School board hears about collaboration

Our teachers spend time in collaboration with each other, but the question is often, “what is collaboration and what does it do for my child?”

The second grade teachers from Ralph Witters Elementary (RWE) made a presentation to the Hot Springs County School District #1 Board of Trustees last Thursday, which answers that question.

Dawn Peterson, Emmie Coxbill and Kim Carswell explained the first thing they do as a collaborative team is determine what they expect the students to learn and then review the curriculum documents for each of the base subjects, math, science and language arts.

As a team they look at the common core standards, assessments and SMART goals along with creating pacing guides as they lay out the groundwork for every week. As they go through the week teaching the subjects they get together and decide if there are any “tweaks” they need to make such as staying on a particular piece of the curriculum a day or two longer or speeding lessons up that the students may be grasping more quickly than they had expected.

When they review the week they ask themselves what worked and what didn’t and adjust their techniques as needed.

So how do we know they’re learning?

The team checks each student’s daily progress as well as monitoring their testing scores in things like MAP and other standards assessments.

Now they have a strategy to work from for re-teaching those students who haven’t quite gotten a handle on the subject as well as creating enrichment activities for those students who are more advanced.

The trio looks not just at each individual student, but where the students are as a whole and then break it down into the three classes. This gives them an idea which teaching methods are working best and share their techniques with each other.

Studies have shown this type of teaching method helps children learn better and is being used in top performing schools all across the country and its obviously working for RWE, too. Working in small groups, utilizing technology and collaboration have made the second grade MAP scores, math specifically, go from 63% proficient to 88% proficient or advanced.

Peterson, Coxbill and Carswell meet for just 40 minutes a day, Monday through Thursday, for collaboration.

Middle School

MAP testing and their results are also important pieces of the puzzle at the middle school, showing student’s progress from fall to spring and spring to fall.

New scores arrived recently and middle school teacher Catelyn Deromedi has already taken them and broken them down to see how things are progressing.

For the eighth graders headed into their freshman year of high school, the target in the fall was a score of 219 and for the spring, that target was 222, forecasting students to grow three points across the board during the school year.

So who grew and did they meet their goals?

One-hundred percent of the students in Deromedi’s class had growth.

“Three years ago we didn’t think that was possible,” principal Breez Daniels told the board. “Eighty percent, maybe, but not 100% of them. Mrs. Deromedi just proved us wrong.”

Some of Deromedi’s students grew 12 or 18 points, some as high as 22 points from fall to spring, well ahead of the predicted growth.

Sixteen students going from seventh grade into eighth grade are already algebra ready.

Fifteen students moving from sixth grade to seventh grade are algebra ready.

Two of the students who are algebra ready are in special education classes.

High School

Academic acceleration will soon be part of the curriculum at Hot Springs County High School after the school board approved a pilot program presented by high school principal Scott Shoop.

Shoop said they want to challenge all the students, not just those who are currently considered advanced, which will ramp up the classes offered, including honors classes.

The higher expectations of students will mean more support is needed, but they’ve already been working on that piece with the interventions that are in place. Now they’re going to take it a step further and challenge the advanced students to move even higher.

They key is not creating a lower level, but working beyond the standards, pushing them harder to achieve. It’s not creating the “I’m in the dummy class” mentality, but instead, pushing everyone to the next level with all the help and resources available.

Shoop wants to start with language arts and math, adding some new classes there, then adding trades offerings, additional college/concurrent enrollment classes, additional physical education offerings and even advanced art classes.

The offerings will also be open to special services students to allow them a higher level of achievement as well.

Arranging classes is done over the summer months, and Shoop asked the board for early approval to give them plenty of time to work out a schedule that will work. The classes will be single semester courses, allowing students to take more than a single advanced class during the school year.

“This isn’t going to happen overnight,” Shoop said, “but we’re going to do our best to get all the students who want to into the classes they want.”