10/08/14
Focus on Learning
On August 27th and 28th, Woodland Primary started the year out by establishing a vision for the future we wanted to create together. The Woodland Primary faculty and staff committed to establishing a culture where there is a relentless focus on learning with an unwavering belief that all students can learn at high levels. We established a theme that says that “every time we gather becomes a model of the future we want to create.” Since then all staff meetings and late start Mondays have been repurposed and retooled to support our commitment to student learning.
The first few late start Mondays in September have been devoted to deconstructing the new Washington Learning Standards and establishing grade level team norms, roles, and agreements for their work together. On September 29th, grade levels started their first of many Collaborative Inquiry (CI) work sessions, aka Professional Learning Community (PLC). Each grade level focuses on learning instead of on teaching. The focus is on the instructional results instead of on the instruction itself. Each CI meeting is more than teachers getting together to share data—it is a team of individuals who meet to achieve common goals for their grade level and for the school. Instead of sharing data, they respond to data, which requires a sense of mutual accountability and changing classroom practices. Each team focuses their conversations on the following four questions:
● What specifically do we expect all students to learn?
● How will we know when each student has learned it?
● How will we respond when students are having difficulty learning?
● How will we respond when students demonstrate that they have learned?
On September 29th, each grade level set a team SMART goal for student learning in math. Each team set a two week SMART goal that will be measured by a common formativeassessment.
The following goals were set by each grade level.
K: By 10/20/2014 100% of students will be able to connect quantities to given numbers 15.
1: By 10/15/2014 100% of 1st grade students will be proficient using addition to solve word
problems.
2: By 10/13/2014 100% of 2nd graders will able to score 80% or higher on summative
assessment of adding and subtracting within 20.
3: By 10/20/2014 100% of students will be able to solve multiplication word problems using an
array model and an equal groups model.
On October 3rd, grade levels engaged in Highly Effective Assessment Practices FOR Learning.
The primary objective is to support teams in how to use assessment information formatively and effectively in the classroom and deepen their understanding of research based,high impact formative assessment practices. Teams collaborated on effective ways to develop student understanding of the intended learning, provide descriptive feedback effectively and efficiently, and teach students to self-assess and set goals.
In addition to the late start Mondays for teachers, our instructional assistants have been engaging in professional learning on positive behavior intervention.
PBIS
Woodland Primary implemented a school wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Every student has be taught the “Woodland Way” for being respectful, responsible, a problem solver, and safe. Students are recognized daily for modeling the “Woodland Way”. Behavior referrals have dramatically decreased compared to the number of referrals by this time a year ago.
Open House
On September 25th, 2014 WPS opened our doors to students and families for a night of visiting classrooms, eating hot dogs and pie, purchasing books at the book fair, and community building. The event was well attended.
Walk a Thon
The Woodland PTSA hosted their annual “Walk for Woodland Kids” fundraiser at WPS on October 2nd. With the help of dozens of volunteers this was a huge success, raising over $10,000. A limousine lunch is planned for October 14th for all students whose pledges totaled $100 or more.
Other events
We look forward to our annual Veterans Day assembly on November 10th at 10:00. This well- attended event is open to the community.