What have I done and what do I intend to do to improve student achievement in language arts and mathematics?

The past two school years we have made a tremendous commitment to working together within the grade level departments. The grade level departments (7th Grade Math, 7th Grade LA, 8th Grade Math, and 8th Grade LA) meet for two class periods each month. The agenda is pretty basic. We examine the data from our Acuity Assessments or ISTEP. I feel fortunate that we have access to data that is current and useable. The data allows us to quickly see the strengths and weaknesses of our students. It allows us to see which teacher has had the greatest success on the individual benchmarks. The meetings allow that teacher to discuss what they “do” in their classroom to for the students to achieve the great results. The GLD’s have a great relationships with each other, an all for one, one for all mentality. Also during the meetings the GLD create a short term action plan to combat the most glaring weakness that the majority of the students possess. The two basic themes of the short term action plan are: 1. Win small, win early, and win often. 2. Teach – Assess – Adjust.

During the 2010-2011 school year the reading department and the language arts departments will merge into one department. This is something that should have been done long ago. The language arts and reading teachers need to work as one team. Our biggest challenge and one that we must meet head on this year is our poor achievement in reading comprehension. Until we raise the student achievement in that area our overall “scores” will not increase. We need to examine the amount of reading instruction that students are receiving in ALL classes. We need to ask ourselves is the reading that we are having our students read “good purposeful reading”? Does the reading challenge our students to process information and think critically?

The math department GLD’s and full department has worked together to address the low problem solving achievement. This past school year the full math department created lessons that specifically targeted the type of problems that the students would encounter on the ISTEP Applied Skills Assessment. We believe that the students have to be exposed to the specific types of problem that they will have to solve on the ISTEP. But we also believe that students must be challenged to think critically on a daily basis in ALL CLASSES. The students must be challenged to think critically and “solve” problems everyday in every class. During the 2010-2011 this must become a point of emphasis. During our instructional audit/instructional conversation/formal evaluations the administration will monitor and discuss this area with the teaching staff.

I believe that with the great teaching staff that we have at Tecumseh, we will be able achieve even greater academic success. The entire staff is committed to providing the best for the students. In the end an organization can have the greatest plans/programs, but if you do not have quality people those “plans” mean nothing. I am very fortunate to be able to work with them.