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Challenger 7 Elementary School

 

School Information

School Name:  Challenger 7 Elementary
School Address:  6135 Rena Avenue, Cocoa, FL 32927
School Phone:  321.636.5801
School Fax:  321.631.3208
Principal:  Carol Mela
Principal email:  mela.carol@brevardschools.org
Web Address: http://www.challenger.brevard.k12.fl.us/

Demographics

Number of Students:  483
Number Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch:  43.56%
Percent of Limited English Proficient:  0.62%
Percent of Special Education:  21.78%
Racial/Ethnic Percentages:

- White:  93.77%
- Black:  2.7%
- Hispanic:  0.2%
- Asian/Pacific Island:  0.83%
- Other:  2.5%

 

Student Achievement Data:

Percentage of students passing FCAT test for grade level 3 and above at school level/state level:

Grade: 3
Math
(School/State)
Reading
(School/State)
Writing
(School/State)
Science
(School/State)
Social Studies
(School/State)
2003
78/62
78/62
N/A
N/A
N/A
2005
83/68
82/67
N/A
N/A
N/A
2007
84/74
90/69
N/A
N/A
N/A
2009
97/78
87/71
N/A
N/A
N/A
2010
87/75
82/72
N/A
N/A
N/A

 

Grade: 4
Math
(School/State)
Reading
(School/State)
Writing
(School/State)
Science
(School/State)
Social Studies
(School/State)
2003
66/55
79/60
86/70
N/A
N/A
2005
77/64
83/71
81/74
N/A
N/A
2007
91/69
86/68
88/60
N/A
N/A
2009
80/75
89/74
89/85
N/A
N/A
2010
85/74
88/72
95/94
N/A
N/A

 

Grade: 5
Math
(School/State)
Reading
(School/State)
Writing
(School/State)
Science
(School/State)
Social Studies
(School/State)
2003
63/51
72/57
N/A
N/A
N/A
2005
70/57
83/66
N/A
N/A
N/A
2007
73/59
92/72
N/A
63/42
N/A
2009
79/62
85/71
N/A
71/46
N/A
2010
68/63
83/69
N/A
81/49
N/A

 

Please comment on any aspect of the data that you believe is particularly significant.

Challenger 7 has scored well above the state average on all FCAT measures over the past seven years.  When comparing data from year 2003 with 2010, there has been a significant increase on all measures in the percentage of students on or above grade level on the Sunshine State Standards FCAT.  The most growth over the five-year period has occurred within the last three years when PLC’s have been more fully implemented.  Professional Learning Communities promote a team approach to educating all children.  This collaborative effort is reflected in our high assessment results that include our exceptional education population that makes up over one-fourth of our population.  Also, improvement can be seen across all grade levels as a result of an emphasis on school-wide goals as opposed to isolated improvements.  Because our scores seem to have stabilized over the last couple of years, we are focusing on improving the achievement of our higher level students while still intervening with our below grade level students and raising them to grade level status.  In order to accomplish this task, our PLC’s this year are focusing on differentiated instruction.

Please present additional information that indicates your efforts to build a professional learning community have had a positive impact on students and/or teachers.

The key to a successful professional learning community is involvement by all members.  Teachers have to be willing to take risks and share their successes and failures.  They need to take on leadership roles and learn from one another instead of the administration always leading.  This is what is happening at Challenger 7 this year as a result of the growth involved in PLC’s over the past few years.  In our efforts to target our higher level students, we are continuing to focus on differentiated instruction. This year we are also continuing to build a professional learning environment by following the guidelines as established in the book, Learning By Doing by Richard and Becky DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas Many.  Collectively as a school we wrote a new school vision and mission statement.  These are now displayed throughout the school and posted on all newsletters and correspondence.  Each grade level team collectively wrote group norms to follow during all PLC meetings.  These are posted in our meeting room.  Next, we have identified the essential standards in both reading and math to be mastered at each grade level as well as identified the common assessments we will use to monitor students’ progress toward them.  We have also implemented a Response to Intervention (RtI) process where teachers meet biweekly to discuss student progress, provide interventions for those students in need, and monitor and adjust interventions as necessary.  The teachers not only share successful strategies and interventions, but they also share instruction with walk to instruction being shared.  For teachers’ Professional Development Plans (action research) this year a common grade level goal was identified and all teachers’ professional development was based on this goal.  To further support the professional learning environment at Challenger 7, we are running various book clubs based on the following books:  When the Brain Can’t Hear, Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom, The RtI Daily Planning Book, and RtI From all Sides.  We are also in the process of implementing a school wide share point site for successful strategies/ideas and student work to be shared amongst the staff here at Challenger 7.  This year’s School Improvement Plan is centered on creating a professional learning community; in fact, this is our primary goal for the year.

Please elaborate strategies you have found to be effective in the following areas:

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basi.. 

- Grade level Professional Learning Communities meet weekly at Challenger 7 to discuss strategies for improvement, analyze data, and determine courses of action to better meet student needs.  The team approach provides each teacher access to the ideas, materials, strategies and talents of the entire team. 

- Subject specific Professional Learning Communities, such as for reading, writing, science, and math meet on a monthly basis to review school-wide assessment results (on school and district required assessments) and determine school-wide goals. 

- Each teacher maintains his/her data in a program called A3 Vision which is a compilation of all of the indicators related to a child’s academic growth.  Patterns, strengths, weaknesses, and students with similar skill needs are determined using this data.  Student progress is monitored on a weekly basis and adjustments made to differentiated intervention groups as needed. 

