Brookvale Elementary School (2019)

  1. PLC Story
  2. PLC Practices
  3. Achievement Data
  4. Awards
  5. Resources

During the 2015/2016 school year, Brookvale began using a cycle of collaborative inquiry school-wide.  We established collaborative committments in order to focus on student achievement through 3 big ideas:  1.  Ensuring that students learn, 2.  Creating a culture of collaboration, and 3.  Focusing on results.   In our first attempt at identifying essential math standards, our school chose essential standards without the benefit of common data. Our district provided teams with a list of math standards from which we chose 6 standards that we felt were most essential for student learning.   We followed the same procedure for ELA the following year. This process did not produce the improvements that we expected. Our school community felt that current assessment data needed to be used to determine which essential standards would promote the most student growth and understanding for our particular group of students.

Beginning in 2016, SBAC data was used to guide our school's choices for math and ELA essential standards. Once we reviewed the data and agreed on identified academic weaknesses we focused on the standards that would have the most leverage at producing academic growth. This process was more successful in showing improving student learning and our school deepened its understanding of the importance of an ongoing process of collaboration and action research.  

Since 2016, the majority of our staff has been able to attend a PLC conference. The conferences instilled a deeper commitment to the collaborative process as well as an understanding of how to better provide instruction utilizing the 4 critical questions: What do we want students to learn; How do we know they have learned it; What will we do if they don't learn it; and What will we do if they have learned it? These 4 questions are continuously revisited throughout our school community and are a driving factor in teacher instruction.

Everyone within the school community who impacts student learning engages in lesson planning, creates CFA’s and develops learning targets for improved student understanding, all while keeping the 4 critical questions in mind. Our school develops meaningful assessments and rubrics that align with the essential outcomes, ensuring student mastery through the teaching process. Everyone at Brookvale works together to create formative and summative assessments, as well as integrate common core standards to ensure that all students are presented with the appropriate level of exposure to standards. Increasing lesson rigor, depth of knowledge and a focus on Bloom’s Taxonomy, have become a common thread within our school community.

During the 2017 school year, Brookvale created a school-wide Common Core State Standards action plan with specific steps which incorporated strategies for instruction and school-wide improvements.  These steps were monitored by everyone in the school to ensure accountability, engagement, and collaboration. Through school-wide collaborative efforts, everyone in the school environment works together to analyze assessment data in order to ensure that all children are exposed to a rigorous, appropriate, and viable curriculum. During the school year, the staff is provided collaboration time to closely assess the essential standards in order to establish our guaranteed viable curriculum.  Everyone at Brookvale has created access to a team drive within Google, that stores, monitors and reviews school-wide collaborative work that enhances and improves student achievement.  

Our mission at Brookvale Elementary is to work together to provide a challenging, engaging and supportive environment where every student is independently successful. Through collaborative efforts and our analysis of data, teachers develop learning targets that promote rigorous and relevant lessons in order to improve student achievement. We have established an acronym C.R.I.T.I.C.A.L that represents our schools focus on learning:

Collaboration

Rigorous and relevant lessons

Independently successful students

Targets for learning

Inspire and engage students in their learning

Challenging and supportive learning environment

Analysis of data

Love of learning

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

At Brookvale Elementary School, all members of the school community work together to unpack the standards in order to use all curricula and create assessments to monitor student learning. Our school community works together to ensure all units of study and assessments are standards driven. Teams collaborate regularly and analyze assessment data to find the most effective interventions for all students.

Standards and Curriculum:  At the beginning of each school year, teachers establish norms and review them at every meeting. This ensures a culture of mutual respect and purpose so that the learning of all students is prioritized. At this time, our staff then collaboratively reviews the priority standards to be taught within their units. Our school as a whole work to unpack the essential standards in order to gain a shared understanding of the skills and concepts contained within those standards. These standards are referenced with students as learning targets during instruction so that students are also responsible for self-monitoring their learning. Common expectations for student mastery are in place across the entire school community.   Staff consistently finds time throughout the school year to adjust these standards based on data. Our staff also uses common planning time to collectively review their tools and teaching strategies to determine how they can best be used to teach the essential standards.

