Committee Meeting Summaries

District Committees Met on December 17th:

Elementary Literacy Committee:

•  Announced that Wonders District Unit Assessments will be ready to administer at the end of Unit 3.
  • Teachers in grades 3-6 will find the assessments in their Wonders account at the beginning of the new year.
  • Grades 1-2 will have their assessments delivered to teachers’ emails and students will take the tests via paper/pencil.
  • Unit 3 assessments should be completed by Friday, January 25, 2019. Teachers should have assessments graded by Friday, February 1, 2019.
• Trained teachers on the Wonders platform on the following:
  • How to assign an assessment from the Provo Test Bank to a class
  • How to manually grade constructed responses

• DLC members previewed Wonders Unit 3 District Assessments for their grade level.
• Training on the Wonders “Know Your Reports” guide and each member received a printed copy for their schools.

Secondary Literacy Committee:

In our December Secondary District Literacy Committee meeting, we talked about the current use of common assessments and ways to improve them in the future. We also discussed improving existing assessments and updating them in our shared team drives. Janette Grimshaw shared a spotlight from Independence about introducing argument writing with visuals and evidence. It was proposed that next summer we should have a group of teachers meet to bridge the gap from sixth to seventh grade and also from eighth to ninth grade so we can more fully align vertically between schools in our district.

Instructional Strategies Committee:

We had a productive working meeting. We broke into 4 groups and worked to come up with a working definition of “Mastery” with a corresponding scale that will communicate the progression of a student’s learning relative to knowledge and skills of an essentials standard. Superintendent Rittel shared his experience with us and emphasised the need to find the right way to do this, even if it takes years – better right than fast. Also shared examples of Proficiency and how we can help students really have a full understanding of standards with appropriate language and definitions of Mastery.

Social Studies Committee:

We had a productive working meeting. We broke into 4 groups and worked to come up with a working definition of “Mastery” with a corresponding scale that will communicate the progression of a student’s learning relative to knowledge and skills of an essentials standard. Superintendent Rittel shared his experience with us and emphasized the need to find the right way to do this, even if it takes years – better right than fast. Also shared examples of Proficiency and how we can help students really have a full understanding of standards with appropriate language and definitions of Mastery.

*Math Committee didn’t meet in December