Local News Update
Guided Reading
Lots of things going on at Rann, that have the potential to boost huge gains with our students. All grade levels have finally had the guided reading training and been through an implementation update. There are varying levels of implementation happening across grade levels and within the building. There are two things that can make or break the effectiveness of this program, inconsistency of group meetings and doing the guided reading lesson without fidelity. We have about 8 weeks of school left to get a good understanding of this in order to roll it out effectively next year. Now is the time to perfect it so your current students can reap the benefit and end the year on a good note. The Jan Richardson book, The Next Step in Guided Reading, will be the tool we base our understanding of this process on. If you are not sure of something refer to this book first, and if you still need further understanding talk to your team. We can also email Missy if we need to for further clarification. There is one new book that has been added to library for each grade level to check out as needed, Running Records For Classroom Teachers, by Marie Clay. We have the resources we need to assure this is beneficial for all.
Goals, Data, Goals
Everyone one of us like to see improvement in all areas of our personal lives, be it whatever the outcome is, we measure it from past experiences to current experiences. We gain improvement thru doing it multiple times. This is the true also in our classrooms. We do the Star Lit or Reading three times a year to identify current improvements and areas of extra need. Everyone will be finishing up the end of year star testing within the next couple of weeks. As soon as your testing is done, look over your data and determine what you will be doing extra for your students that are below the 70% range in the sub domain scores of the test. I will run the Score Distribution Report so you know the areas to work on. It is not fair to send a kid on that is not ready for next year. We must use these last few weeks to make gains with our students. Tutoring time is held in the upper grades to get kids where they need to be for STAAR testing, this too needs to happen for our students that have not mastered skills needed for the next grade. Basically look at data, set the plan needed to make improvement, assess to see if improvement is being made, and then plan again to meet next goal. Data drives the instruction for everything we do. Without data and goals we do not know if we are where we need to be.