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Executive Summary: School Improvement Plan |
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Allenwood Elementary School is a Model Comprehensive School, which opened in 1967. The total student enrollment is 530 students with now fifty-two staff members. This student enrollment has increased from our 2000-2001 school year population. Our school is located in a community where we serve only students from the Camp Springs and Temple Hills attendance area. Our community population is 94% African American, 3% White, 1% Hispanic, 1.8% Asian, and 0.2% American Indian. 39% of students participate in the Free/Reduced Meals Program. The average class size at Allenwood Elementary School consists of a range from 20.1 to 31.0 in grades K-6.
Allenwood Elementary is a place where staff, parents, business partners and the community collaborate to meet the challenge in education for all children. We strongly believe that children are priority in every decision made about their valuable education at Allenwood Elementary School. We articulate our school vision and philosophy to all stakeholders in meeting the challenge we now face in education for excellence for all students. Through high academic focus, extensive staff development initiatives and increased participation among our parents and business partnerships, we will begin to achieve at satisfactory and above in areas by the year 2005 on the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program.
Our goal at Allenwood Elementary is by year 2005, 70% of our third and fifth grade students will achieve a satisfactory score in reading, writing, language, mathematics, science and social studies on the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP). Students in grades 2, 4 and 6 will achieve the 70th percentile on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) by year 2005. In addition, we will achieve the excellent range of 96% in student attendance. This year, 2002, our Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) for grades 2, 4 and 6 increased by 2 percentage points above the national average. Our goal is to continue to provide the instructional program, which correlates performance-based and basic skills to further our success on the CTBS next school year. Our goals are aligned with our school needs and the written action plan presented here.
In the areas of reading, writing and language usage, our school will focus on additional staff development opportunities to address quality reading and writing instruction for all students in grades K-6. It is the goal of the school community to expand the knowledge base of all children, so that children will have a more consistent background as they move from one grade level to the next. A constant focus will be placed on writing at the primary grade levels as we prepare these youngsters for more intense writing at the intermediate grade levels. The Four Square Writing Method will be utilized school-wide (grades 1-6) to further support our goals to increase writing across the curriculum.
In mathematics, the focus needs more intense activities to support the goal of success we are striving to achieve. Communication in mathematics will be the priority focus as we work with children to write in mathematics. Challenge of the week, math word problems, problem-solving activities and the 4-Square writing method are some of the strategies that the Allenwood staff will undertake to provide opportunities for children to write in mathematics. The staff will reach out to the parent and community group by hosting a Family Math Night to provide additional strategies that parents can do at home to further enhance the mathematics program. Again, this school year, quality instruction in the area of mathematics will be addressed through quarterly planning for improved teaching and learning by grade levels and cross grade levels. A greater emphasis will be placed on learning of the basic facts in mathematics, providing more opportunities for students to make connections of previously learned concepts to new concepts, and providing lessons, which support math integration and connections to the humanities, science, and reading. Lessons written and implemented in all grade levels will include authentic problem solving tasks and will follow the Five E’s model to meet the state outcomes.
In the area of science, teachers will continue in grades K-6 with a focus on the prescribed curricular outcomes using more creative ways to present information to students. Science instruction will follow the science plus tasks for each grade level with a more constant monitoring of the assessments given each quarter through the science plus tasks. AIMS activities and other supporting instructional strategies will be implemented to help our students with the content of meeting the science outcomes. Expository texts will be utilized and monitored this school year to support the content of teaching science to children as well as the performance-based activities in science.
In the area of social studies, the main focus will be to integrate reading and writing into the content for students to read, respond and write. Staff development opportunities using manipulative in social studies will be greatly enhanced so that teachers and students will be able to utilize materials in social studies with ease. Map essentials, video clips with history content, and other expository texts will be utilized to support children as they accomplish the state outcomes in social studies. Additional materials in social studies to meet the specific areas of need will be purchased to provide adequate and effective instruction to students.
Our school climate process has been very successful and we will continue with some of the same strategies for effective management practices of students. The Community of Caring and Character Education program instituted two years ago will continue with a few enhancements. An integration of teaching the core values will be continue in all content areas such as reading, music, science, social studies, etc. We hope that these strategies will help our school climate in keeping suspensions rates low and also by teaching our students the important values of being safe, well liked, successful in school and mature as they matriculate at the elementary level.
All classes at grades K-6 have been blocked-scheduled to allow for team planning of instruction at al grade levels. Each Tuesday and Thursday of the week, grade levels meet with principal, reading specialist, math specialist to plan and drive instruction in the classroom. There will be a set agenda of items to cover during this one-hour period of time for each grade level. Each grade level will focus on learning outcomes and how they are meeting them and student achievement of these outcomes. Staff will be asked to bring to these planning meetings, samples of students writing in the area of mathematics, science, social studies and reading. Our focus will be “writing across all content areas.” We strongly feel as a school team that if we can promote good writing strategies across all content areas, our children will do much better on the MSPAP outcomes and assessment. In reading, the four stances will be highlighted in all content areas as we encouraged more opportunities for writing. The FUSE and Four Square Writing strategies will be used as we move to develop better writing samples from our students. We strongly feel that with this teacher-planning model in place each week, instruction can be monitored, assessed, and adjusted for optimal performance on county, state and national assessments.
Allenwood Elementary School’s instructional initiatives for the next three years will include performance-based instruction which mirrors assessments; use of journal writing, FUSE to support short answer responses, rubric scoring and writing across all content areas; much greater emphasis on integration of content areas; and to continue our focus on Technology inclusion. We, the staff and community of Allenwood Elementary will strive for high academic achievement for all students. As we prepare our students to be life-long learners, they will be equipped with the knowledge, skills and work habits that would enable them to be successful members of society. |
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