Meeting+notes

9/24 Karen, Michelle, Dave, Nancy in attendance Discussed NWEA testing in 9th grade. Dave visited with 9th grade teams to discuss their involvement with the testing. Nancy wants to provide help with interpreting the results. 9th graders will take it during their seminar time. Not all kids have seminar, but Leslie will make sure they are tested. Test to be held in room 111. Will be given fall, winter, spring. Whole district will take it in grades 5-9. This years 8th graders will have records from last year. We need to talk to the kids about getting them to buy into it. We need to train teachers how to read results. It will give results by strengths and weaknesses of kids and or classes. At teacher level they can look at their class by skills, if you put in the time and know how to use scores. Right tone needs to be set with kids. Kids who have trouble with speed will shine, because it is not timed. Kids with accommodations need to be provided to them for reading the math section.

Keep track of teachers and kids serving. How can we help student fill the gaps that are missing. We need to say we are supporting that support in the main stream. Documentation of serving them in the least restrictive place.

Michelle has started doing PSAT skills training in sophomore and junior English classes that meet periods two or three. A form has created to document strategies that teachers are using. Nancy suggests we meet periodically with Pam Doe, Stacy Flink, and Kristen Curry to discuss Read 180. We should work on criteria to what it takes to get into Read 180. We need to be consistent with how we place kids into the program.

9/30 Literacy Committee Meeting- Peter, Justin, Joe, Michelle Fields, Wendy, Dawn, Michelle Gabriellsen, Karen, Louise, Reviewed Goal statement #2 of Literacy Action Plan Discussed the writing workshops and how they are going. The writing workshops are going to be advertised for drop ins. Dawn Lee reported that the Library is booked through the end of October for research projects. Math is one of the classes coming down. Geometry is having a literacy project every quarter. Sara Smith and Matt Davis are working on this to having common language.

SMART Goal for literacy committee. We have to come up with something measurable. NWEA testing with 9th graders is going well. With the scores on the SAT last year going down, we are on the 3rd year of scores going down. Literacy committee can come up with strategies to increase writing via computers. Junior teachers should start each day with a SAT question. SAT do not require content knowledge, what it tests is reason. They are being tested on multiple choice, so we need to expose them to more multiple choice. While we don't want to teach to the teach, we should prepare them and be used to taking the test. We need to come up with plan to prepare them with strategies. We did not meet with our low economic kids especially. If you take them out, we met our goal. We should have a full time SAT prep class and make all sophmores take it. Algebra II class is typically taken jr year, questions are at. Staffing is the problem. Smart Goal Why: Not meeting assessments goals. We have a large gap between those kids who can read on level or above and those that can't. Desired state: We need to bring our scores up What?: We will increase our SAT writing score by 10%. We want to go from 1139 to 1141, within two years. We need to figure out how we are going to do this: First newsletter-Peter talk about how to take a multiple test. Scantron machine for school? Add to the Action plan the 8 strategies from MCLP.
 * 1) SAT warm ups in all core content classes
 * 2) Develop more multiple choice tests
 * 3) Staff take a sample SAT test
 * 4) Long term we need a SAT semester course (half quarter reading, half quarter math to make a full semester class.)
 * Next meeting grab a SAT to look at it and see what strategies we need to target.**

10/8 Coaches Meeting (Nancy, David, Michelle) Nancy shared a recent conversation from the science vertical team meeting, in which Carolyn Nichols beamed with excitement about the literacy activities in the MHS science department. David chimed in with Carolyn's recent correlations between science and reading comprehension. Nancy would like the high school team to meet with the middle school team in October to discuss: coaching techniques, spring screening tools, system 44, data for Read 180 and NWEA. Meeting to be held 10/27, 2-3PM, Room 117 at the HS.

12/3 three days in January for workshops are 1/13, 1/20, 1/27 One option is do a gallery walk of going to certain rooms to see what is working from a variety of teachers. Divide into 3 groups. Or make the gallery walk the first 10 minutes of each session. David wants to do a think-pair-share with other teachers of what was successful.

3 groups: 20 members in each group 50 min. total, 25 min. strategy 25 min. chat of what is working or not. Can we help you with some of these strategies for your exam? Ringers- Tasha, Carolyn, Danelle Young, Justin, Ross
 * 1) Save the last word for me-Karen
 * 2) Coding-David
 * 3) Rafts-Michelle

3/26/2010 Meeting with Margaret Arbuckle and Donna Ray Introductions GNP (grow new people)

43 schools in the project. Some have been selected from each region. Questions have been piloted. They are asking general questions and then best examples of work done.