Monthly Updates

March 2006 Central Dauphin School District What an exciting month! The Lehigh grant staff met with three potential preschool sites for the project. Most of the feeder preschools for Central Dauphin School District are smaller private day care facilities. About one-third of the incoming kindergarteners do not attend pre-school, while the remainder of the students attend nearly 20 different preschools or day cares. Christine Lay, the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Central Dauphin School District, made the initial contact and then attended each meeting to express the school district support for the project. With her help, we were able to secure participation for two of the three preschools. The Lehigh grant staff also had the opportunity to meet with Deb Fulton from PaTTAN and Mary Kay, the professional development coordinator from Central Dauphin School District, to review the baseline data and discuss future professional development opportunities for the teachers. Several key areas for professional development were identified: Review of the Big Ideas of Reading (Phonological Awareness, Alphabetic Principal, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension) and how they fit into the core curriculum Materials and Strategies for Differentiating the Core Curriculum Using the Teaming Process for Data Decision Making Progress Monitoring Addressing these areas prior to the implementation of the project is necessary to ensure success. With the help of Debbie Stover, the principal at Phillips Elementary School, we were able to schedule several times to provide professional development to the teachers. First, Project MP3 staff will be able to meet with teachers for 50 minutes one time a month for the next three months to introduce using the teaming process for data based decision making. Second, a school-wide data decision making team will be identified and they will participate in the AYP conference at Penn State this summer. The goal is to meet with the team during the conference and discuss the model for the up coming year. The details still need to be sorted out. Finally, we have proposed a two-day professional development seminar prior to the start of the school year for ALL teachers. Teachers will receive information about the school model, the big ideas in reading, and progress monitoring. Debbie promises that food will be served so it should be good. Project MP3 staff and Deb Fulton from PaTTAN were able to implement the first professional development training of the project. Eighteen teachers received an introduction to DIBELS, the teaming process, and interpreting benchmark data. Teachers were both excited and concerned by the fall and spring benchmark data they saw. Unfortunately, most grade level teams were unable to get through the teaming process and focused more on individual student data as opposed to grade level data. Based on this experience, the teaming process will be modeled for the teachers followed by guided practice with the process in their grade level teams. Check in next month to see how the next professional development turns out! Tessie Rose - Project Coordinator, Lehigh University Back to Monthly Updates Main Page