Our Second Meeting

On December 16, 2009, Newark Valley's English department was involved in a professional development session led by Tom Beatty of Owego Free Academy. Tom worked with the English department, sharing his expertise on the use of Socratic Seminars to improve comprehension, student writing and speaking, and, most importantly, to improve the climate and culture of our building. It is his belief, and ours, too, that a building where students believe that their ideas are important and their voices are given a chance to be heard is one in which students will take more pride.
Tom worked with us for four hours, involving us in practice seminars to inform our practice as well as to refine our skills. We found the hands-on portion of his presentation to be extremely powerful, and many of us were up and running with our own seminars within a few days of his visit.
As a department, we will continue to focus on our questioning techniques as well as other approaches that involve students in higher order thinking skills (HOTS), also our building's literacy initiative.

Our First Meeting

Our first meeting had two agendas. First, we met with the school psychologists from the elementary, middle, and high schools to gain a comprehensive picture of our current efforts and concerns. Our English department has already been quite proactive, developing new courses to reach a variety of student needs. These range from a looping-style ninth and tenth grade classroom taught by an English teacher and a Special Education teacher, focusing on basics from decoding to the implementation of reading comprehension strategies in a non-traditional setting. We also have a section of eighth grade for students who are repeating that grade and/or who have shown signs of struggling after our first marking period. This class is also team taught, this time with a Reading Specialist and an English teacher. That same combination is offered in ninth and tenth grade as well. Ninth graders in this section are all required to be in AIS, too.
We acknowledge that we are working hard at RTI, but we were up against formidable obstacles, including student attendance problems as well as motivation. This was not unique to the high school.
In response to our concerns, a group of couselors went to visit Chenango Forks School district to observe their program. The visit reveled some promising interventions, and a follow-up visit by the high school Literacy Coach, guidance counselors, and principal of Newark Valley is pending.
The second goal for the meeting was for all English teachers to become familiar and proficient at administering the Woodcock Test so that we may begin to create data against which to measure the effectiveness of our interventions. We have information from the middle school that we will add as we create Data Central, allowing us to better follow all students, marking their progress, as well as designated students for RTI.

Our Action Plan

Newark Valley continues to strive to avoid student involvement at the lower levels of RTI by addressing classroom instruction and our present English Academic Intervention Services, AIS.