August 2006
Central Dauphin School District

Well, August has been another busy month for the MP3 project! This month was full of training and preparation for the official kickoff of the project.  We began the month with a planning meeting to outline our activities before the start of school.  Nathan, Karen, and I met with Deb Fulton of PaTTAN and Mary Kay Gainor of CD to discuss the upcoming two day training and to plan for fall benchmark testing.

On the following day, Nathan conducted AIMSweb training for key members of the Phillips data decision making team.  Phillips will use AIMSweb this year to manage all benchmarking and progress monitoring data.  Nathan introduced the website to members of the team and provided a tutorial on the use of the system.  Additional training will be provided throughout the school year as Phillips adopts the new system. 

We had the first official meeting of the entire Phillips Data Decision Making Team on the 15th.  During this meeting we reviewed the role of the team, discussed the schedule and answered questions.  The teachers worked hard to develop a school wide schedule.

August 22nd and 23rd marked the official kickoff of MP3 Project at Phillips with our two day Professional Development Seminar.  During this time we covered a lot of information on a wide variety of topics.  We began with an overview of RTI and the model we will be implementing at Phillips.  After that we discussed CBM and Progress Monitoring and introduced the intervention schedule.  Throughout the day teachers were asked to write down any questions or concerns and put them in the “Parking Lot”.  We ended Day 1 by reviewing all comments in the Parking lot and answering questions and discussing concerns.  While Day 1 focused on RTI and the specifics of implementation, the second day of our training went “back to the basics”.  We began with a review of current reading research and an activity to review Effective Teaching practices led by Deb Fulton.  We then spent the rest of the day reviewing the 5 Big Ideas of Reading.  Teachers worked in groups and rotated to stations throughout the afternoon to discuss theory, assessment of and teaching strategies for phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and core reading instruction.  The Seminar ended with a 5 Big Ideas Jeopardy game in which our first ever MP3 Outstanding Performance Trophy was awarded to the winning team! 

Our last training was conducted on the last day of the month.  On the 31st the MP3 team met with the data collection teams for Phillips, Lawnton, and Rutherford as well as all reading specialist, and IST teachers for the district to give a DIBELS “refresher” training.  Administration and scoring procedures were reviewed and everyone had the opportunity to practice before we collect data with the students in September. 

Check in next month to learn about fall benchmarking and the start of skill groups!

Alex Hilt-Panahon - Project Coordinator, Lehigh University

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