Explain the activities in which your school will participate to increase your overall rating. Include specific details.

As evidenced in the SES Band Data, which content area(s) will be the focus for improving student achievement and why was this area chosen?

Professional Learning Communities meet twice a week and unwrap standards, plan curriculum, study data.  Student work is reviewed during PLC sessions to determine if work is aligned, remediation, and enrichment.

What specific BEST Practice(s) will be implemented or scaled-up to improve teaching and learning in order to increase performance within the SES Band?

Literacy infusion is part of our School-Wide focus and discussion during professional learning community.  Each content area teacher is responsible for introducing informational as supplemental material. During PLCs, the instructional shifts, namely informational text is discussed. Teachers present best practicess  that will ensure that informational text is infused in their instruction.  This includes various Learnaing management systems, text and genres of material. Student work is part of the discussion as well.

Describe in detail how the BEST Practice(s) will be scaled-up.

The following areas will be the focus

ELA, Math, lowest 25% in ELA/Math, Science

What specific school-level progress monitoring data is collected and how often?

The BEST Practice that Bair will scale-up to improve teaching and learning in order to increase performance within the SES Band is implementing systematic and consistent PLCs in each core content area.  These PLCs are based upon data driven instructional cycles with a focus on adjusting instructional strategies to meet the emerging needs of our students.  The PLCs have been planned with incorporation of the CARE cycle and are part of the school calendar.

How does the school ensure the fidelity of students not progressing towards school and district goals?

PLCs have been scaled up through the use of a new formative assessment collection tool, NEWsELA, CANVAS and the use of new PLC data analysis forms.  The data collected is analyzed at the classroom level, teacher level, and grade level in each assessed content area.  This year consistent data chats and instructional PLCs are taking place at the beginning of each cycle (unwrapping standards and instructional planning), mid cycle (instructional plan adjustments), and at the end of each cycle (remediation/enrichment plans).  Students in need of additional remediation beyond the traditional scheduled class time are targeted for Extended Learning Opportunities.

How does the school ensure that all classroom instruction is accessible to the full range of learners using Universal Designs for Learning (UDL) for effective instructional design (planning) and delivery (teaching)?

In the 2013-2017 school years, Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) were implemented in Science, Writing, Reading, and Math. Students were selected for ELO based on FCAT, FSA and emerging benchmark data.  Reading and Math proficiency and learning gains for both the lowest quartile and all students increased. Additionally, the staff has developed a deeper understanding of the PLC process, data analysis, and the utilization of data to design instruction, remediation, and enrichment. This has resulted in increased student achievement on internal assessments. The ELO program was changed to Level Up for the 2016-2017 school year. Our schoolwide vocabulary initiative has proven to be successful, and has contributed to our increase in reading and ELA FSA scores. We will continue with the Level Up program.

Please complete this section based on 2018-2019 end-of-year results.
Instructional Implications: Discuss the success of specific strategies/activities and provide a rationale as to why those academic improvements occurred as a result of those strategies.

In the 2018-2019 school year, we infused literacy in all content areas using a variety of strategies, including schoolwide vocabulary in the core academic classes. Reading proficiency decreased from 52% to 43% for our sixth-grade students and also decreased from 63% to 50% for our eighth-grade students; however, reading proficiency increased from 45% to 47% for our seventh-grade students.

Our focus areas for the 2018-2019 school year included ELA, Math, the lowest 25% of students in the school based on their ELA and Math scores from the previous school year, and Science. The mathematics department provided Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) to our lowest 25% of students during their elective classes Monday through Thursday for two months before the students took the math FSA. In addition, all students were invited to attend math ELO sessions twice a week after school and on Saturdays during this two-month period. Mathematics proficiency decreased from 47% to 43% in the sixth grade; 43% to 42% in the seventh grade; and 54% to 31% in the eighth grade. The reason for this dramatic drop in eighth grade was because all students who scored a Level 3 or higher on the seventh-grade math FSA in the 2017-2018 school year were enrolled in Algebra I in their eighth-grade year, during the 2018-2019 school year. Thus, the students who took the 8th grade math FSA in the 2018-2019 school year earned either a Level 1 or a Level 2 on the math FSA in the seventh grade. ELO opportunities were extended after school and on Saturdays for ELA as well.

As for Science, ELO was offered to eighth grade students after school for the two months of ELO once a week, and also during one Saturday of that same time period. Science proficiency for the 2018-2019 school year was 42%, which was a decrease from the 2017-2018 school year.