Assessments/Data analysis:  In order to best monitor student learning, our school regularly identifies shared learning goals, we create rubrics, and assess standards aligned with instructional units of study which allow all school members to develop common formative assessments. All professional conversations and collaborative planning time are centered around student learning and analyzing data. Teachers also work within the classroom setting to monitor student progress on a regular basis and to provide specific feedback.  By using a variety of formative assessments within the classroom, students understand what they need to accomplish to close any learning gaps. This feedback stems from collaborative work performed by all staff members.  This work allows our school to create success criteria for each developed learning target. Gains in student achievement based on data are celebrated school-wide and these successes are also regularly reported to parents.  

Intervention:  Our school has a system established in which the achievement of all students is monitored. The use of data is part of the school’s culture and is used to develop specific goals, monitor achievement of all students, and guide the development of interventions. The staff at Brookvale has worked to develop a data-reliant school-wide intervention and instruction system, designed to provide additional time and support to students who are not achieving or who have mastered the content. Data is collected through the intervention process which includes small group instruction with targeted students, in order to continue providing systematic interventions on a timely basis. All members of the school community collaborate to ensure that interventions reflect the best instructional practices and utilize research-based programs whenever appropriate. These interventions are implemented during the instructional day rather than requiring students to attend before or after school programs. Brookvale also has an intervention specialist who rotates around to all classrooms in grades K-6, to provide intensive academic support as well as enrichment support to students during the school day.

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

Our school has actively participated in an ongoing process of collaboration in order to create, implement and provide intervention within the school day to support all students. Within the first week of school, all staff meet to discuss the previous years Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC) scores to identify essential standards so that interventions can start immediately in September. For students without SBAC scores, we examine data from District Assessments and/or IEP goals to see which ELA and Math standards need support. Throughout the entire school community, essential standards are unpacked to create common formative assessments which then drives our intervention programs. Students are reassessed daily, weekly, or monthly to keep the groups fluid. Intervention groups are for all students regardless if it is for enrichment or support. Implementation of interventions occurs differently throughout the school. Our school has created common schedules to allow for intervention support for Tier 2 students across the school community.  Tier 3 schoolwide intervention is provided by a full time intervention specialist who works closely with various staff members to support the critical questions 3 and 4.  District support for intervention consists of the use of LEXIA Core 5 for all grade levels K-5. These instructional programs address the development of oral language, reading, spelling, and writing skills for students and are online computer based programs.  Brookvale staff has consistently engaged in the process of collaboration in order to meet the needs of all students. Assessment data has shown that through our collective commitments we have seen an increase in our students achievement levels. Working together to provide access to the curriculum for all students through a guaranteed viable curriculum has shown that all students are aware of their expected learning targets.   Since 2015, our certificated staff have attended multiple Solution Tree conferences with Mike Mattos on interventions and our school culture has benefited by using an ongoing process of collaboration. The Brookvale staff is committed to maintaining the high level of education we provide for our students.  We collectively believe that it is up to everyone in the school community to enhance student achievement and we believe that it is a shared responsibility of everyone within the school community to educate ALL students in our school.  

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

At Brookvale, we strive to create an environment of high-performing, collaborative teams whose main focus is on improving student learning. For the past four years, our school has attended Solution Tree conferences together to unify our understanding of collective inquiry, collaboration and collective commitments. Members of our school community are able to attend outside Professional Development that supports our growth as educators and team collaborators. Our schools instructional leadership team has representation from every grade level including special education. Our Instructional Leaders begin planning for the school year early in August at our annual leadership retreat. At this gathering,  school leaders plan, strategize and develop collaborative outcomes for the school community as a whole. This type of planning ensures equitable learning for all students and sets the stage for our school-wide Team Collaborative Outcomes agreement (TCO).

