I talked to fellow KC steering committee member, Laurie Milne (also in area V), and asked her to give me her crib notes from the area meeting of last week that I couldn't make. Here is her summary:
"Scott Fehr was the main presenter ( he is the System AP I think) and he spoke about PLC's ( professional learning communities) and how they address the needs of students from the "grass roots" level based on data driven information from the provincial achievement tests, pillar studies, and other input from the parents and school. The final goal is always to meet the 5 end statements of the CBE.
There are facilitators in place to help learning communities meet these goals. Their job is to meet with teachers in groups of any size in a learning community. Together they will brainstorm and come up with a plan to work on area's in which the students are not reaching the desired level of achievement.
For example, a grade 3 language arts PAT result with falling achievement in the area of writing organization could be addressed. The facilitators could work with the teachers in a PLC and decide that the best way to work with the students in this area would be by using smart boards in a group setting to show how to organize sentence and paragraph structure. There is an emphasis in the "no child left behind" philosophy, and serious problems or deficits are addressed immediately.
The example for this was a child who did not write anything besides the title on her story for the PAT. It was an interesting and interactive meeting, and helped me to understand how different areas of the CBE can work together. Parent input and parent/teacher communication is very important."
Big thanks to Laurie!
In its first few days of operation, the Haultain Parents blog has set a new model for parent-school communications - and must certainly stimulate other parents and schools to follow suit.
ReplyDeleteOne interesting thing it achieves is to keep those not directly involved in daily school activities - grandparents and other caring relatives - aware of the school's teaching philiosophy, which is enormously important these days.
Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this useful communications tool - even though I suspect that your skills will soon be called upon by other parent-teacher groups around the city and the province.
JN
Thanks JN - we're hoping to reach as many parents at Haultain as possible, but there is definitely the added bonus of extended family members. I'll have to pass the link on to my folks.
ReplyDeleteShane