Fifth+Grade+PLC

Riverbend Elementary School Fifth Grade Professional Learning Community

Schedule of joint IST/Fifth Grade PLC meetings 2008-2009: Sept. 19, Oct. 10, Nov. 7, Dec. 5, Jan. 23, Feb. 13, Mar. 6, April 10, May 8 PLC & PLC/IST minutes:

Friday, May 8th, 2009 Present: Badilla, Doxey, Katasse, Faure, Parmentier, Cox Not Present: Pasteris (Absent), Smyth

Discussion: Talked about student progress during the last intervention cycle.

Reflection: Fifth grade was based on less data than younger grades. Less progress monitoring/assessment than needed. Jan would like to be preteaching what's coming up. It will be a bit easier next year with power standards selected. We talked about the challenges of "no new whole group instruction" and brainstormed ways to provide everyone what they need. The math intervention went well (especially having Tina work with the most needy students).

Carmen, noting that MRCS and, starting next year, GV are using a scripted series, is thinking that if we don't meet AYP again, we have to do something different (like a scripted series).

Other possible names for the intervention block: Skill building time, tool time,

It was mentioned that the current structure (all of the IST meeting with a grade level) didn't facilitate all the conversations that need to happen (like the EL or ESL teacher meeting with the classroom teachers making curricular adjustments to meet the particular needs of their students).

Pasteris Monday @ 11:40 Parmentier Thursday @ 11:40

22nd P&P Echo Ranch, potential 28/29th

We did a lot more reflecting, but I didn't jot it all down (SHW)

Friday, February 13, 2009 Present: Parmentier, Pasteris, Doxey, Faure, Wittig, Cox, Katasse, Badilla

Status of DRA2 assessments: Nick has all of the oral readings done, Tina has about half of the oral readings done. Both plan on having the kids complete complete their booklets at the same time. Tina is planning on borrowing the extras she needs from Karen's DRA2 box. Karen said that, since she wasn't helping much over the last three weeks, she is more than willing to help score the comprehension section. Wednesday, March 4th, John Wahl will be working with the IST after school on how to access various assessment databases.Thursday, March 5th, after school, during the regular staff development time, John will do a similar training with the classroom teachers, et. al. Math: We don't have a current summative (or pre-test) math assessment on the fifth graders, but we know, based on current performance and past test results that we have a critical mass of students that would benefit from some math intervention before the SBA's. It was noted that some of the students, it is a language problem (ESL or other). A lot of the kids would benefit from CGI math, explicit instruction in problem-solving strategies. We looked at the Mathematics Practice Test (SBA-Grade 5). Tina also shared a meta-analysis on math instruction. (Carmen is reading at 11:00 AM on Monday). The rest of us would like to read the article. Tina thought it might be too confusing to have the kids doing fractions in the morning and division during intervention, but maybe an integrated unit (MCC-geometry) might work. We also talked about flipping the two, and having everyone do MCC in the morning, and then during intervention. 9:40-10:35 Whole Class - Trailblazers/Sixth Grade Math10:50-11:40 MCC (11:30-11:35 interventionists come in to help students transition out to intervention)11:40-12:10 Math intervention (CGI, CML, etc.) perhaps wrapped in a MathQuest shell. Discussion about materials needed prior to this intervention starting. We still need to finish DRA2's. Jan has ESL testing that will make her unavailable for intervention for two weeks. We will start one week from Monday. We will meet Wednesday after school to group students and answer the following questions: How will we group students? Based on present assessments, teachers have the data they need to categorize students most pressing intervention needs. What materials will the interventionist need?

How long will this intervention last? We have four full weeks (not counting next week) until SBA's. So we will probably go up until then.

Friday, January 23, 2009 Present: Parmentier, Doxey, Cox, Wittig, Faure, Pasteris, Badilla

Agenda: book club closure & reflection, planning/chunking out the rest of the year. Book club closure: Our goal: for students to be able to generate good author & me questions for discussion.Did we meet this goal? We went around the table and summarized our experiences. Mixed results. Good discussion.Evidence:What else came from them? Good? Bad?A lot of kids were struggling with interpretation, and this QAR helped with that. We talked a bit about how the Junior Great Books might help with this (we have 10-15 copies at each grade level). Schedule - looking at the rest of the school year.

January - Artist in Residence - poetry/book-making/art thing -Three weeks, 1 hr/day 5x/weeks.

FebruaryJan's ESL testing - Feb 23 - Mar 6 (no regular group instruction, some group testing, some indivdual testingTerra Nova Feb 3-5 Three mornings. MarchMaybe one full day of skiingspring breakParent teacher conferences - 11-12-13 AprilSBA- 14-16April 20-May 15 (Missouri full charge) Sea Week (April & May) Inservice 24/25 May28-29 Echo RanchCruise ShipI'm going to collegeI'm going to middle school (half day)Science Fair???EL Project Fair (Saturday May 16?)

Brainstormed what our big priorities are prior to SBA's Looking at doing a three (ish) week intervention in math. But first we are going to do DRA2 on all of the fifth grade. Nick does AIS during intervention block, beginning. IST will do DRA2 on as many kids a we can. Classroom teachers will get together lists of kids and the interventions they need (including students who can come to Sheryl for Continental Math League). We will probably need to get together before our next scheduled meeting to look at the DRA2 data, reflect, & plan.

End of this year - look at fourth grade DRA2 data, come up with plan for fall, so we can hit the ground running.

Carolyn Kelley - We need information/schedule for Terra Nova testing ASAP!

