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Professional Development
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| A district committed to student achievement must reculture itself for change. It must establish new systems for teamwork, communication, and collaboration. In effect, districts working to improve are asking staff to change significantly in the manner in which they work; how they make decisions; analyze and use data; plan for change; teach; monitor student learning; evaluate and train personnel; and, assess the impact of new approaches to instruction. |
Improving also asks staff to change significantly the manner in which they think about work to replace assumptions and hunches, especially about student learning, with facts; to open up their classroom doors and work with colleagues in teams; to consider their every action in terms of its impact on others and the entire learning community. |
School District #109 will provide on-going professional development activities that are planned in congruence with the district goals and calendar, provide all community members with opportunities both to improve personal performance, and to learn new skills that support the development of all children.
A professional development committee comprised of administrators, staff, parents, community members, and students (when appropriate) will be established to ensure that our professional development has relevant continuity, practical application, and opportunities for collaboration. Committee members will keep a thumb on the pulse of those people within their advocacy group in order to design meaningful learning experiences based on needs. All professional development will connect to the Illinois Learning Standards and the district's curriculum, instruction, and assessment programs.
Professional Development Workshops/Courses
Assessing Outcomes & Analyzing Assessment Information
Assessment and instruction cannot be separated. Assessment identifies, for both the student and teacher, the next step of instruction. However, the implementation of new instruction and assessment skills can be a threatening and overwhelming experience. The class is designed to learn about and share a new vision of student evaluation; a vision that includes learning standards, meaningful performance tasks, and authentic classroom assessments to help students become reflective, lifelong learners.
Differentiation Intervention
The course is unique in that it offers graduate students the time to engage in action research. Knowledge and skills learned in class will be applied in the students' classrooms where they will implement, monitor, and assess differentiated techniques learned in class. Qualitative and, to the extent possible, quantitative data of student achievement will be collected and analyzed. As participants try out new approaches to teaching and learning, they will have the support of the instructor as well as the other participants.
3 - 8 Framework - Strategic Readers Course
This course is structured to grapple with the jungle gym of thoughts, words, and ideas that make up reading. Numerous teachers report that although many of their students can read the words in texts, they don't seem to understand what they read. In the early 1980's reading researchers distilled a collection of comprehension strategies that proficient readers use to build meaning and comprehend text. In the course practitioners study these strategies and learn to apply them authentically into their classroom practice. Participants look closely at the work of P. David Pearson, Jan Dole, Judith Irwin, and others for guidance in how to create strategic readers. Participants work from the Illinois Reading Standards framework, which identify the essential understandings children need to become successful interpreters of all text.
K - 2 Framework
Participants will learn how to use the Illinois Snapshots of Early Literacy (ISEL) assessment data to determine students' instructional levels and identify the appropriate instructional interventions. Grade 2 teachers will be introduced to the newly developed ISBE Grade 2 ISEL. The workshop also provides training in the ISBE's Reading First initiative. The Reading First focus is on phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension - all the scientifically research-basede components of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation.
Language Arts (reading, writing, speaking, listening)
K-2 Framework
Providing excellent reading instruction in the 21st Century will require a fundamental change in how policy makers and school professionals look at improving schools. The only question is do we have the courage to make the required changes (Williams, 2002)? Review of the research literature about early literacy conclusively states that early intervention is key in helping at-risk students avoid potential problems in reading.
District #109 will adopt a team approach to early literacy; one that places auxiliary staff (Title I and Remedial Teachers and Writing To Read Aides) into K-2 classrooms to work in partnership with the classroom teachers. The goal is based on the premise that providing early, organized, diagnostic, and prescriptive intervention and flexible staffing is the soundest way to maximize student learning (USDOE, 2002). We will face the challenge of helping all readers by establishing a preventative program that not only identifies struggling readers early but also finds ways to challenge the district's secure learners.
The approach to scheduling and deployment of staff will pair one auxiliary teacher with K-2 teachers during each grades designated reading time. Auxiliary teachers will rotate amongst the classroom teacher partners to provide equity in support. By doing so the specialist will have insights about all students; valuable information at team planning for authentically subdividing students into fluid, instructional groups as learning needs evolve.
How each team's internal planning is accomplished is a function, first of all, of that school's organization. However, as a system, joint planning time must be designated to ensure that the benefits of teamwork and planning are actualized. Building grade level, committee, and sanctioned district planning times will initially structure team planning. An explicit, data-driven approach to professional development will be provided to support the entire learning community in transitioning to an early literacy program.
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Tier 1: The general reading program (Scott Foresman, McGraw Hill) with Reading First/Best Practice instructional methods.
* Students not making progress receive Tier 2 intervention.
Tier 2: Extra practice in small groups on essential reading skills predominantly in-class.
* Kindergarten receives ten-minute daily practice (letter sounds-blending); first grade receive thirty-minute daily practice.
* Students not responding to Tier 2 intervention receive Tier 3 intervention.
Tier 3: An intensive alternative program conducted daily (afternoons) for 30-5- minutes in small groups (sometimes pull-aside, some pull-out), generally for Title I students, although others may participate. Intervention is phonologically and phonetically based, follows a carefully designed instructional sequence, and has multiple scaffolds. |
3-8 Framework
Grade 3 and Beyond
Indian Springs District 109 widely agrees that good first teaching and early intervention are critical, but we also realize that there are children presently in grades 3 and beyond struggling in learning to read for an array of reasons. Evidence of the scar tissue that accumulates when literate identities of children in the upper grades sustain injury is apparent. Turning around the feelings of hopelessness and the pattern of failure is not an easy task. In response to this challenge, the district will implement a scientifically research-based strategy approach to reading and will persevere as a learning community to generate a wide range of creative solutions.
Twenty years of reading research emphasizes the importance of developing independent, strategic readers. These are readers who learn to monitor their own success and develop a wide repertoire of learning strategies to turn to when they need them. Strategic readers monitor comprehension and change strategies when they are not working. District 109's language arts curriculum is designed to provide teachers and students with a toolkit for developing strategic readers. Professional development activities are structured to support and actualization of this objective. |
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