Transcript Reaching New Heights!” - Winton Woods City School District

Kendell L. Dorsey, Principal
State of the School Address
Winton Woods Elementary School
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
“Working Together”
About Us
 534 students (256 – grade 3 and 278 – grade 4)
 Students with Disabilities (75 students – 14%)
 Limited English Proficient (62 students – 12%)
 African-American (356 students – 67%)
 Hispanic/Latino (44 students – 8%)
 Multiracial (48 students – 9%)
 White (86 students – 16%)
 We have had 636 come through the building this year.

25% of all students are transient (either started after the first
week of school or have withdrawn).
Improvements for 2011-12
 Improved our diagnostic assessments to ensure that we
can provide appropriate interventions for students as
needed
 Placed an emphasis on teacher collaboration
 Created common department planning time on
Wednesdays to allow teachers to collaborate on best
practices
 Created improvement teams of staff (and some parents)
to improve aspects of the school including: culturally
responsive practices, parent/community relations,
academic pride, positive behavior supports and service
learning
Improvements for 2011-12
 Our school improvement teams have:
 Created our new Galloway Learning Center in the front
lobby
 Improved our school wide behavior program be unifying
school money and creating a new traveling school store
“Warrior Deals on Wheels”
 Our award-winning service learning project, “Giraffe
Heroes” focuses on character education and doing
projects to make the world a better place
 Instituted a new parent newsletter
 Had an excellent Mix-It-Day which was a meaningful
experience for students
Improvements for 2011-12
 Our community has supported us to provide many
improvements:
 A Chase Bank grant allowed all students to attend the National







Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
Our lobby improvements were donated by the family of Julie
Galloway (a former WWES teacher)
Our Career Fair was staffed by community members and all 4th
graders were able to attend.
Wal-Mart has provided funds to support our school store and
aware two staff members with financial awards.
PTA has funded many initiatives to support many of our
programs.
Motivational Speakers – current/former professional athletes
Duke Energy sponsored Science related assembly – The
Energized Guyz
Greenhills/Forest Park Kiwanis purchased “Stellaluna” for all 3rd
grades and sponsors reading competition
Improvements for 2011-12
 Our community has supported us to provide many
improvements:
 Local churches/organizations have donated school
supplies



Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church
Compass Community Church
Forest Park Steppers Club
 Whiz Kids
Benchmark
Last Winter
This Winter
Last Spring*
This Spring
Reading - 3
61%
64%
72%
66%
Reading - 4
78%
67%
88%
(74%)**
Math - 3
45%
54%
45%
51%
55%
86%
68%
71%
Math - 4
Diagnostics
 We have improved our diagnostic assessments to
ensure we are well aware of your child’s progress.
 Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI)
 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
(DIBELS)
 Diagnostic Spelling Assessment (DSA)
 Scholastic Math Inventory (SMI)
 Ohio Achievement Assessment Practice Tests
(Benchmarks)
Response to Intervention
 We use our diagnostic data to provide interventions for
students based on their level of need. We must
monitor their progress with interventions and take
them through all tiers to determine if they may need
special services.
 Tier 1 – general curriculum
 Tier 2 – targeted interventions needed (team time,
guided reading groups, math support, SOAR
intervention)
 Tier 3 – intensive intervention (WAC Reading, pair with
intervention specialist)
80-90%
“Meaningful Experiences”
Curriculum: Reading
 The district has implemented a new literacy
framework model.
 Part of the make up of reading class is guided reading,
self-selected (independent) reading , working with
words and writing
 As students engage text we want to encourage them to
make connections, question, predict (infer), determine
importance, visualize and synthesize.
 We use elements of the daily five method to ensure
children have a meaningful experience. Each day we
want to make sure that students: read to self, read to
someone, listen to someone read, work on writing and
work on words.
Curriculum: Reading
How can you help?
 Encourage your child to make connections, predict (infer),
determine importance and visualize as they read.
 Focus on those daily five skills when working with your child:
have them read to themselves, to you or younger siblings.
 Encourage reading of many different mediums. It is great for
students to read fictional stories. We also want them to
engage in non-fictional text (i.e. newspaper, appropriate
websites, research) – this is a big focus of the National
Common Core Standards that are coming down the pike.
 Attend literacy related events at school and in the community
Curriculum: Math
 We continue our use of the Investigations of Number, Data and Space.
 Support students to make sense of mathematics and learn that they can
be mathematical thinkers
 Emphasize reasoning about mathematical ideas
 Engage the range of learners in understanding mathematics.
 The program focuses several ideas:
 Students have mathematical ideas. The curriculum must support all
students in developing and expanding those ideas.
 Teachers are engaged in ongoing learning about mathematics
content and about how students learn mathematics. The curriculum
must support teachers in this learning.
 Teachers collaborate with the students and curriculum materials to
create the curriculum as enacted in the classroom. The curriculum
must support teachers in implementing the curriculum in a way
that accommodates the needs of their particular students.
Curriculum: Math
How can you help?
 Ensure that your child knows all of their appropriate




math facts
Support your child with homework using the Math
Handbook
Have your child continue to engage in math activities
throughout the summer
Students can also continue their work in Study Island
throughout the summer.
Attend math nights when they are offered
Curriculum: Science
 The district adopted Interactive Science.
 The program is built around 3 focus areas:
 Reading – a high quality engaging text that allows for
receive multiple opportunities to engage non-fictional
text in a meaningful way
 Inquiry – provide meaningful real world experiences to
help students construct meaning around Science
concepts
 Digital – the program has a comprehensive digital
component that assist students in accessing the
curriculum
Building Climate
 We have worked hard to improve our building climate. We
still have work to do.
 Our office referrals have increased 22%.
 We have increased out of school suspensions by 41%. (114 to
161)
 We have put a lot of emphasis on improving building
climate:
 Improved our positive behavior support system – unified





Warrior Bucks
Created a new school store
Positive Behavior Referrals (VIW)
Implement Warriorology – Character Education
Anti-bullying training with Children’s Theatre
Giraffe Heroes – Character Education component
Building Climate
 We have put a lot of emphasis on improving building
climate:
 Guest Speakers – Pittsburgh Pirates, former Bengal
 Implement behavior interventions based on student
need through the Response to Intervention process
including:



Check In/Check Out
Small group intervention – anger management, social skills
Ladies Who Lunch
 Site based therapist through Talbert House
 Teacher professional development with a behavioral
specialist
Building Climate
How you can help?
 Daily remind your child of school behaviors and hold
them accountable for poor choices
 Consider mentoring a child to be a positive influence
 Keep in strong communication with the school
regarding your child’s behavior
“Making A Difference”
Looking towards the future
 Continue to strengthen academic achievement by
working to meet students’ individual needs
 Develop focused school wide initiatives to strengthen
the climate of the building and improve student
discipline
 Improve parental involvement – increase parental
involvement on all improvement teams, increase
parental and community tutoring
 Improve our physical building (i.e. library, painting,
clean up)