It is SO great to have everyone back here at Willow for another great school year! We have a lot of fun things happening this year as we are able to do more groups and mix grade levels of students after last year.
I visit classrooms to deliver Life Skills lessons every other week and will do my best to post photo-worthy activities here for parents to see what we have been up to as well! I'm also posting my bi-weekly calendar and my *plan* is to update this to maintain a weekly calendar for all to see my schedule! My blog posts always start with the best of intentions and waned by November, but if I put it out there to y'all I may need to be more accountable! ;)
While we are talking about being held accountable, I'll also share out my student outcome goals for this year. While data has been tricky to get a hold of the past two years, it is always fun for me to watch students grow and share this out!
2021-2022 Student Outcome Goals
By June 2022, 56% of 4th graders at Willow will score advanced/proficient on the Forward ELA exam, from 49% doing so in 2021. Willow's Leadership team has set this goal for all 3-5th graders this year, so I throwing my hat in the ring by reinforcing our academic success lessons from last year, creating small groups to support those students who did not reach this (managing test stress, studying strategies, setting goals etc.) and continuing our Literacy Toolbox Book Club program to get books in the hands of all students.
By June 2022, the percentage of the building's ODRs coming from Kindergarten will decrease by 34% - from 38% of the building's ODRs in 2020-2021 to 25%. From getting into the Kinder classrooms daily the first month of school to instruct Second Step lessons as they were intended (in past years I've used Second Step as my curriculum and taught lessons every other week - so I'm getting to Fair Ways to Play in May when we have had a full year of conflicts during play!!) to more intentional small groups based on behavioral referrals, I am predicting a front-loading of social skills at the beginning of the year and Tier 2 supports after will help get this number down. We always expect our Kinders to need the most behavioral coaching, but in the past our K classes have had as high as 38% of our building's ODR's, which is quite a gap compared to our other grades.
By June 2022, Office Discipline Referrals (ODRs) for male students will decrease by 8%, from 71% of all ODRs to 65%. While this is a national trend in education, Willow River continues to have a discipline/behavioral gap with our male students vs. female. I will be offering staff professional development connecting brain science, males, and behavior while also inviting boys from our school who are receiving these ODRs into groups to review and practice peaceful problem solving strategies and leadership skills.
Here's to year #8 here at my beautiful little elementary building!!!!!!