Through an ongoing collaborative process we continue our focus on the 4 critical questions. At the start of each school year, essential standards are determined based upon data analysis. Those standards are then used by staff members to create a learning progression along with mastery levels for students.  Learning targets, timelines and student expectations are established and communicated to all members of the school community.  These initiatives allow for everyone to gain a better understanding of what success criteria looks like and when the learning targets should be addressed with students.  At the beginning of each school year, our guaranteed viable curriculum is agreed upon and norms for our school are established.

In order to facilitate parent-teacher communication, standards based progress reports are shared with parents during the middle of each trimester in addition to report cards. These reports ensure parents have knowledge on their students progress regarding the essential standards. As a school we have made collective commitments to provide these additional progress reports in order to address student learning more frequently. This allows everyone to focus on essential standards with which students struggle or essential standards which require enrichment.

Student learning is the basis of all conversations at our school.  Brookvale uses common prep time, collaborative release days and a variety of collaborative forums to create and review common assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments. These discussions allow everyone to analyze and evaluate data which informs our instruction regarding what  needs to be retaught in order to work towards creating  SMART goals to support student learning. 

Our school is fortunate to be able to rely on instructional coaches from the district as well as our own site curriculum liaisons who give support for teaching and learning.   Our school's guaranteed viable curriculum, along with a vast array of pedagogical techniques to meet the needs of our students, helps our students make academic gains.  Throughout the entire school, strategies to improve student learning are shared with all stakeholders. This sharing allows our school to engage in a recurring cycle of collective inquiry with the desire to improve ALL student learning.  

Over the past four years, Brookvale’s commitment to ensuring that students learn by creating a culture of collaboration and focusing on results, has helped transform our school culture for the better and has positively impacted our students’ learning.

Achievement Data Files

Additional Achievement Data

Beginning in 2015, Brookvale Elementary School began using a cycle of inquiry  in order to raise student achievement levels and effectively analyze data to drive our instruction.  We participated in Solution Tree Conferences and attended many workshops and professional development summits that taught our staff effective strategies to build teaching and learning capacity.  As a staff we committed to doing the following in order to raise student achievement levels:

  • Focused staff development programs as an improvement strategy to address documented problems/needs as observed by student assessment data

  • Teacher assignments were based on skills needed as indicated by the assessment data

  • Established school-wide goals based upon student assessment data

  • All collaborative meeting times including school-wide discussions were focused on improving student data within the school community

  • Provided consistent and regular parent communications regarding the progress of their children on multiple assessments throughout the school year

  • Used standards-based grading and rubrics to report student data using essential questions

  • Created reflective opportunities for students to self-assess their own learning on essential questions

  • Determined essential standards for each grade level

  • Created SMART goals at every grade level in order to increase student learning opportunities for each Trimester

Our Instructional Leadership Team began focusing their conversations on student achievement and how to improve collaboration among all members within the school community in order to positively impact student achievement.  By using our Instructional Leadership Team in this capacity, we found that the effort needed to sustain continuous school improvement during the current and subsequent school years was much easier when tasks are divided among a team of people that have direct contact with students.  Our data growth over a three year period shows that due to a collaborative approach to teaching and learning, we have been able to improve performance levels across the entire school including our student subgroups for both ELA and Math.

2017 Golden Oak Service Award  from California State PTA

2017 Certificate of Recognition from Scholastic Book Fairs

2016 ACSA Region 6 Elementary Principal of the Year Award

2016 ACOE Region 6 Classified Employee of the Year Award

2016-2017 Library Award- Exceeding CA State Standards for Library Circulation

2014-2015 Library Award-Adding the Largest Number of Titles

2014-2015 LIbrary Award-Highest Percent Increase in Total Collection

2014-2015 Library Award- Exceeding CA State Standards for Library Circulation

2014-2015 Library Award- Largest Increase in Circulation per Student

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