Present: Karen Doxey (Notetaker), Jan Faure (Tiime Watcher), Sheryl Wittig (Facilitator), Doug Badilla, Nick Parmentier, Tina Pasteris, Deb Cox Agenda:
 * Friday, December 5, 2008**

The IST proposal to develop an overall Goal for every student (Critical Thinking Skills), how to measure, how to provide feedback to students and how to provide feedback to their classroom teachers. Intervention Goal for each group (based on DRA) Intervention Goal for at risk groups (Intervention Specialists) Reflection about the process.

Ideas: That each student be able to state an opinion and back it up with context from the text. **That students be able to come up with interpretation questions (author and me).** Looking for words or passages that you think are important or look for parts of the story that you feel strongly. or “What do you think?” What do you know? What do you know? What do you wonder?” This would lead to the skill of summarizing.

Sheryl shared the rules of shared inquiry.

Ideas for teaching the interpretive questions: What do you think?” What do you wonder? Look for words or passages that you think are important and that you wonder about. Look for parts of the story that you feel strongly about. Sheryl will also provide other suggestions.

How can we measure? **We will take their questions, date them and compare their progress three weeks from now.**

For next time around we want to spend more time looking for titles that will provoke thinking. Some ideas: Historical Fiction Odd Man Out (Tolerance) Collier Books (Civil War )

Leader Role: Sheryl talked about keeping track of the dialogue while they are discussing as a way of keeping track.

Housekeeping: Sheryl can see two groups if the teachers would like her to – she has the time. Jan thought the reason Deb was not in the 5th grade book group was because she was with an intensive level three student, so wants to know how the groups came to be the way they are (why Spec Ed not working with the group that is 2/3 IEP. Deb’s response – she is doing 3rd grade math at the 5th intervention time. This because “we were so late getting started” that her schedule was set.

Carmen suggests that Deb transitions them back to seat work and then join the 5th grade. Deb feels strongly that she should stay with the 3rd grade level. The question is if whether the ESL students are receiving adequate instruction the way the groups are set right now? Carmen talked with Deb to clarify her schedule during the 5th grade intervention time. Deb also clarified that she is pulling a 4th grade student for reading 1:1 during that time.

When we get back together again, we will look specifically at the questions that ESL students have written and determine if they are reaching the goal along with other 5th grade students. Jan will send information to the group about the ESL students.

When do we want to be done with the groups? We need to find books for Tina to use to fill the gap. When we are done with this we need to ask if this is the best use of the intervention time. In order to answer that question, we would need to bring reading, writing math data to the next meeting to make that determination. The classroom teachers will tell us by the 9th of January which direction they want to take the intervention time: continue with the books groups or change directions? One idea is to combine math and reading by having the intervention focus on math language.

Pr esent: Badilla, Doxey, Pasteris, Parmentier Notes - Rumor has it someone took notes. If so, they go here!! **
 * November 7, 2008

October 10, 2008

>Analyzing DRA data –determine trends and immediate needs

>Determine intervention, intervention curriculum, what assessments will be done

>Areas that require whole-class instruction - Expression, Phrasing & Fluency. Ways to address these areas: Punctuation Chart, Choral Reading, plays, reading theater, books on tape -Comprehension – type of intervention suggested; “Making Meaning”

>Question for reading specialist – recommendations/suggestions in how to address whole class instructional areas

>Students needing level 1 and level 2 intervention – not determined yet (possibly students reading at a level 38 and below)

Meeting Again with 5th grade teachers:Tuesday, October 14th, 3:50 pm. in Doxey’s room. Agenda: Revisit the 5th grade data and decide on the intervention groups.

Notes from continuation of 5th grade PLC/IST meeting Tuesday, October 14, 2008, 3:50 PM

Present: Pasteris, Cox, Faure, Doxey, Wittig, Parmentier

Pasteris mentioned that she has three or four spelling groups using Words Their Way, and could probably have a couple more. We noticed that most of the fifth graders identified to work with Faure, and really have some typical ESL behaviors.

We discussed helping the students with their content area studies. We noted that the fifth grade social studies text book is beyond almost all of the students (reading level).

5th grade intervention time will be focusing in on text features and vocabulary. The classroom teacher will addrress expression and phrasing through the whole group.

The focus for the next three weeks or so will be comprehension and text features via content area (The Consitution). Doxey will bring a unit on text features and we’ll use the 5th grade history book, chapter 13, Consitution.


 * September 19, 2008**

Fifth grade PLC/IST Meeting Friday, September 19, 2008 Present: Doxey, Wittig, Faure, Badilla, Pasteris, Parmentier, Smyth, Katasse Roles: Doxey: Facilitator, Badilla: Parking Lot Attendant, Faure: Time Keeper & Gopher, Wittig: Notetaker

Agenda:

1 Common understanding of oral fluency. 2 Interrater reliability – look at rubrics & samples, try out rating various samples. 3 Score reading assessment

DRA2 Continuum explanation: Karen Doxey described the part of the assessment the RAT (Riverbend Assessment Team) administered (Oral reading fluency)

Proceeded to score out sample comprehension packets. Lots of agreement between raters, which is comforting. One note: When discussing one student’s summary, most of us concluded that we would give the work a 2 if we wanted to know if the student could write a summary, but a 3 if we were trying to determine if the student understood the story.

Discussion about what to do with 20 minutes left. The group decided to continue developing inter-rater reliability for the remaining traits and then divvy up the assessments to be read by two persons each.

We are comfortable with our inter-rater reliability for Oral Reading & Comprehension. There was a discussion about Reading Engagement. The classroom teachers will assess that section.