Thank you!

Team,

Thank you for being part of the continuous improvement process at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School.  I appreciate your work, dedication and daily impact you bring to our students.  While I fully understand the challenges and needs that our students face and have, it is always crucial to stop and think of the role each adult in our building plays in the lives of students.  We teach, we encourage, we love, we set boundaries, we hug, we question, and we provide for all our students.  As a staff, we collaborate, support, disagree, challenge, and grow on this journey of educating students and ourselves.

Over these next two days, be steadfast with enforcing our high expectations for learning, goal setting, and ensuring a safe environment for all.  Remember that going home for the holiday is not celebratory for everyone, so let us be patient with one another. 

While we will not have faculty meeting Tuesday afternoon (Happy Thanksgiving), there is still expectation of collaboration in your professional learning community to share and communicate results from Friday's learning checks.  PLC minutes are still due by 9AM Wednesday morning, so please be sure to get this done.  For each grade level, be sure to turn in the assessment analysis for both reading and math, along with learning results (got it, almost got it, not yet) and a high, medium, low sample from each class.  ECE and ESL teachers are collaborating and providing input for students on their caseloads as well.  We are ALL IN to drive instruction and student learning.

Last, we have PBIS rewards on Tuesday --more to come from the PBIS committee -- watch your email.  We are having a pot luck on Tuesday -- see the email from Mrs. Mozier to sign up to bring something.

Have an awesome two student days and a Happy Thanksgiving.  I appreciate you all.

FYI...we had 117 parents join us for Thanksgiving Lunch Friday!

Diagnostic Review Week

Team,

This week we have our diagnostic review.  The review is an opportunity to have our instructional program and school culture reviewed.  The team from Cognia (formerly AdvancED) will provide us with improvement priorities that will function as high leverage strategies to move our collective work forward to increase student achievement.  I'm proud of the work we have in place and look forward to feedback to impact our future actions.  Here is the week at a glance:

• Monday, November 18th -- Principal presentation @ Louisville Marriott East - 4:30 PM
• Tuesday, November 19th -- Cognia team arrives by 8AM (will be housed in Mrs. Gutterman's office).
• The team will begin walkthroughs using the ELEOT tool
• The team will begin interviewing staff members
• Wednesday, November 20th -- Cognia team arrives by 8AM 
• The team will interview parents beginning at 9:30, parents arriving @ 9:15 AM
• The team will interview students beginning at 2:00 PM (select group)
• The team will conduct walkthroughs and interview staff members
• Thursday, November 21st -- Cognia team arrives by 8AM 
• The team will finish conducting interviews and walkthroughs, departing by noon
• The team has 30 days to provide a written report to KDE and our district
• Results at the school level are anticipated by the end of December

Please be sure your classroom is ready for instruction, student work is posted, and your daily learning targets are posted, along with success criteria.  I was told they will interview 25% of the staff, so be prepared for interviews.  They did not specify who would be interviewed.  Don't be nervous, you all know what we do, be confident in speaking on what you know.  As always, I appreciate your work and efforts at King.  Have a great week.

PLC's Tuesday -- be sure to turn in minutes by Wednesday @ 9AM

Friday -- learning checks and Thanksgiving Lunch (families invited)

Faculty Meeting Tuesday:

• Student goal setting for MAP -- check in -- AGENDA

Here we go!

Learning Targets and Success Criteria to Scaffold Learning

King Staff,

Our mission and purpose is to ... provide rigorous and engaging instruction and remove barriers to learning so that students believe in their own ability to achieve success...  with this as our focus, consider the following as you move through this instructional week.  Homeroom, special area, ECE, and EL teachers and instructional support staff will discuss and begin goal setting with their classes.  All other staff members will discuss this and assist with students you encounter and support within your role group.  This means we are discussing goals in the cafeteria, as we pass students in the hallway, as we push in to support students in class, as we redirect following SRT, as we sign students into school, and greet or dismiss students throughout the school day.  Our students WANT our attention, as we provide it, be direct in discussing learning goals.

Our school-wide goal is to increase the number of students meeting MAP grade level benchmarks by 10%  in reading and math as evidenced by the winter MAP assessment.

