teachers in action
This week was spent preparing our 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students for the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. Summary writing has been a major focus of instruction as it will most likely be a component of the TCAP test at 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. Teachers are asking kids to summarize poems, parts of poems, fiction and non-fiction passages as well as newspaper articles, advertisements graphs and charts...WHEW!!. Test preparation has not only focused on summaries, teachers are planning and facilitating many interactive games that have been very effective in helping students review the concepts that they have been taught. The games are fun, they encourage cooperation and teamwork, and they provide extra support for students who need it. Thank you Haskin staff for your important role in preparing our students for the big test. The students are well prepared and we will no doubt be celebrating when the results come in!!
Haskin blt meets
The Haskin Elementary Building Leadership Team met bright and early on February 26th. The BLT has been charged, by Mr. Welsh, to begin work on the 2013 Improvement Cycle for our school and district. We began by looking at the School Performance Framework document from the CDE website. This document is used by the District Accountability Committee to consider the school's accreditation status, and it shows how students are performing in all TCAP tested areas. Our task is to identify areas that we need to target for improvement and to create an action plan to address these needs. Also, the BLT has been asked to consider programs and procedures which we might need to let go of at this point in our school improvement process and to brainstorm needs for next year. During this meeting, BLT members spent some time listing all the programs, interventions, and practices that we provide at this time. Some of you may remember that we carried out this same activity at the beginning of our turnaround process. At that time, we were able to cross out many things we were doing because they were either ineffective or unrelated to the improvement plan we had begun. This time around, however, though the BLT came up with a rather long list of practices in which we now engage, we were unable to identify any that we felt were unnecessary. After further thought, we might be able to remove a thing or two from our list, but for the most part each plays an important role in the success we are having in increasing student learning and achievement.
As this work on the Improvement Cycle continues, more information will be shared with all staff members regarding action plans for next year. These plans will be submitted to the District Leadership Team for approval and will then be considered when the new budget is created. Two of the main areas that were discussed were math instruction, as student growth was lowest in that area, and the need to provide professional development in best practices for teaching English Language Learners. Please feel free to share your thoughts and/or suggestions for school improvement with any BLT member. We will be happy to consider your suggestions and opinions.
As this work on the Improvement Cycle continues, more information will be shared with all staff members regarding action plans for next year. These plans will be submitted to the District Leadership Team for approval and will then be considered when the new budget is created. Two of the main areas that were discussed were math instruction, as student growth was lowest in that area, and the need to provide professional development in best practices for teaching English Language Learners. Please feel free to share your thoughts and/or suggestions for school improvement with any BLT member. We will be happy to consider your suggestions and opinions.
next steps in teacher evaluation
A group of Center teachers and administrators was invited to attend an Educator Effectiveness training. The intent of this training was to provide guidance on how to create student learning outcomes in order to calculate student growth for teacher evaluation. As you know, the SB191 legislation requires that fifty percent of a Colorado educator's evaluation will be based on student academic growth. The training centered around how to calculate growth using student learning outcomes. Student learning outcomes may include results from many types of measures that we may choose to use. We will be providing training in the near future to make this portion of the evaluation process very clear. In the meantime, there are numerous resources on the Colorado Department of Education Educator Effectiveness webpage that clearly outline the steps of creating student learning outcomes. The web address below will take you directly to the page that provides the step by step guide on how to create student learning outcomes.
http://www.cde.state.co.us/EducatorEffectiveness/StudentGrowthGuide1.asp
http://www.cde.state.co.us/EducatorEffectiveness/StudentGrowthGuide1.asp
importance of tcap
Since the passing of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, high stakes assessment has come to the forefront in education. NCLB mandates that every student in public schools which receive federal funds must be tested on their knowledge of certain skills relating to mathematics and reading. These tests are said to be high stakes tests because they hold teachers and students accountable for high scores. In Colorado, this assessment, Transitional Colorado Assssment Program, has arrived and will be administered in the next two weeks. High stakes assessment allows the teacher to be at his or her best while teaching, and can come as a great satisfaction when the students succeed. Also, because of high stakes assessment the teacher knows the educational goals of his or her students. The continued use of high stakes testing is a very important piece to the puzzle of education, and should continue to be used to make decisions about kids.
TCAP information helps us at Haskin in various ways. The results provide data for the Colorado Growth Model which will show the student’s academic growth over the years. It will indicate areas of weakness so a student and teacher knows where to concentrate effort. A student’s academic growth can be determined through TCAP scores. Teachers use this data to provide appropriate instruction for each student. TCAP results provide valuable information about the curriculum and instruction for each subject area. TCAP scores can be used as a piece of evidence for placement into programs such as Gift and Talented, special education and academic interventions. This is just a bit of what TCAP results have to offer us at Haskin. We are well prepared and our kids will be successful on this test coming up in the next few weeks.