Growing Programs for Student Success

As I've noted before one of my favorite aspects of teaching is growing programs for student success. I like what we can do together as grade-level teams of students, families, educators, administrators, and community members to develop programs that serve students well today and into their futures. I was thinking a lot about this focus when I woke up early this morning. This year our team is focused on growing the following programs in the following ways:

Deeper, better math teaching

• More performance tasks with a math study process approach including problem/project work, teacher/peer edits, and share that includes discussion, debate, and displays.
• Potential revision of our grade-level RTI efforts
• Deeper efforts to teach all standards well

Teaching science standards with a greater interdisciplinary approach

• Developing our environmental science efforts throughout all aspects of the curriculum
• Bringing our science teaching full circle with more and better student writing, analysis, reflection, problem solving, project work, and presentation

A deeper, greater commitment to fostering a positive readerly life for every student 

• More conferring with students about reading
• More time for independent reading
• Helping students to find just right books
• More time for read aloud

A more explicit approach to social-emotional teaching and learning 

• Focus on teamwork with greater specificity, depth, and practice
• Focus on metacognition with attention to reflection, student portfolios, and student-led parent-student-family conferences
• Focus on growth mindset including perseverance, positive self talk, asking questions, and willingness to risk, make mistakes, and learn from them.