Update 2/4

Hi Everyone! Over the next few days you will receive updates that will help to outline the 3 topic (Leadership and School Culture, Learning and Teaching, and School-Family Partnership and Communication) that will be explored at the World Café. This is an exciting opportunity for our school to be able to have teachers and parents work together to improve our school! If you have responded to the first link for the survey in regards to attending the World Café unfortunately you will have to resubmit your reply and possible questions. Here is the correct link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PHQPBSH

To keep you posted on some of the happenings at Joshua Eaton, I want to share with you one of the opportunities that our teachers in grades 3-5 took part in. The DSAC – District and School Assistance Center, came in and used a tool called the MVAR to help teachers take a deeper look at the 2014 MCAS data. We have had the chance to look at that data as a staff but this allowed teachers to really drill down into the information. This tool allows teachers to create more specific ranking to gain a different perceptive on the information. Some of the PLC leaders were able to take part in this training as well. This training took place at the end of January. Teachers spent 90 minutes working with the DSAC team. These work sessions did not include me (Ms. Feeney). The DSAC team focuses not so much on the data but rather the conversations that take place as a result of looking at the data. What is it that we notice from that data? What is the data telling us? As I mentioned at the October MCAS meeting we recognized that scores were low in fractions, data and measurement, geometry along with students not receiving high points for open response and short answer questions. This information was confirmed through the use of the MVAR. We learned a few things that the basic MCAS data did not tell us. Here are a few things that learned: boys did not score as well on the math MCAS in grade 4, the vocabulary score dropped in 5^th grade when compared to scores in 3^rd and 4^th grade and when faced with questions that involved inferring the students in all grade levels did not score well.

So what are we doing to help address these students in all grade levels are having more opportunities to answer questions in short answers and open response format. This began back in the beginning of the year. By providing students more opportunities to explain and reason it will help them be more prepared to answer these questions. Students will be provided with text that will give them opportunities to use context clues from the story to infer what is happening. Reading folk tales was one way that was suggested to us by the DSAC team as text that will support this development. For improving vocabulary we will read and allow student to read text that includes more rich vocabulary and incorporate more challenging vocabulary into daily lessons. By providing hands on opportunities for all learners in math we envision that boys will take more to the concepts as most learn by doing.

As a staff we continue to find new ways to reach all of the learners and their learning styles. We look for ways to make learning enjoyable as well as engaging for the students. I am in the process of scheduling a date to have Helene Levine, a literacy specialist from DSAC, come to Eaton to work with the teachers with some of the identified areas of concerns. I will keep you posted on when that date is set.