School Council: Goals

Getting Ready for Fourth Grade at Pierce

PIERCE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN

May 3, 2006

Submitted by School Council Members:

Jack Curtis, Parent

Joshua Frank, Vice-Principal

Mary Gabriel, Teacher

Cherie Gaehde, Parent (PTO Liaison)

Jenna Goodearl, Teacher

Chan MacVeigh, Parent

Cass Miller, Parent

Nancy Springer, Teacher

Rima Osornio, Parent

Mindy Taylor, Parent

Gigi Wiziwaty, Parent

Pipier Smith-Mumford, Principal, Co-Chair

Karen Victor, Parent, Co-Chair

We have had a very rewarding school year. We are pleased with the gains made over the course of the year. Many of our students are showing improvement on many levels from classroom assessments and standardized test such as MCAS. Our goal is always about continuous improvement in all areas. Teachers work very hard to meet student needs. Parents partner with us to enhance and support the school experience. The tireless efforts of both groups, on behalf of all the students of Pierce, are at the heart of what makes this school successful. This school improvement plan will note accomplishments in several other areas and additional areas that have been identified for specific attention. We thank all those who support our children and salute all members of our community as we continue to work together for educational excellence.

Update on Goals for 2005-2006 School Year

I. Continue to Maintain the Academic Challenge

Pierce School continues to solicit feedback to assess our progress on school improvement goals and to identify areas of concern in the school community. One overarching issue is to ensure all students are challenged to stretch and learn in ways that work best for them. We work hard to bring to life the Brookline core value of high academic achievement for all students. This year, we have more fully engaged our professional staff in the ongoing work of the Equity Project by creating a Pierce Equity team. Our goals are multi year goals as we keep them in alignment with the district's goals and core values.

We continue to promote the culture of a professional learning community amongst the faculty and staff. To ensure that teachers have appropriate tools for their work and opportunities to engage in structured conversations, we have put into place formats such as Looking At Student Work (LASW), Critical Friends Group (CFG), small inquiry groups and the establishment of Pierce Equity Teams. Teachers report that these structures, most often meeting during the faculty meeting times, are invaluable in promoting collegial and collaborative opportunities. With colleagues across grades and discipline areas, teachers used the aforementioned groups to address concerns related to their practice. They also collaborated with colleagues across the district and within the school and made presentations during staff meetings on what they have learned and how it has impacted their work in the classroom.

Feedback surveys from teachers indicated that this format was a very good use of the faculty meeting time, and urged that we continue to orchestrate our time this way again next year. Teachers also asked for more grade level time and cluster meeting time (k-3 and 4-6, our 7-8 are the cluster teams). We have had two cluster meetings this year focused on writing. Teachers were asked to respond to the following three questions:

1. What does good writing look like at each grade level?
2. How do you communicate these expectations and teach students to meet them (for example, the use of exemplars)?
3. What are the obstacles to meeting these expectations?

Teachers reported that these cluster meetings are important informational sessions as they are able to learn about curriculum issues in grades preceding and following their own, as well as to identify overlapping and inadequate coverage of some topic areas. They also reported that hearing from each other helped to reinforce some practices, like the use of rubrics, and how best to convey them to students. The meetings also brought to the fore the common obstacles to achieving the identified goals, such as a lack of time and unreliable technology.

Teachers continue to report that providing more differentiated instruction within the classroom, though most challenging in classes without aides, interns or student teachers, is seen as more viable when scheduling allows teachers to work collaboratively with reading, math and other specialists. This year, in grades four through eight, schedules were more in step with meeting this goal. The opportunity to meet during common planning time enabled teachers across all grades to more adequately prepare and discuss grade level curriculum issues. We will continue to support the creation of schedules that promote flexible groupings for reading and math in grades 4-8, while we also begin to explore how this kind of scheduling might be offered in the earlier grades.

