Date: 11/29/10
To: Michael Z. Green, SuperintendentFrom: Cari Thomson, PhDRE: November Summary of Teaching and Learning
November has been another busy month at Woodland Middle School!
Professional development on Mondays has centered on department collaboration as well as examining Elmore's instructional core in relationship to our own practices. Additionally, both Integrated I teachers and the 6-8 design team participated in day long trainings with the Southwest Washington Mathematics Consortium. I attended these and was please to see the progress the groups were making. Additionally, Debra Schneider came out for a day long Integrated I training with WMS and WHS teachers and modeled a lesson. This was very insightful and led to a great discussion about mathematics instruction. Mr. Jeff Howell was kind enough to give up his classroom for Ms. Schneider to teach in, the kids were fantastic!
I also was invited by Evergreen School District to listen to Dr. Ted Feller and his thoughts on assessment. He spoke not only of formative and summative assessments but also interim assessments and how they provide students with the "big picture" of the concepts they should know. WMS and WHS Integrated I teachers will convert their unit assessments into a 0-2 scale and then Dr. Feller will be able to correlate the data to predict student success on the MSP and HSPE.
Woodland Middle School has been selected as the pilot site for sustaining the Safe Schools Healthy Students grant. Starting in January, we will be referring Medicaid students to our safe schools counselor rather than referring them out of the building. We are working with ESD 112 and Lower Columbia Mental Health to make this happen. If we are successful we will become the national model as it has not been done before.
WMS had their first honor roll field trip of the year. We took 145 students to Golden Skate and only came back with three injuries! Honor roll students also received awards cards that Jeff Nesbitt, administrative intern, developed by working with local business. Winter I sports season is wrapping up.
Have a great holiday season!