Strategic Planning Committee Minutes
Rita Polen and Fritz Norman
shared the first draft of the Curriculum Criteria Rubric with the SPC. The
purpose of the rubric is for teachers to self-evaluate the performance tasks
they have developed for their classrooms. The rubric addresses the components
of the district’s Purpose Statement. These components include having students
access, process and communicate as they solve problems. The subcommittee also
outlined the criteria for a quality curriculum. The SPC noted that the rubric
would be most helpful to teachers as they worked to revise their performance
tasks. The subcommittee will report back on the refinements to the rubric at
the next SPC meeting.
Roger Ruder updated the
committee on the changes that the Research Skills Subcommittee recommended.
These changes included adopting the MLA format for student use throughout the
district, and revising the library links categorized under the Database and
SuperSearch links. The members of the subcommittee will pilot the use of links
with their students as they complete research assignments in their classrooms.
SPC members from the elementary expressed concern that the MLA format may be
too complicated for their students. If this proves to be the case in the pilot
program, the elementary teachers will make recommendations to the committee on
how to simplify the process for their students. The subcommittee will update
the SPC on the pilot results at the next meeting.
The SPC discussed the
district staff development that will occur on February 21. The teachers will
begin that morning with their Integrated Performance Task partner(s) to revise
and rework the task together. The last hour before lunch the vertical teams
will meet to review the products that are being produced at each grade level in
all their performance tasks. The vertical teams will
collect the information on the products for each task and discuss their
observations on the variety of products being required of students. Are there a
variety of products being required? Do the products become more complex as
students move up the grade levels? Are there any products that are being
overused? The data will be turned in to Rita Polen and will be analyzed by the
Research Skills Subcommittee.
The calendar for the
2005-2006 school year was discussed. Rita Polen asked
the committee for their recommendations to the calendar committee which
included starting school early in August, having a week at Thanksgiving and
another week at Spring Break and having as long as possible for the Winter
Break. SPC also asked that the breaks for RFISD be aligned as much as possible
with the surrounding districts, the semesters be close in length and the school
year end in May.
As an additional agenda
item, Rita Polen noted that at the February SPC meeting teachers from each
campus will present an Integrated Performance Tasks that they have completed
with their students. These presentations will be informal and include
information on the TEKS addressed in the task, samples of student work and
results of the assessments utilized in the task. The principals will notify
Rita Polen as to who will present from their campuses.
Dick Wilson will be the
facilitator for the next SPC meeting.
Next scheduled meeting:
Room
21
4:00
PM