There are now ten Pierce staff members who have been trained in the Critical Friends Group (CFG) Coaches Training. They have ignited the interest of other staff and served as leaders in small group discussions. The whole staff is either in Looking At Student Work (LASW) groups, CFG groups and inquiry groups, including our Equity Teams. Almost all of the meetings use the structures or protocols that are the framework of the CFG format. The trained coaches facilitated several meetings where we have followed a plan or protocol which allowed more equal air time for all members and more effectively used the very limited time available. Below is a sampling of comments teachers made when describing their work this year with colleagues and its impact on their students:

• “I am grateful to our facilitator for taking on this leadership role, planning and preparing for our sessions. She and I are also meeting regularly to plan classroom curriculum which ties into our group work. It has made a difference in my teaching.”
• “This time has been well spent and has allowed us to focus on the social skills curriculum and to expand the scope. We are able to test out our revisions in the classroom. I am pleased to report we see our students making gains because of these curriculum and instructional adjustments.”
• “I feel our group has gotten even better by expanding. We have energy and ideas to keep on for some time. We also have established routines and norms which provides everyone with opportunities to be heard. I know I am learning and sharing more with my colleagues.”
• “The K-3 Lucy Caulkins group reminded me of how much more I could learn if I had more time with colleagues. Without this format I would have even less time to work with them.”
• This work is hard, rethinking established ways of doing things, changing your practice. Change is hard. I feel more able to take these risks with my group's support.”

These comments have encouraged our plans to continue staff meetings as mini professional development opportunities. We also want to increase the number of CFG coaches. We have also established a Best Practices email conference for more widespread sharing amongst teachers. Making teaching practices public is an essential element of a professional learning community. We are well on our way.

A subgroup of the Pierce Equity Team collected data from 5th through 7th grade students on their knowledge of, participation in and reception to after school offerings which support academics. These results showed that the 7th and 8th graders knew more about the offerings than did the younger students, but reported lower participation. Many of them attributed the non-participation to competing after school demands. The 5th and 6th graders had some knowledge of the offerings but were unclear of who they were for and how one would enroll or participate. This subgroup has proposed an after school homework center for grades 4 to 8 as a result of this student survey and feedback from teachers and parents.

As part of the focus on transition issues from 8^th to 9^th, and as part of the work of the Equity Project, a small group of staff members continue to gather and analyze data of Pierce graduates from the past four years, gathered by Sarah Crane, the school system's data analyst. Information on their high school courses, grades and scores on MCAS and SATs are the primary areas of focus. Preliminary results have triggered a request for additional student demographics to further disaggregate the data. This committee plans to share results and seeks additional members to devise next steps on how to use this data to impact instructional practices.

Math Focus

Once again this year, we have kept the goals for improvement in math achievement at the front of our thinking with teachers and students. The Pierce School Math Committee (representing teachers at every grade level) continued to meet monthly to update established programs, set new goals for this year and next, and facilitate the communication and sharing about math among Pierce colleagues.

In addition to helping with all of our math programs and activities from the past years, the Math Committee this year, focused mainly on improving the learning of math vocabulary in grades 2-8. At our final meeting on May 24, we will discuss how best to continue supporting math instruction and the expansion of flexible math groupings for the 2006-2007 school year.

To reinforce common math vocabulary, grade 2 students maintain the Math Word Wall. Posters are created by the students to represent math vocabulary words. The Math Word Wall presents a visual display of common math vocabulary for all students. Math vocabulary acquisition is further reinforced as the word continues to be used and highlighted in their math lessons. Teachers report that second graders are more invested and take pride in owning this portion of the school math goals. There is a sense of pride and reinforcement in their learning the math vocabulary because of their role in the Math Word Wall.

Students in grades three through six, create cumulative math dictionaries throughout the year. These math dictionaries are then used as an excellent classroom resource. In addition, these individualized dictionaries are kept and used throughout the year. They are then passed on to the next year's teachers to distribute to their owners for continuation, or in seventh grade, as a starting point for their Math Glossary. Teachers report that students take more ownership in understanding and holding on to math vocabulary when they have created their own math dictionaries.

Grade seven and eight students keep a Math Glossary in their math notebooks with definitions, figures, and mathematical formulas. These are utilized as a grading component in quizzes and tests. Teachers report that for some students the Math Glossary is a significant aid in their retention of math vocabulary.

In order to facilitate this work among teachers, each one received a copy of the Pierce School Math Vocabulary Handbook, a working draft that was compiled by members of the Math Committee during a summer workshop. Teachers in Grades 4-8 also received copies of the text Hot Words, Hot Topics--A Math User's Handbook to serve in class as a good reference book for themselves and their students.