- Progress Monitoring Plans as well as Individual Education Plans are developed immediately for those students who demonstrate skill weaknesses in a subject area or show a processing deficit.  The plans outline deficiencies and identify strategies for implementation.  Professional Learning Communities are made up of all of the personnel who impact the students’ learning.  Together they determine what strategies are needed based on the students’ deficits.

- All students’ progress is continuously monitored through a variety of assessments.  The FAIR is administered three times a year with progress monitoring occurring every three weeks.  The Scholastic Reading Inventory is administered three times a year to monitor each child’s comprehension.  District required assessments in reading, math, and science are administered once every nine week period with school level assessments administered weekly.  A school-wide writing is administered four times a year with students writing to a prompt and being scored by the classroom teachers on a weekly basis.  The administration also administers timed writings following instruction based on identified weaknesses.

- An RtI process is in place in which students needing extra support are assessed and their skill weaknesses targeted with intervention.  The students’ progress is monitored, and intervention adjusted as needed. 

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

- In order for intervention to be effective, it is important to build it into the master schedule and provide all “extra” personnel to support the intervention.  Challenger 7 has scheduled a thirty minute intervention reading block at Grades K-2.  This is additional time outside of the 90-minute reading block.  Activity teachers, administration, and exceptional education teachers are scheduled to assist with intervention.  Students are progress monitored every three weeks using FAIR to determine the effectiveness of the intervention.  Instructional strategies and groupings are adjusted according to student need.  The Phonics Screener and/or Phonological Awareness Screener are also used to pinpoint student strengths and weaknesses.  Professional Learning Communities meet to discuss all progress monitoring results and share strategies that have produced positive results.  Teachers support all students, not just those on their roll.  Each teacher’s strengths are utilized to benefit the students. 

- Challenger 7 has implemented an Academic Support Program in which students working below grade level are provided additional time and support in reading and/or math.  This class is offered during the September/October intersession to provide immediate assistance.  A student’s Professional Monitoring Plan identifies the skills to be targeted during instruction.

- Because Challenger 7 has implemented an inclusion model to service the majority of our exceptional education population, additional support can be provided within the classroom setting by both the regular education teacher as well as the exceptional education teacher.

- Challenger 7’s guidance counselor has implemented a mentoring program targeting students who need extra support.  The mentors are made up of faculty members who meet with their mentees and monitor their progress as well as provide incentives and support.  There are numerous mentor/mentee parties throughout the year to build relationships.                                                             

–Several teachers offer before/after school tutoring to students in their class who need academic support.

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

- High performing collaborative teams are a direct result of lots of staff development.  Challenger 7’s School Improvement Plan is focused entirely on professional development of the teachers. 

- For a Professional Learning Community to work, collaborative teams must feel nonthreatening and willing to share.  When hiring, grade level teams assist with the interview process.

- The fifth and sixth grade classes at Challenger 7 are not self-contained, but rather teachers share students.  This reinforces the concept of collaborative teams because the teachers all have a stake in the performance of all students.  No longer are they isolated but rather are encouraged to collaborate to help their students succeed.

- The principal and assistant principal promote Professional Learning Communities and play an active role in the collaborative effort.  They share in the education of the students and share ideas with others.  They also create the time in the schedule for collaboration to occur both within grade levels and across grade levels. 

- As a collaborative team, school wide objectives are set that target grade level goals.  For examples, we have determined the required standard for our fourth grade writing.  Based on this objective, curriculum mapping is used to plot expectations at each grade level so that this objective can be met.  All teachers are responsible for a child’s writing over several years (especially since we do not have a high mobility rate).  Discussions across grade levels are often held identifying strengths and weaknesses in the continuum as well as suggestions for improvement.

- In creating the master schedule for this school year and the next, the exceptional education teachers, some regular education teachers, the guidance counselor, the speech/language pathologists, the district inclusion resource teacher, the staffing specialist, and the administration all worked collaboratively identifying each student’s needs and matching them with each teacher’s strengths.  Because of everyone’s input and the collaborative approach, we were able to develop a schedule focused at improved learning for all students.

- An instructional thread that binds all teachers at Challenger 7 from kindergarten to sixth grade is that they all teach the same thinking maps thought processes and differentiating instruction.  All teachers were trained on thinking maps and differentiated instruction, and they collaboratively promote continuous cognitive development as they are applied in increasingly sophisticated ways.

- Part of an effective Professional Learning Community involves teams designing formative assessments based on the needs of the students in which data is collaboratively analyzed and strategies shared, implemented, and revised.  Since our district provides lots of assessments, most of our teams utilize these resources to meet this need.  The McMillan McGraw Hill math series permits our teams to generate assessments specific to the skill weaknesses of the students to be used as progress monitoring.  My fourth grade teachers use these formative assessments to guide their instruction.  As a school we also create writing prompts specific to our students’ needs and together score and analyze the results in order to determine our instructional focus.  The process of creating a formative assessment and the academic benefits of this process are still being developed at Challenger 7.

List awards and recognitions your school has achieved:

- FCAT Annual Report A – (Challenger 7 has been an “A” school every year!)
- AYP
- Golden School Award
- Florida School Recognition Award
- Five Star Award
- Excellence in Visual Arts Award
- Governor’s Fitness Champion School
- School Age Child Care Gold Key