin French Colton Goldsmith
Ana Hamm Jerrica Tarbox Clayton Wall
Aaron Jackson Donnie Talbott Logan LeRette
Yessica Lemus Gilman Cooper Grace Blomstedt
Rylee Palmer Mikayla LeRette Teanna Pafford
Morgan McFarland Cameo Stephens Cade Johnson

Iowa Tests of Basic Skills
I was in each of the classrooms the weeks prior to ITBS week. Our focus was sharing individual students with their scores from previous years and goal setting for this year’s tests. Students looked at their prior grade equivalent scores for reading comprehension, math total and math computation and then set a grade equivalent goal (score) for this year. If 80% of students reach their goals, we will announce that during an assembly and students will get to pick from something fun for us to do or for them to do to me. J We hope to have some fun with it. Also, grade level goals and rewards were set – basically if grade levels hit the NCLB/Iowa trajectory target for their grade level in a math and/or reading, they earn a reward (i.e. class goes bowling or skating, etc.).

AEA 14 Accreditation Visit
I have been (and will continue) to be a part of the Department of Education’s accreditation team’s visit with AEA 14. There are five AEA 14 administrators, five AEA personnel from NE Iowa and five DE employees on the team. We reviewed documentation for two days, interviewed AEA staff, LEA staff and parents for two days and the final paperwork and presentation of findings will be two days in late April. It has and will be time consuming but a good learning experience and opportunity for me to give feedback directly to the state and AEA as to how they are serving the AEA districts and especially our district.

KCSI
Melanie West spoke with me this week to discuss the possibility of promoting Washington’s activities and setting up a live remote like IPS and the MS have done. We discussed a few possibilities and look forward to building lasting partnerships with KCSI to promote student activities. Melanie also mentioned creating ‘public service announcements’ for Washington and the district. One example would be students creating a 30 second commercial to promote our after school math program. I’m sure our staff will have more ideas too!

Curriculum Updates

Washington Intermediate Explores Math Grouping – we spent a ½ day in teams discussing ability grouping options for math instruction for our 4th and 5th graders. Many options were presented and discussed. The general consensus was we were not ready to pursue doing something with math ability grouping as an entire building yet. At our teacher meeting on Friday, March 28, I indicated to the staff that I would definitely support teachers or teams who would like to pursue options to differentiate math instruction on a smaller scale (i.e. guided math groups within the classroom, 2-3 teachers working together, etc.). We also have started creating pre & post tests directly tired to our math curriculum and math instruction that is tied directly to our standards/benchmarks & supported by the textbook/materials, instead of vice-versa.

Math Curriculum – The district math curriculum team met in February to look ahead to next year’s tasks (cycle: write and selection). As far as the writing and editing of current curriculum, we will be in a ‘holding pattern’ until direction is given from the state as to when the K-8 math standards and benchmarks will be in place. Other items covered was review of assessment data, and input from other key stakeholders (district staff, SIAC, etc.). I am also putting together a data base of what other AEA 13 and 14 school districts use for math series and for their mandated 2nd assessment. Currently, I believe our math ICAM tests and data are not useful and it does not drive instructional decisions – the cost is too much to continue to use it just because we have to have a 2nd assessment. More to come…

Science Curriculum – The district science curriculum team met in late March to revisit some work left undone in 2003. As mentioned above, we will await the state’s decision on K-8 science curriculum and then cross-reference with our local curriculum to ensure compliance. We did see some glaring repetition and the team saw a need to spend time ‘fixing’ those issues this coming year during professional development time.

Reading Curriculum – The K-5 leadership team discussed the $3000 grant we received from the AEA. This Instructional Decision Making grant will allow a team to spend a day this summer to create a solid core curriculum (essential learnings/indicators) document that all K-5 teachers can follow to ensure core reading instruction is consistent from room to room and eliminate gaps from grade level to grade level. The final product will be a useable, workable ‘curriculum map’ of sorts that will be presented to teachers in the fall and follow-up professional development will be needed to assist teachers with this process.

Special Education teams met in January and came up with four very doable, needed, yet possibly time consuming tasks that need to be completed: (1) District delivery plan/review case loads; (2) Continuum of services/programs; (3) Resources & programs research; (4) Developing a transition day for SPED teachers to meet with parents/students in spring. With Monica Crouch’s assistance, we have started moving on these tasks and hope to have more to report during the spring, summer and next fall.

ELO – Talented & Gifted – Bates, Kaiser and Barry met in February and the main topics discussed were to determine how we can better serve our ELO students and to create a parent survey we can administer each spring. The survey would be a K-12 survey for ELO parents and a draft has been completed.

Guidance – Counselors met with me in February. Two areas of focus were communication and curriculum (look at the K-12 National Model curriculum). All agreed that added professional development time during the 2008-09 school year would help with communication between the counselors.