Grade level teachers continue to examine the “math benchmarks” that were devised four years ago at each grade. They were designed to “raise the bar” as far as math expectations and as extensions of the basic curriculum. Adjustments continue to be made to these documents and revisions have been shared with teachers in the preceding and subsequent grades. The teachers in grades 4-6 continue to review the pre and post assessments and reached consensus on the content and the appropriate time to give these tests, as well as the best way to share it with teachers in the next grade.

Other math enrichment and support programs and activities continue. We are in our fifth year of our free After School Math Tutoring Program for grades 3-6, and it has been a continuing success story. This year we continue to enjoy a cadre of committed high school tutors with more Pierce students in the program than ever before (42). They report that they feel the tutors help them with homework and better understand math concepts while building their skills. The tutors feel good about earning community service credit by participating in this wonderful opportunity to support and improve the math skills of our students while reinforcing their own.

We also offered after school MCAS tutoring in both English Language Arts and math for students in grades four through eight. These sessions were open to any student in those grades, free of charge, and taught by classroom teachers. We had well over thirty students for each area. Students participated to receive review and remediation as well as opportunity to boost confidence.

Pierce continues to do well in the town wide Math League competitions. This year Pierce came in third place out of ten schools at our first and second meets. We won in the operations category in all three meets. We won in the geometry and team problem solving categories at one meet. We had two students obtain perfect scores during their participation at one of the meets. Math League practice sessions continue to be attended by fifteen to thirty students each morning. Any fourth through sixth grader who is interested in math is invited to participate in Math League.

One of the Math Committee's goals was to have grade level teachers revise the summer math packets to make the assignments more fun and engaging for our students. Suggestions were made to include more creative projects or problem-solving activities. This work continued this year. Teachers reported that it is beneficial to revise and review the materials regularly to keep the summer assignments fresh and appropriate.

In addition, there are members of our Math Committee who are also members of the district wide Math Program Review Committee. These Pierce teachers along with the principal have been members of this program review committee since its inception. Next year one of the teachers from the committee will provide regular updates to the school community on the progress of the committee.

This has been a very busy year thus far in our endeavors to strengthen students' math skills and conceptual understanding. It is an ongoing effort that will continue to be a focus in the future. The members of the Math Committee and the faculty as a whole are very committed to the continuous improvement of math performance at every level at Pierce.

As a final note in this section, we feel compelled to share a few of the accomplishments Pierce students have earned in local, state and national arenas as recognition of their hard work, and because we are proud of these achievements. Fifth grader, Sam Burrington, captured the winning title in the Brookline Education Foundation's Annual Spelling Bee. The seventh and eighth grade Math Counts team came in as the top Brookline elementary school in the state competition. Our team of Celeste Cass, Aaron Jacobs, Nathan Mendelsohn, and Rachel Sege, came in 10th of 31, against very tough competition (including Milton Academy, Boston Latin, Roxbury Latin and the like). Our 7th grade team-in-training of Lynn Su and Molly MacVeagh also represented us well. Two of our eighth graders, Aaron Jacobs and Nate Mendelsohn won first prize in the annual National School Scrabble Tournament held in Boston. These are but a few examples of the ways our students have demonstrated high achievement. None of these accomplishments would have been possible had it not been for Pierce's hard working staff and supportive parent body.

II. Focus the Home/School Partnership on Academics

As part of the work of strengthening the home/school partnership this year, it became apparent from parent and teacher feedback that we should shift the focus to academic life. Communication is always a critical area. We are always looking for effective vehicles, which improve flow of information between the home and the school. In this effort, we started two series of articles: one to introduce and inform our community about our specialists on staff, and one to inform the community about general grade expectations. Our goals were to increase families' understanding of specialists' areas and highlight things that might be different from grade to grade. Sections of the weekly Broadsheet (PTO Newsletter, our main avenue of communication) were reserved under the heading entitled, “Words from the Specialists”, such as the G & T, reading and math specialists. They provided information monthly on their roles, detailing their training, interests, and their responsibilities in the school. The other Broadsheet section was entitled, “What to Expect”. In these articles, grades 4 and 5 teachers were interviewed about the general goals, expectations and special programs offered at each of these grades. We then made all this information available permanently on our new school web site. We plan to move on to 6^th grade and continue the articles through grade 8. Our hope is that once all the articles are in place, they might serve new students coming into the school as well as students and families moving up through the grade levels. Our hope is that increased availability of this type of information will help parents become more and better involved at Pierce and be better able to support their children at home.

