Eldon Middle School

School Information

School Name:      Eldon Middle School
School Address:  1400 North Grand 
                            Eldon, MO 65026
School Phone: 573-392-8020
School Fax:     573-392-9151
Principal:        Chris Miller
Principal email:  Miller@mail.eldon.k12.mo.us

Demographics

Number of Students: 296
Number Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch: 151
Percent of Limited English Proficient:  0%
Percent of Special Education: 13.2%
Racial/Ethnic Percentages:
White       98.7%
Black        .70%
Hispanic   .70%
Asian/Pacific Island
Other

 

 

Present Student Achievement Data at 3 points along a continuum to demonstrate trends.

Please list source of comparison data:

Missouri Assessment Program: Math Proficient and Advanced

Year	All EMS Students	EMS F&R lunch	EMS IEP
06-07	43.3	36.9	16.1
05-06	35.6	26.4	4.7
04-05	20.0	9.9	0

Missouri Assessment Program:  Communication Arts Proficient and Advanced

Year	All EMS Students	EMS F&R lunch	EMS IEP
06-07	45.6	36.6	6.5
05-06	41.1	32.7	2.3
04-05	21.3	12.0	4.8

Please comment on any aspect of the data that you believe is particularly significant.

In 2007-2008, a part-time math position was made into full time. The math MAP scores have improved 23.3% to the State’s 20.2% increase.  The free-and-reduced-lunch subgroup improved 27% in comparison to the State’s 14.4%.   Prior to entering EMS, all students are given a math skills assessment to determine placement for the following year.   This allows students to work at an appropriate level to make sure they are understanding the concepts.  The math teachers also compiled a list of low scoring concepts as indicated by MAP results and focused on weak areas of instruction; the department then created curriculum pacing guides to create better timing for introducing key concepts.

Missouri Assessment Program: Math Gains from 2005-2006 to 2006-2007

	All EMS Students	EMS F&R lunch
Eldon	23.3	27
MO	20..2	14.4

In the summer of 2004, the Communication Arts Department realigned curriculum to match State grade level expectations and to achieve vertical alignment within the district.  In the 2006-2007 school year, the schedule was reconfigured to allow a two-hour block of communication arts for all seventh grade students.  In order to reduce class size and accommodate the change in scheduling, an additional communication arts teacher was added to the staff.  Smaller class sizes and doubling the class time have allowed students the opportunity for more guided instruction in their writing.  Student performance is also monitored with regular common assessments and three benchmark reading levels per year. Reading levels are assessed using STAR and Gates tests.

A Wilson Reading program was implemented in the 2004-2005 school year for struggling readers.  The special education staff had specialized training to implement this program.  Class-within-a-class instruction began about ten years ago, but extensive training began in 2004-2005 with in-service training for both special educators and regular classroom teachers.  The communication arts teachers and their special services co-teachers are actively participating in the Missouri Writing Initiative Program sponsored by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).  This three-year training has enabled staff to assist students in the writing process as evaluated by the MAP test. 

Next year EMS will continue to vertically align their reading and writing programs by piloting the MRI, Missouri Reading Initiative, program that has already been initiated in the elementary schools. This will include social studies, science, and math; reading will be taught across the curriculum. The PLC leadership team, with input from the staff, has determined that a major goal for next year is to study, plan, and implement a school-wide vocabulary program. EMS will be studying Marzano’s  Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement.

With increased collaboration, EMS has seen steady improvements in MAP scores. We have increased in proficiency levels by 24.3%, as compared to the State increase of 14%.  In the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 school years, EMS communication arts MAP score averages were below State, but with a focus on student achievement and the above mentioned changes the 2006-2007 scores were above the State average. EMS has implemented programs to assist our free-and-reduced-lunch students and have, therefore, made a 24.6% increase in that subgroup’s MAP scores, as compared to the State’s 11%.  Further explanation of programs is included in the at-risk portion of this report.

Missouri Assessment Program: Communication Arts Gains from 2005-2006 to 2006-2007

	All EMS Students	EMS F&R lunch
Eldon	24.3	24.6
MO	14	11

              
Please present additional information that indicates your efforts to build a professional learning community have had a positive impact on students and/or teachers.

