P/T Conferences
We are looking forward to our second set of conferences, which will be held over the next few weeks. Some are scheduled for as early as this coming Monday, while the majority will be happening on Friday, February 3rd, Tuesday, February 7th, and Thursday, February 9th. Our goal is to meet with every single family during this month; and share with you the progress your child is making in their learning, as well as to continue strategizing with you and setting goals around their learning for the rest of the year. If you have not received a scheduled time to meet with your child’s teacher, please contact them to schedule an appointment.
UIP
I shared with you last fall that each school must create a Unified Improvement Plan (UIP) and that ours is the highest performing level, called a performance plan. The work from our plan is well underway with the professional development and trainings the teachers have been involved with this year, but we are just at the point of officially submitting the document to the district and the state. The first part of the plan analyzes our data from several viewpoints: looking longitudinally, looking at subgroups, looking by standards, looking at performance levels, etc. We have also included our School Accountability Committee in the process of creating our plan and designing certain aspects of the plan to involve some parents and community members in the process. The final section of the plan includes our action strategies which includes three strategies that I would like to share with you as our school community.
The first strategy is to continue our focus on higher order thinking. We believe that is one of the reasons we have so many students performing at the advanced level on CSAP. We also want to continue to push students into the advanced category, demonstrating a very thorough understanding and mastery of the standards.
The second strategy we have is around student engagement. As we look at ways to increase the involvement of all students into their learning, it will increase the performance of some subgroups that aren’t performing consistently as high as other groups, allowing us to close the achievement gap.
The third strategy we have is around our students that are in the “catch-up group”. These students have not performed in the proficient range yet, but are catching up to their peers in their acquisition of the standards. As these students are struggling in a content area, we want to make sure we are using appropriate interventions to move them in their learning, and monitor that growth regularly to ensure that they are progressing at a rate that will allow them to catch up to their grade level peers.
The bottom line is that we want all of our students learning, and we won’t stop until we have 100% of our students proficient, with an increased percent of students performing at the advanced level. If you have any questions about our Unified School improvement Plan, please visit with myself or your child’s teacher.