To further support this effort, we had the following topics for the quarterly Principal's Forums:

• Getting the most from the parent/teacher conference. This well attended and well received event with over 50 parents and teachers sharing perspectives was held in November.
• The work of the Equity Teams- parents learned of the district's goals and processes in this area and met with members of the team to plan for next year.
• Courageous Conversations- the METCO Experience and Understanding Learning Differences- both of these events were held in May and reflect the community's desire for open and honest dialogue between teachers and parents.

Working more closely with the Community Partnership program, Steps to Success, helped better support outreach to those families who have great difficulty connecting with the school. The programs sponsored by the Community Partnership serve families in public housing, and/or those who meet low-income guidelines. For a variety of reasons, these are often the families hardest to engage in the academic life of their child. Working more with the Steps to Success program, which focuses on students in grade 4 and above, will provide more support to specifically reach out to these families and students of concern. To help create a cohesive community and foster understanding of the needs and nature of various groups, we will continue to address key issues such as race and equal access to education as a direct support of the efforts of the Equity Project.

This year's newly created parent email list, the Pierce Post, provided over 100 families with timely information about school events. Our goal next year is to continue to expand this list by actively recruiting more families at the fall Open House, class breakfasts and monthly PTO Community Breakfast and PTO meetings.

III. Continue to Focus on Bullying and Teasing

Through our outreach program in grade 2-6 classrooms, our monthly surveys with 7^th and 8^th graders, the annual parent and student surveys (grades 2-8), open and consistent communication between students, families and staff, and School Council discussions, a consensus has emerged that bullying issues have been and continue to be effectively addressed and are no longer a major concern at this time. We received 136 responses to our parent survey. Fewer than 10 reported any significant concern about bullying. Still, in considering these few surveys, we acknowledge that when bullying and teasing behaviors happen, it must be addressed immediately to protect the safety of a member of our community. When it is not addressed, these behaviors become a bigger problem as they are often repeated. The parent survey responses also indicated, as they did last year, that when bullying and/or teasing do occur, it tends to happen at recess. Fortunately, we have been able to add some staffing to recess in the last couple of months, and attribute some of our positive responses to the additional support on the playground.

Our outreach discussions begin with a snapshot of what's happening at Pierce. Our vice principal and guidance counselor has met with classes of students in grades 2 through 6 to assess their experiences and hear their concerns. On a monthly basis we survey our 7^th and 8^th grade students during their advisory (homeroom) period. These monthly feedback sheets reveal little to no reporting of these unwanted behaviors. Though we acknowledge this age group might be more reluctant to report these kinds of problems, students are encouraged and reminded on the survey that they can always speak with their advisor, another teacher or staff member or their parent. Generally speaking, from all of this direct student feedback and from the student responses to our annual survey on the topic, students do not see bullying as a major problem at Pierce School.

Students come to us about various small conflicts to seek our help in addressing these issues before they become big problems. In each case, we make every attempt to respond quickly. Our students know that when we see these behaviors repeatedly committed by the same individual, they cause concern for everyone involved and lead to students feeling hurt, physically and/or emotionally. These incidents also lead to staff intervention and parent involvement. The students at Pierce are clearly empowered to advocate for themselves and their classmates, just as they and the rest of us are committed to doing our part to keep Pierce a safe community conducive to learning. Our successes in addressing bullying and teasing behaviors have relied on

school wide initiatives such as the Keys to Success. These proactive measures must continue in order to assure that teasing and bullying behavior does not re-emerge as a front-burner issue as we look forward to the 2006-2007 school year at Pierce.

IV. Continue to Enhance Facilities

Pierce continues to face challenges in enhancing and maintaining its facilities, particularly as we are the only K-8 school with an open setting and two buildings to manage. Ongoing issues such as building cleanliness and attractiveness continue to be addressed. The Pierce Building Task Force meets monthly to help identify problems and create action plans. They have been instrumental in responding to some concerns raised by staff and parents. For example, they have helped remove clutter from the Primary building basement. That space is now available for use. There is also a subgroup working with town project manager, Tony Guigley, on the plans for our window replacement project. This is now scheduled to begin the summer of 2007.