In the summer of 2003, five staff members attended the State-sponsored PLC training.  As a result of this training, in the 2003-2004 school year, PLC was introduced to the staff by the newly formed PLC Leadership Team.  Implementation began by studying Professional Learning Communities at Work by Rick DeFour and Robert Eaker.  Thus began the journey of  “Living in the Vision.”  The first year as a PLC community we devoted our time to creating a new vision and mission. This process caused us to reflect upon not only where we truly were as educators, but where we wanted to be.  The following year the staff was organized into teams to begin the process of creating a true PLC school. We decided to study Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis and Chappuis’s Classrooom Assessment for Student Learning.  Each content area identified essential skills and created student-friendly learning targets for each of their units.  These have been of great value to our students to clarify expectations.  The students’ self-reflection on specific learning targets (through formative and summative assessments) also helps teachers identify which students need additional time to master the objectives or which portions of the lesson need to be retaught. 

In the fall of 2006, the district created an early-out schedule to allow for collaboration time. This decision was not taken lightly. A CSIP team studied this proposal and decided this early out time was in the best interest of students. This contracted time has allowed for teachers to build their lessons around what is best for their students as well as increase the conversations between professionals about best practices and current trends within their school.  To enhance the weekly collaboration time, the middle school schedule was changed to give daily common plan times to each content area.  For example, this allows all math teachers to have their conference period at the same time every day, which is valuable time to create and assess common assessments. Our department and personal SMART goals are also monitored at this time. The non-core cadre is the building’s CARE team. Early-out Wednesdays permit this team to assess student progress and determine where they are best helped.  Our Americorps staff is a part of this team. Our special education team not only works in their own cadre, but because we have mostly class-with-in-a-class rooms, they are part of the core area cadres also.

 

Please elaborate upon strategies you have found to be effective in any of the following areas:

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Students have planners they are required to use.  Every three weeks course grades are recorded in student planners and sent home to parents.  Goal sheets are in the back of the planner. The students create their own SMART goals for course grades, MAP scores, and attendance goals as well.  These are monitored by the teachers throughout the year.  The building SMART goal has been to reduce the number of Ds and Fs given at EMS.  This goal has been closely monitored by department teams and the non-core CARE team cadre; every three weeks (or more) student grades and attendance are reviewed and new strategies are implemented to ensure student success.  EMS is flexible. When a student is at risk, we are ready to do what it takes to help that individual experience success.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

The staff at EMS will do “Whatever It Takes” (the district’s second year PLC motto) to ensure student success.  The CARE team (non-core cadre) consists of the counselor, classroom teachers, nurse, library media specialist, Americorps tutors and the administrator.  This team meets regularly to discuss students who could benefit from additional support.   To ensure all students have access to tutoring, it was built into the master schedule for the 2006-2007 school year.  This tutoring program is designed to assist students who are having difficulty achieving success in school.  We currently offer four hours of tutoring, with a certified teacher, daily.  Tutors assist with basic reading skills, completion of homework, organization and learning target mastery.

In the 2006-2007 school year, the Eldon School District applied and received an Americorps Grant. This grant provides for one-on-one intervention time with designated students.  In addition to the Americorps tutors, community volunteers regularly assist in daily activities for at-risk students.

Fall 2007 a District CSIP committee established increasing attendance rates as a district-wide goal.  To meet this goal at EMS, each morning secretaries call students who are absent. They also recognize each student’s birthday with a card.  We also have teacher greeters in the morning to help create an atmosphere of caring. This action has resulted in an increase of 1.2% in attendance from last year (September–December).

Another building goal has been to increase communication between the school and home.  To better assist in the communication process, teachers have posted the course essential outcomes and chapter/unit student-friendly learning targets on the middle school portion of the district website http://www.eldon.k12.mo.us/middle.  This is a valuable tool that can inform both parents and the community on events in our school.  Teachers are also required to make from 5-10 parent phone calls a month.  Moreover, we built five extra minutes into the last hour of the day for teachers to check student planners; parents and teachers can communicate through the planner. 

Another major intervention that has been useful to all students has been the implementation of the class-within-a-class program in each of the core area subjects.  This has given extensive training to both regular classroom teachers and special education teachers.  Having two adults in the classroom allows for more small-group instruction to take place, which results in higher achievement.

Summer school is another component in our plan to reach students requiring intervention as well as enrichment.  Each summer enrichment and orientation classes are offered to incoming seventh graders.  Students returning to EMS are offered both enrichment and remediation courses in all core areas.   In addition, all students with a reading plan are personally invited to attend reading remediation.

EMS has started several clubs for students. In order to promote reading and to build interpersonal skills, students are invited to attend a lunch book club once a week in the library.  While they eat, students discuss the books they are currently reading and make recommendations to their peers.  The library media specialist and one of the communication arts teachers participate in these discussions.  A technology club was also started this year.  Students meet after school once a week to work on Web page design, desktop publishing, and digital photography. 

