McSpedden Elementary School has built a shared understanding and commitment to the professional learning community at work by establishing a collective culture where our visions and values for student learning drives our decision making. This shared vision began when the principal and a teacher from each grade level started attending the PLC Symposium each year.  Each new committee takes part in inspiring our community to view our students’ success as a collective responsibility. These individuals help others understand the benefits of working and learning together.

At the beginning of each school year, this committee reviews the PLC vocabulary and updates teachers with their newly acquired knowledge to provide a clear focus on the PLC model. During staff development, we take the time to rally together to create norms and commitments that ultimately further our initiative to achieve positive results for student success. These norms and commitments are revisited throughout the year with collective inquiry to determine what actions are needed to see continuous improvement. We make team collaboration a priority to ensure that teachers have enough time to fulfill their commitments. Each grade level also takes the TEAM survey to evaluate where they are on the continuum at least twice a year.

All planning documents and PLC agendas are shared school-wide to help develop cross-team collaboration. Our “PLC Room” houses all of our data, and this is where we track our RTI and monitor progress towards mastery of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Our PLC committee meets at the district level three times a year to develop a widespread leadership. This committee updates their team and works to support staff with implementing new tools and ideas. As a result of these consistent efforts to uphold the PLC model we celebrate and share success school-wide. McSpedden Elementary’s school motto is, “Inspire One, Inspire Many,” and our dedication to ensuring our actions match our purpose is continually cultivating one inspiration at a time.

For additional information about our PLC process, see the McSpedden Staff Handbook posted under resources.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

At McSpedden Elementary we are facilitating a culture of continuous improvement by establishing a systematic approach to align our commitment to providing high levels of learning with our actions to monitor and support all outcomes. Grade level teams begin by prioritizing which learning standards are essential for future student success.  For all grade levels to align expectations and monitor data, teams use Google Docs to set appropriate goals for high levels of learning.  Vertical teams meet throughout the school year to evaluate progress, implement strategies, and identify next steps towards improvement.

Each team monitors student learning on a daily and weekly basis through the use of a variety of formative assessments. They also develop common formative assessments, which are used throughout a unit to assess essentials, and the district provides curriculum-based assessments in math and science, which we use as summative assessments.

Since the framework for student success is a shared commitment, teams have the autonomy and freedom to decide how to utilize tools, common formative assessments, and various instructional strategies to guide the work. As a professional community, we collaborate and build on each other’s strengths by providing professional development during our quarterly learning and leading time. Teachers design learning and leading sessions as they are eager to share instructional strategies and tools that they found to be successful in their classrooms. These sessions are planned in response to survey data gathered to support the needs of staff and students.  

Teams are provided an extra 45 minutes beyond their regular planning period to meet on a weekly basis to review the data from these common assessments. We follow a school wide PLC schedule (see attached) which allows us to provide extra classes, such as physical education, music class, art class, keyboarding class, or guidance.  for our students while the teachers collaborate during this extra planning period. During this PLC time teams often use data protocols which helps keep the discussion solution focused and helps them to make plans that address the needs of their students. If the need to discuss data comes up before the weekly meeting, teams will often discuss data during their conference time or after school as needed. Teachers on this campus are committed to responding to student needs promptly by discussing student data as quickly as possible.

Throughout the year, we have had check-in meetings with each team called “Name and Need.” Teams can bring student concerns to discuss and get help with new strategies to address learning and behavior difficulties. Currently, we are adjusting the frequency of these meetings so that they will occur every month.

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

Before this year, teams were providing intervention to students by flexibly grouping them based on need from assessment data. Teachers whose data showed they were the best fit for teaching the intervention group, would take them. Then they scheduled a time to have students move to those teachers for a set period and reassess their needs. We found that while this worked for intervention, it didn’t provide for an extension for students who needed it. This year, our campus set a goal to ensure that each grade level set aside 30 minutes each day for intervention and extension time. We call it What I Need (WIN) time. Teams still go through the same process of looking at assessment data to see where the needs are. They find students that need intervention and those that have mastered the concepts and are ready for extension and make groups accordingly. Grade levels have spreadsheets and tracking tools to help them organize groups and keep notes on students’ progress. Plans and strategies for each group are discussed and a time limit is set for how long the groups will meet. At the end of the intervention period, students are re-assessed for mastery utilizing teacher team created CFA’s. Students that do not reach proficiency receive intensive small group intervention from different grade level teachers during their daily intervention time until they see the desired outcome. When students continuously need support teachers bring their data and anecdotal notes to our student support team.  This team consists of administration, school counselor, classroom teachers, and the instructional coach. We collaborate to create individual action plans for these students. The action plan states explicitly the amount of time the student will receive services, who will provide the services (classroom teacher, IC push in, individual pull out, etc.), and focus on agreed-upon standards during this systematic intervention. There is progress monitoring sheet teachers utilize to track the intervention effectiveness. The student is exposed to a variety of strategies and monitored.  If the student is still not successful, the Student Support Team (SST) convenes to review data and make recommendations for testing (SPED, Dyslexia, etc.)