There continues to be a need to renovate our auditorium. The auditorium is one of the most frequently used common spaces. Due to our vibrant performing arts program and our increased student numbers, the functionality of the auditorium space is no longer adequate. We continue to work with Peter Rowe to push up the date of the auditorium renovation in the capital improvement budget.

The following goals have been accomplished:

• Bar coding for the library
• Maintaining the relationship between Pierce Building Task Force , Building and Custodial departments
• Ongoing Clutter Buster Events

Pierce School Improvement Goals 2006-2007

I. Continue to Focus on the Academic Challenges

As differentiation of instruction continues to drive our work in meeting the wide range of student needs, we will more closely look at the data we collect, determine next steps and adjust practices as needed. The following goals will tie into the system's goals of strengthening the collegial professional culture, developing assessments, closing the achievement gap, and providing professional development opportunities to further these goals:

• Expand the number of teachers in Looking At Student Work (LASW) groups, Critical Friends Group (CFG) opportunities, and inquiry groups. Deepen the ongoing work of those already involved in these professional development activities across the curriculum.
• Increase the opportunities for vertical articulation and grade level team meetings to promote greater awareness of student learning K-8 and grade level Learning Expectations across the curriculum.
• Collaborate with 7-8 teachers to create a new master schedule to enhance our ability to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of a widely diverse student body. This collaboration will also use this year's analysis of after school homework centers to refine and revise those programs.
• Explore the creation of an after school homework center staffed by teachers for grades 4 to 8, in addition to MCAS tutoring sessions.
• Continue to expand and support the work of the task force looking at data on Pierce graduates.

Measurement:

-The 35 teachers currently in the LASW and CFGs will continue in their groups

-Increase by three to six the current number of teachers in LASW and CFGs

-Increase the development of rubrics and public sharing of best practices

-Classroom assessments, MCAS scores

-Feedback surveys from teachers, students and parents

Math Focus Continues

Pierce School has a long term commitment to excellence in mathematics instruction. The Pierce community has identified math as an area for continued focus. We have moved forward this year in coordinating assessments from grade to grade, laying the foundation for our work in years to come. In the coming year, our goals for this work include the following:

1. Work with math specialist for K -3, as well as the math curriculum coordinator, to develop grade level assessments for the lower grades. As we have done with grades 4- 6, we want to begin this process in order to coordinate instruction and student learning K - 3.

2. Continue to share and further examine the Pierce Math Benchmarks for all grades, helping to keep teachers current in the Learning Expectations and in the development of student assessments. This work is important as new teachers join our staff.

3. Model flexible math groupings for inclusion in more classes. Identify specialists and other support staff to demonstrate a variety of flexible grouping models. Research how these models work in other Brookline schools.

4. Continue the work of the Pierce Math Committee with specific focus on supporting the above goals and others identified by the committee.

5. Communicate on a regular basis to the Pierce community the work of the Math Program Review Committee. Our goal includes the creation of a liaison to provide updates from the Committee.

Measurement:

-Classroom assessments, MCAS scores

-Feedback surveys from teachers, students and parents

II. Further Enhance School/Home Communications

Communication is critical to strengthening the partnership between school and home. Feedback from parents and teachers suggest that we continue to share information about school life. We want to continue the successful communication on learning about general grade level expectations to assist in grade transitions and the roles of specialists. In addition, families want to know what is happening school wide, above and beyond what is relevant to their own child's grade. We also plan to do a better job highlighting our school's successes. Therefore we have the following goals:

• Continue the “What to Expect” and “Words from the Specialists” sections of the Broadsheet
• Report monthly on the school wide activities in both the Broadsheet and the Pierce Post (parent email list)
• Continue to expand the Pierce Post by actively recruiting more families more families through the information packet, class breakfasts, monthly PTO Community Breakfast and PTO meetings

We also want to continue to reach out to our diverse family population to be sure they are able to participate fully in the life of the school. Our hope is that the collaboration of the Pierce Equity Team, the METCO Partnership along with the PTO and School Council, will further support the achievement of all students. In this effort, we put forth the following goals:

• Focus topics for the PTO/Principal's Forums on the Equity Project and on exploring the richness of our school's diversity
• Continue to examine the results of the annual Tripod student surveys administered in the spring to 3rd, 5th and 7th graders and determine how best to share the results and what they tell us