Divisional Meeting (October) - Minutes

Divisional Meeting – October 2012 (Minutes)

Marker Student (Tracking Sheet & Folder)

§  Use of varied strategies is important ex. Graphic organizers, tiering, chunking tasks are strategies

§  Preferential seating, use of computer not strategies

§  Some strategies in Effective Guides and in CASI manual

§  Should be a student who is a level 2ish who with some intervention can move

§  Submit name and rationale to Brian – use data and examples to support choice

§  If you need data Brian will print the information from the data warehouse

§  Use your professional judgment and get data to support

§  Pieces in the file or portfolio should be unedited and authentic work from the student

§  Nothing that goes home can be assessed

§  These marker student files will come to the next divisional mtg

Learning Goals/Success Criteria/Descriptive Feedback

§  Reference to the Damian Cooper clip (see earlier post) everyone watched last year

§  Once we put a mark on it the learning stops

§  Evidence is nice to see in the halls

§  Build the rubric from the learning goal and the success criteria you establish

§  Students need this before they embark on the task so they ‘know the rules of the game’

§  This evidence of student learning also helps when you are writing report cards

Formative Assessment (“once we put a ‘mark’ on something, the learning stops”)

Portfolio

§  Let’s make sure we have collected all the files for the students in our class – ask around if you are missing some

§  Authentic pieces – perhaps something from language and math each term

§  Writing pieces should not be edited yet

§  No we don’t remove anything from the files

                        Student Self-Assessment

§  Begin to think about students going through this process as it is very important

§  We would like to move in the direction of student led conferencing

§  Students need to play a role in their learning - accountability

IEP

§  Thanks to the teams that met to develop those

§  Difficult sometimes when we don’t have the feedback from last year

§  This year will meet with teachers before the end of the year so we have a starting point for the IEP done in June

§  IEP’s should have writing on them – indicate if the goal was attempted but not met or the opposite

§  Share with the EA’s as they support goals on the IEP’s as well

§  Written on copy of the IEP is what goes home with the report card

Support (Guided Instruction)

§  Our support staff is assigned to the school

§  LSST’s and EA’s are in the classrooms helping all who need it

§  Work in small groups – more children will benefit

§  When someone else walks into a room they should not be able to tell ‘who is who’ in the room in terms of Teacher, EA or LSST

§  We work collaboratively as teams

§  LSST’s are delivery PALs remedial and guided instruction

§  Great if the materials are ready in the room and the person coming in already knows what their role is

§  Should not have to ask the teacher each day what they are working on

§  Have to tweak schedules to go with the data

Math Focus

§  Ministry focus this year across Ontario

§  Package provided has the linear look at the expectations

§  Look at the grades in your division or the grade before and after yours- find the ‘AHA’ or something interesting to share at the PD day in Nov. as that will be a numeracy focus

§  Let us know if there is something you think we should explore that would be practical for all

Questions/Comments

·       Can we compile a list of possible strategies to explore with marker students or all students?  Answer=Absolutely.  We can work toward this during our Divisional Meetings this year

·       How many pieces should go into the portfolio?  Answer=All year long we should be putting everything into the Portfolios.  At certain points during the year you will ‘cull’ them and keeping only certain ‘authentic’ pieces.  We started a School Wide list last June….lets build on it.

·       IEP statement – does it have to go onto the Progress report?  Answer=No

·       Do we comment on all 4 areas of language for the progress report?  Answer=Maybe.  You comment on where you are (i.e. If you have enough for a comment, then comment.  If you don’t have enough, then you don’t comment.)  Please remember that these are only a Progress Report and not a Report Card.