Teachers from Chief Sealth High School and consulting teacher Mel M. confer about students making the transition to High School:
Thank you for your ongoing partnership with Seattle Schools, and for sharing your wonderful students with us. It has truly been a fantastic year of growth and learning. Just a few updates as we head into the final week of the school year:
- On June first we hosted a riser file exchange event at the John Stanford Center for both elementary and secondary riser students (students moving from Preschool to Kindergarten, from Elementary to Middle School, and from Middle School to High School). Teachers came from nearly every school, and not only passed along student files but had conferences with receiving teachers to ensure a smooth transition for our students. Representatives from the Transportation Department were also present so that transportation will be in place at the start of the 10-11 school year. Thank you Seattle staff for your great work!
- We are finishing year one of a five-year move toward supporting a more inclusive approach to providing services to students in alignment with Seattle's strategic plan Excellence For All. We are finalizing outcome data for our students who received services through the integrated comprehensive service model and will have a full report prepared by late June. The data we gathered include Parent/Family Surveys, feedback from Parent/Family meetings, Staff surveys (fall and end of year), Site Visits, MAP data, review of Third Quarter IEP Progress Reports, and 2010-2011 riser enrollment data. It is particularly crucial that we look at third quarter progress reports to see if our students are moving toward and/or meeting their IEP goals. Analysis of third quarter progress reports showed that ALL students were making some to significant progress on their IEP goals. Goal areas include adaptive, social, behavior, motor, speech and communication, and academic. See below for "mean" average scores for IEP goals of students being served with integrated comprehensive services. A "2" indicates some progress made. A "3" indicates significant progress made.
It is essential that we continue to develop our skills and knowledge if we are going to be able to effectively teach our students. We have focused this year on providing a broad array of professional development opportunities for our students so that we can meet the needs of our students. Here are a few examples:
- Autism expert Cassie Martin has been training our staff this year in effective strategies for supporting students in inclusive settings.
- We have hosted two Inclusion and Collaboration Institutes, and have two more in June and August. Trainers include specialists from the University of Washington and experts from within our system.
- We have worked with experts from the UW to provide technical assistance in supporting students with Autism on-site through our Technical Assistance Team (TAT).
- Consulting teachers and Supervisors continue to provide targeted, personalized professional development at our schools.
- Special Education coaches Kristin A. and Lindsey D. and Supervisor Amy B. have been co-teaching for Literacy, Writers Workshop, and Math trainings this year, so that all teachers are learning how to differentiate instruction and provide supports for all students.
- This summer Special Education consulting teacher Mel M. will be working with a team from Curriculum and Instruction to modify and align High School Biology curriculum. Consulting Teachers will also be building differentiated ; curriculum for the newly aligned 4th and 8th grade Social Studies curricula.
Thank you for sharing your students with us!