From the ELEOT (walkthrough) tool, high expectations are set and evidenced by the following:

High Expectations Environment:

• Learners strive to meet or are able to articulate the high expectations established by themselves and/or the teacher (starts with updated, clear learning targets)
• Learners engage in activities and learning that are challenging but attainable (use of visible success criteria scaffolds learning by showing students the whole picture and how day-to-day learning fits the bigger picture of the learning standard expectation)
• Learners demonstrate and/or are able to describe high quality work (do students clearly understand the expectation for their learning and why they are learning it)
• Learners engage in rigorous coursework, discussions, and/or tasks that require the use higher order thinking (analyzing, applying, evaluating, synthesizing) -- Leverage writing to demonstrate learning -- have students explain their thinking and understanding by writing 
• Learners take responsibility for and are self-directed in their learning -- Goal setting is for students to be able to understand where they are individually and where they need to grow.  The better they understand this, the faster they grow.

Advisory Council (former SBDM) meeting Monday (11/11/19) @ 4:10 PM in room 104.

Faculty Meeting Tuesday -- We will have a 90 minute meeting (previously shared), please plan accordingly -- this will be  a great time for differentiated learning as we have district resource staff for you to engage with on various topics including opportunities to respond, cultural inclusivity, classroom management strategies, and more.

Team Leader Meeting - Wednesday @ 4:00 in the library

Student Recognition Ceremony -- Friday @ 2:30 in the cafeteria -- we will recognize students for honor roll, perfect attendance, and students of the month from the first grading cycle.  If you have students who have made tremendous improvements, this is a great time to recognize as well.  We will send a letter home with students today -- parents are invited to attend.  Logistics for that day will be forthcoming.

Please remember to check the living calendar and daily updates.  Have a wonderful week!

Setting the Stage to See Growth

Thank you for your work on Gold Day, it is always crucial to spend time learning together and preparing for student engagement and success.  This week we welcome back Haley Miller and two students from Simmons College as part of a JCPS/Simmons College partnership to increase the amount of minority teachers in our district.

As we welcome students today, please take time to set expectations for learning and behavior as well as revisit the established routines and procedures for your classrooms and all common areas.  Remember to utilize affective statements per our training on restorative practices and support one another with the use of buddy rooms.

Planning for rigorous, engaging instruction continues to be a method of bringing our mission to the desks of students.  Remember to use the Classroom Instructional Framework as a lesson frame to provide relevant context, model for students, provide time for guided practice, independent practice, and close the lesson with a formative check for understanding so you know which students met the learning target and how to proceed for the next day's lesson.  The formative check is the magic that allows you to see growth in every student each day.

Let's start and finish strong, we have 14 days until the winter MAP assessment window opens and our goal is to increase the number of students meeting grade level benchmarks by 10%.  Talk to your students about this goal and how their individual goals play a part.

Remember, there is no substitute for you, please be present each day so all students have high quality instruction each day.

Please let me know if I can be of assistance to you, have a great week!

Pause and Reflect

Team,

Thank you for your work and dedication to our students and one another.  I realize this has been a tough month for many and as we prepare for the upcoming week, I encourage you to take a few moments for gratitude and deep breaths to find your peace.  I am practicing this as well.

• We know that each day requires our best selves.  The goal is for each day to be better than the day before.   This is how we manage change and growth, which leads to progress.

• We know that each day we may face a challenge that we cannot provide an answer to in the moment.  We don't have to be perfect, just as consistent as possible.

• We have each other and together we can achieve.

• I know I don't thank you enough for your efforts to support our school, but please know you are greatly appreciated and I look forward to figuring out the work together, having some fun and growing our school.

No faculty meeting this week

Colleagues,

This week, grades three through five will begin a new model for push in partners with literacy.  Using tiered response lessons and leveraging the MAP Learning Continuum, teachers are creating lessons for reading instruction and intervention.  The push-in model will begin this Monday, October 21st.

Small Group and Individualized Instruction - Reading Support at King

• Push-in teachers will work with small groups or individual students
• Students are identified based on MAP data for math and Running Records and MAP data for reading.
• Homeroom teachers create a folder for each intervention student and/or small group (small groups are NOT flexible -- students are to stay with specific push in teacher until DATA shows to exit.
• Identify materials needed to support push-in and identify the work area in the classroom
• Plans and materials given to push-in teacher and Dr. White by Monday morning
• Push in support people will track student progress with the weekly progress monitoring sheet and provide a copy to the homeroom and teacher and Ms. Flener weekly.
• If plans and materials are not ready or available, the push-in teacher will not stay.