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

At McSpedden elementary we have established teams not only in grade levels but interdisciplinary teams as well. Our vertical content teams collaborate five times a year to ensure that expectations and student achievement goals are aligned in each subject area. Also, we are in campus action plan committees (CAP) where we set goals to monitor progress on social, community, safety, and academic achievement within our campus. The vertical teams and CAP committees are structured with various faculty members such as classroom teachers, administration, specials teachers, and community representatives.  Specials teachers collaborate as a team during their collaborative planning time.  The team members discuss cross curriculum opportunities for specials curriculum. The special ed and general ed teachers meeting during PLC to provide support and plan co-teaching opportunities.  

After each formative assessment collaborative teams work together to tier students and begin discussing next steps for instruction. Teams establish focus by asking, “How will we respond when students don’t learn and how will we enrich learning when they demonstrate mastery?” The data protocol has helped to create a systematic Response to Intervention (RTI) protocol school-wide. Each team creates an agenda, set clear expectations for what they want to accomplish at each PLC meeting. As teams begin to analyze student learning, our campus instructional coach facilitates questions to guide the implementation of our RTI process. This process helps plan our “What I need Time” and next steps for classroom instruction following the data talk.

Teachers provide opportunities for enrichment and extension activities for students that have mastered the standards. Also, teachers provide additional opportunities for targeted instruction to reach the desired outcome for those students who did not learn the essential standards. The Student Support Team (SST) provides progress monitoring of struggling students as well as helps us determine the tier 3 students who need action plans.  The team includes the administration, instructional coach, classroom teachers, and anyone trained to meet the needs of the students. These high performing teams at McSpedden make student achievement a priority as they are committed to achieving high levels of learning for all students.

Achievement Data Files

• mcspedden-primary-grades-data-5454.xlsx

Additional Achievement Data

McSpedden Student Achievement Data
STAAR Testing Scores
Percentage of Students Meeting or Exceeding Proficiency
GRADE 3
	2014–2015		2015–2016		2016–2017		2017-18		2018-19
SUBJECT	School	State	School	State	School	State	School	State	School	State
Reading	97%	74%	91%	72%	98%	72%	98%	77%	99%	76%
Mathematics	99%	74%	99%	74%	98%	76%	99%	78%	98%	78%
GRADE 4
	2014–2015		2015–2016		2016–2017		2017-18		2018-19
SUBJECT	School	State	School	State	School	State	School	State	School	State
Reading	94%	70%	99%	74%	96%	69%	98%	73%	98%	74%
Mathematics	94%	70%	100%	72%	100%	74%	99%	78%	97%	74%
Writing	95%	67%	95%	68%	91%	64%	98%	63%	97%	65%
GRADE 5
	2014–2015		2015–2016		2016–2017		2017-18		2018-19
SUBJECT	School	State	School	State	School	State	School	State	School	State
Reading	100%	75%	100%	80%	100%	81%	99%	84%	98%	77%
Mathematics	97%	75%	100%	85%	100%	86%	100%	91%	99%	83%
Science	98%	68%	95%	72%	99%	33%	94%	76%	97%	74%

For additional evidence of effectiveness, see the McSpedden demographic 2015-2018 posted under resources.

Awards - 2017-18

Texas PTA - Honor Roll Award

President’s List Award

Three Year High Award

Head Start Award

Early Bird Achievement Award

Fall Increase Award

Welcome Back Award

Golden Apple Award

MARS Award

TEPSA - Student Leadership Award - 2017-18

Certificate of Excellence - Honor Student Council of Excellence -2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17

Recycling Award Winner - Most Recycled Materials -2015-16

Recycling Award “Tree Hugger” -2015-16

School Digger ranked McSpedden as number 16th in the state for 2018-19

 

Files

• mcspedden-3-5-data.pdf
• 2017-2018-mcspedden-plc-schedule.xlsx
• mcspedden-staff-handbook.pdf