After school tutoring is offered four days a week by certified teachers in the areas of math, communication arts, and SPED. Time has been built into the schedule for tutoring. The non-core cadre (FACS, Industrial Tech, art, and computer teacher) all have a tutoring hour. Students are sent to these teachers when they are in need of assistance. The students in our building have five days of P.E. We committed to this several years ago because we thought physical health was of integral importance to mental health and academic achievement.  Since the students have more minutes in P.E. than required by the State, we pull them from P.E. class to go to tutoring.  Next year we will have three core area teachers tutoring.  We have found that we need the core teachers to reinforce their content.

In the fall of 2007, EMS welcomed a new counselor to the professional community; he adds much to the building climate.  His rapport with students allows for productive and candid sessions of character education in the regular classroom.

3. Building the capacity of teachers to work as members of high performing collaborative teams who focus the efforts of their team on improved learning for students.

After creating our mission and vision, we have continued to visit our beliefs every year. We have used the 18 Critical Issues to assess our progress, both in departments and as a whole.  This evaluation, along with MAP results, grade spreads, discipline information, and tutoring data, have all helped to determine our agenda for the year. The PLC Leadership Team meets at least monthly to evaluate our progress and to determine our goals for the future. Every year we create “notebooks” for our PLC teams to record their data, agendas, samples of common assessments, student self-assessments, and various other team work.

In addition to the weekly early release time, teachers collaborate within various study groups and projects.  Book studies have included the following: Grade for Learning by O’Connor; Getting Started; Whatever It Takes; Professional Learning Communities at Work by Eaker, DuFours and Karhanek; and most recently Classroom Assessment for Learning by Stiggins. The staff decided that the information in Stiggins’s book was instrumental to student success and voted to continue the book study through the 2007-2008 school year.  We have instituted student-friendly learning targets, student self-assessments, and an awareness of higher order thinking skills as a result of this book study.  We have also done intensive training across the curriculum in the techniques of the Making Meaning reading program.  We are going to continue this philosophy with the MRI program next year. Our RPDC  (Regional Professional Development Center) representative, Jana Scott, has been working with our CA staff.  She also did three workshops with the whole staff this year: reading across the curriculum, writing across the curriculum, and making good test questions.  She modeled best practices and asked the staff to take ideas back to the classroom and report back to the group for celebrations or words of encouragement.

Since the PLC process began, full time positions have been added to the English, math, and science departments in order to reduce class sizes and to offer more individualized instruction.  Our vision involves creating an environment in which all students can learn.  Our building has dedicated itself to this concept by adding staff to meet the need.  As a result of these efforts, the student to staff ratio has decreased from 21:1 in 2005 to 18:1 in 2007.

Our building received two awards last year at the State PLC conference.  Our building was deemed a model school and our principal received an outstanding service award from the Missouri Accelerated Schools and Professional Learning Community Project of the School Improvement Initiatives of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.  We share various celebrations at each PLC meeting. Usually this takes the form of what works and successes in the classroom.

Plans to grow:

Every year we look for avenues to be creative with the Pyramid of Intervention. Often this is being flexible with the schedule (7-hour day).  This year, because the data has shown non-core tutoring to be less than effective, we are changing our scheduling hours to core teachers tutoring.  We are also looking at scheduling FACS and Industrial Tech with a two-hour block for a group of male and female at-risk students. We believe that the bonds that will be created with these students and these staff members is more valuable than an extra elective.   Our data has also shown a huge difference between male and female students in regards to D’s and F’s.  There has been almost double the amount of males scoring in these ranges than girls.  In order to address these concerns the building is looking an implementing gender classes next year in 7th grade communication arts and 8th grade science.   We are going to initiate components of the best practice Positive Behavior Support system next year. We are going to combine the “positive” ideas of this program into the B.I.S.T. program of discipline that we currently use. We hope that this addition of character education will be good for all students. Our challenge next year is to work with students “who are getting it.”  We hope to create some challenging and exciting classes for these students.  Currently we are adding Spanish I, a computer multi-media class, and advanced art.  As a part of our self-reflection piece, our District Administration team, and building PLC leadership team has been trained in the Instructional Practices Inventory: a process for profiling student engagement.  We will be doing walk-throughs during the year with the IPI process. We hope that analyzing student engagement will help drive our teaching/learning process.

List any awards and recognition your school has achieved

2007—Received PLC Model Middle School

2007—Chris Miller Received Outstanding Service Award for School Improvement Initiatives from Missouri Department of  Elementary and Secondary Education