At Clinton Middle School our administration and teachers collaboratively created our mission, vision, values, and goals. Our mission is for all students to reach their full potential. Our vision is that we will achieve this by agreeing that learning is our fundamental purpose, collaboration is key to success, and we will make all our decisions based upon data. Our values are safety, learning, and relationships.  Hope is not a strategy and do not blame it on the students. The goal last year at CMS was to be at state average or above on all tested subject areas. This was a large task from the previous years, but we met all our goals!

Part of becoming a professional learning community was creating a Guided Coalition. This team meets once every two weeks for an hour. The team then reports back to the faculty what decisions were agreed upon. The Guided Coalition is made up of six teachers and a counselor. The coalition has norms, an agenda, and celebrations for our meetings. All decisions are made through consensus to guarantee collective leadership and a shared vision.

Flex scheduling allows our collaborative teams to meet one hour each week. They collaborate to create common formative assessments that are given at least every three weeks in Tier 1 of our instruction. In the collaborative team meetings, the conversation is always about the 4 questions: What do we want students to know? How will we know if they have learned it? What will we do if they don't know? and What type of enrichment will we do when they do? 

All teachers are required to give students multiple opportunities to learn. We put our common formative assessments on Mastery Connect attaching problem number with standard.  We assess the students, and then the following day we reteach the standards not mastered to the students in small groups. The following day we retest.  

If a student is still struggling to achieve mastery of the standard, the student is placed in Tier 2 RTI (response to intervention) during our flex hour. The teacher compares the data from the common formative assessment to determine which teacher will teach which standard based upon best data and best instruction. The students are pulled by standards not mastered. There are enrichment classes for students who do not need remediation. The collaboration provides our teachers the opportunity to improve classroom instruction. Students who haven’t mastered prerequisite skills are put into Tier 3 classes. We believe if you’re not changing then you’re not growing.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

At CMS we believe in working in Collaborative Teams to provide high quality instruction for ALL students. We have a flex schedule where our teams meet once a week for an hour in their Collaborative Teams during the school day.  At the beginning of every year we look at our curriculum and determine our essential standards in each subject area to guarantee a viable curriculum. We look at our vertical alignment and blue prints from state testing to insure success for our students as they move grade to grade.  Our teams then create pacing guides and build their first Common Formative Assessment. This is done prior to teaching the material.  They then set SMART goals for their students learning on the CFA. Teams must have one CFA every 3 weeks. 

In Tier 1 of the instruction, they teach the material and then assess using the CFA on Mastery Connect.  The following day they reteach and then reassess. We do not reteach the whole test to every student.  We break the students in groups by standards they have not mastered when we reteach. We also have a groups for enrichment for students that have mastered all standards.

They then meet in their collaborative teams to look over the data for their CFA to improve both individual and collective results.  They do this by learning from one another to improve classroom instruction based on data for each individual standard.  We dont't "PLC" we are a Professional Learning Community because of the way we act in the building.

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

After students take their CFA's in Tier 1 of instruction and after they have had reteaching and reassessment, we group the students by which standards they have not mastered.  We then have ELA teachers pick the students for remediation based upon which teacher taught the standard the best. Math will pick next and then science. Math will be first to pick the 2nd CFA (3 weeks later). The teachers who were shown by data to teach the standard the best will teach the students who are in need of mastery for that standard.  It does not matter whether that is their normal student in the classroom, because ALL of the students must learn and we take responsibility for all of them.  

In Tier 2 of instruction, CMS has a built in time for this RTI.  We have a flex schedule where students who are in need of remediation receive additional instruction 3 days a week for 46 minutes (1 class period at CMS). The other days are built in for Monday Assembly to improve school climate and the remaining day for students to work in Makerspace while their teachers are in their Collaborative Team Meetings.  (see flex schedule). Students who are not in RTI are put in enrichment classes and other classes such as CMS TV, GT, Jazz Band, Yearbook, and Homework Huts.  

For students who do not have prerequisite skills in subject areas, we also provide Tier 3 instruction during flex and also during before and after school tutoring.

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

At CMS our teachers are committed to our mission, vision, values, and goals.  These are first decided upon in our Guided Coalition Meeting using the fist of five for consensus. We then take it to the faculty to confirm. The teachers who make up the Guided Coalition have all been to training at Solution Tree. We also take pride in using and understanding the vocabulary of a professional learning community.  Also, in our Guided Coalition we bring data from our success in RTI and present them.  At faculty meetings our Collaborative Teams present information such as: essential standards and goals, Benchmark results and prediction for mastery on state tests, and successful practices in their Collaborative Teams.  We practice what we preach!  

In our Collaborative Teams at the beginning of the year,  we complete a Collaborative Team outcome sheet.  In this sheet we list our goals for our school and our goals for our individual teams.  These goals are directly tied to students learning and improving on state test sub categories.  At CMS we also develop cross-curricular instruction.  An example of this is working across subject areas to improve writing skills using writing prompts and rubrics.  

Achievement Data Files

• cms-solution-model-school--sheet1.pdf

Additional Achievement Data

Other State Data:

Principal of the Year 2020

Recognized Top Principal PLC Gear UP Oklahoma-San Fran, CA

Award of Excellence 2019 Oklahoma Certified Healthy School

Files

• 8-10-20-leadership-team-meeting.pdf
• guided-coalition-norms-meeting.pdf
• 2020-2021-cms-team-collaboration-outcomes.pdf
• 20-21_-2nd-hr-makerspace_flex.pdf
• my-goals.pdf
• cms-bell-schedule-2020-2021.pdf
• 6-questions-after-cfa-s-copy.pdf
• cms-student-monitoring-worksheet.pdf
• ela-team-collaboration-outcomes-8-27-19.pdf
• 1-8-19-ela-team-meeting.pdf
• 9-4-19-leadership-team-meeting.pdf
• 11-13-19-leadership-team-meeting.pdf
• 19-20-cms-team-collaboration-outcomes.pdf