This method of student learning and support will provide evidence of student acceleration.  The tiered response lessons act as an acceleration plan for literacy based on the current standards being taught at each grade level.  Literacy instruction is anchored with Journeys and the Jan Richardson framework for guided reading instruction.  If you have questions or concerns, see Flener, Camp, Jones, or White

Backpack Artifact Data

Students have at least one artifact in there digital backpack this year  -- 125

Number of students per grade level with at least one uploaded artifact

• Kindergarten     27 out of 53 students have at least 1 uploaded artifact
• 1st grade            45 of of 53 students have at least 1 uploaded artifact
• 2nd grade          26 out of 50 students have at least 1 uploaded artifact
• 3rd grade           2 out of 70 students have at least 1 uploaded artifact
• 4th grade           15 out of 77 students have at least 1 uploaded artifact
• 5th grade           17 out of 81 students have at least 1 uploaded artifact

Backpack Video -- Examples for Backpack Worthy Materials

Student Success Resilient Learner Dashboard Introduction

Reminders

• Tuesday, Faculty Meeting Agenda 10-22-2019
• Grades due in IC by October 22nd @ 4:00 PM
• Printed report cards due to White October 23rd @ 9AM
• Team Leader Meeting Agenda - 11-13-2019

Pushing forward, checking our systems and updating our data

Happy Sunday,

Thank you to all who came out to represent King at the Showcase of Schools Saturday.  We had an opportunity to meet many new families and also visit with other schools and gather information.  This also reminded me that with new staff this year, I want to take ensure all know the many things that go on at King Elementary each week.  I will push out information via our Google Classroom  https://classroom.google.com/c/MzgyOTgxNTI4Nzha that I ask all staff members to join.  The class code is "gohvmei."  Having a school google classroom allows us to share announcements and information and provide practice to all staff as we work on improving our digital literacy.

Data Updates

Click on this link to see the current vital signs for our school.  These are indicators we monitor to assess student progress and our collective school-wide growth needs.  Based on this information, we see that 24% of our students met the grade level benchmark as measured by the fall MAP assessment for reading and math.  Thirty-four percent of students met their growth targets as measured by the fall MAP assessment.  

As a school, our growth goal is to increase the percentage of students who are meeting grade level bench marks by 10% for the winter assessment -- meaning that we move from 24% to 34% of students meeting the grade level benchmark.  We will also increase the percentage of students meeting growth goals to 44% by the winter MAP assessment.  

Vital Signs as of 10-11-2019

Additionally, we have to prioritize both student and staff attendance to ensure students are at school to receive instruction and staff are at school to provide meaningful instruction and feedback.  Based on this data, what is your reflection and how will you adjust your practice to increase achievement?

Teaching and Learning

With intentional planning aligned to the Classroom Instructional Framework and implementing all parts of the framework with each lesson - Anticipatory set, hook, modeling (I do), guided practice (we do), and independent practice (you do) I am confident we will see immediate results.  The goal and the practice is to improve each day.  Tomorrow will be better than Friday, Tuesday better than Monday, etc.

Student Agendas -- Agendas are communication tools between home and school and have the additional feature of providing a space for students to write down the daily learning targets for each content area.  Be sure students are in the habit of doing this daily.  To make this easier for everyone, begin the routine of having students open their agendas to the current day of the week and leave them on the edge of their desk -- this prompts you to have them use it.

Learning Targets and Success Criteria --   In EVERY classroom, the daily learning target shall be posted for all subjects and directly related to lessons and activities happening in class each day.  Success criteria is used to scaffold learning and show students the learning progression.  Don't hide the information, it is not a secret -- tell students what you expect them to learn and how they will demonstrate this learning to you.

Summative Assessments - Reading and Math

This Thursday and Friday, we will take assessments for reading and math.  We aim to have a school-wide testing environment so that all students receive the appropriate accommodations for testing.  More information to come from Ms. Camp by Tuesday.

Reminders

• Faculty meeting agenda 
• The first grading cycle ends 10/16 -- the window will open that day to begin posting grades, please be sure your grades are in Infinite Campus and updated by 10/22 -- if you have questions or concerns don't wait --ask early.
• Check the living calendar 

Have a productive week, let me know if I can be of any assistance.