Lakeridge Junior High School

 

School Information

School Name:  Lakeridge Junior HighSchool
School Address:  719 West 580 South, Orem, UT 84058
School Phone:    801-735-9562
School Fax:  801-227-2490
Principal:  Garrick Peterson
Principal email:  grp84606@yahoo.com

 

Demographics

Number of Students:  1214
Number Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch:  29%
Percent of Limited English Proficient:  15%
Percent of Special Education: 8%
Racial/Ethnic Percentages:
- White  78%
- Black  1%
- Hispanic  16%
- Asian/Pacific Island  4%
- Other  1%

 

Student Achievement Data:

Math Data Summary

	2002	2004	2007
Overall %	55	71	82
Caucasian %	59	79	85
Hispanic %	31	47	65
ELL %	31	45	58
Low Income %	49	61	71
Special Needs %	26	39	56

More Math Data

	2002	2004	2007
Geometry %	48	69	95
Algebra %	65	77	87
Pre-Algebra %	60	66	75

English Data Summary

	2002	2004	2007
Overall %	55	79	88
Caucasian %	59	82	92
Hispanic %	31	49	70
ELL %	34	46	60
Low Income %	46	67	77
Special Needs %	37	51	65

Achievement Gap

One of the pieces of data we are most excited about is the achievement gap between our Caucasian students and Hispanic students. The gap continues to decrease even though our Caucasian students scores are increasing. The following shows the achievement gap between our Caucasian students and Hispanic students in our school from 2003-2007.

Language Arts

	2004	2005	2006	2007
Gap %	40	32	28	22

Math

	2004	2005	2006	2007
Gap %	27	26	26	20

 

 

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

Using the PLC process, we have been able to create sustained improvement. Each year we see our test scores rise. Each year we get a little bit better as a school. The PLC process for us has been about sustained improvement over a five-year period.

As we have focused on an area of for improvement and attacked that area of need focusing on the three questions:

1. what is it we want students to learn?
2. How will we know if they have learned it?
3. What will we do if they do not learn it? We have seen dramatic improvement in that area.

 

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

Below is a fairly comprehensive write-up containing a summary of the things we have done to build strong sustained professional learning communities. We have found that teachers are invigorated to come to work, because they truly feel they make a difference in student’s lives. The morale at Lakeridge Junior High School has never been better.

We are still developing and improving. Using the PLC process, we expect continued improvement.

Culture

In order for Lakeridge to focus on the right issues we had to first check the culture of our school. We believe the culture of our school is the foundation of a strong school. If we could not answer a few questions correctly, it was not in our best interest to get teachers together in collaborative groups. We needed to look at our mission, our values, and make some collective commitments based on those values.

When we first started PLC’s in 2002, we were the lowest performing school in our
district on end of level assessments. 55% of our students were proficient in Math and 55% were proficient in English. We wanted to blame kids for not learning, we wanted to blame parents for not doing their job, everyone was responsible but the educators in our building. We had to address our culture.

What did we decide? First, we decided it was our mission to help ALL kids learn at high levels. This was critical. If this was our mission, we decided to make the collective commitment to do whatever it takes to help all kids learn at high levels.

Based on this mission we had to answer some questions about what we believed. These beliefs have been the foundation for our school:

1. We believe that all students can learn.
2. We believe that we as educators are the key contributors to students learning
3. We believe that education is critical to the success of any person
4. We believe that we make a difference in kids lives
   

Collective commitments:

1. We will do all things in our power to help students learn.
2. We believe that the answers to our issues are found within the collective
   knowledge of our staff. We commit to collaborate with each other to find those answers.
3. We commit to do things that are best for our students even if it might not be the most comfortable thing for adults.
   

Building a Collaborative Culture

According to the book Learning by Doing, “It is difficult to overstate the importance of collaborative teams. It is equally important, however, to emphasize that collaboration does not lead to improved results unless people are focused on the right issues.” We believe not only in being focused on the right issues, but building capacity and vision to address those issues in a meaningful way.

There were two major paradigm shifts we went through as an organization that helped make our professional learning community model successful. 1) Collaboration became our professional development model, and 2) there was a concerted effort to build leadership within our faculty. By focusing on these two concepts, we found collaboration became much more successful and meaningful.

Collaboration as a Professional Development Model

We believe many schools try to do PLC’s as a side project to everything else they do. This practice inhibits the success of PLC’s. It is not the driving force behind creating a culture. We felt if we were going to be successful in a collaborative model, then we needed to make this our focus. We needed to make collaboration and developing our ability as a staff on the three questions the basis of our professional development. How did we make this shift?

As a district, we get five professional development days a year. We decided that during those five days all of our efforts would go into training our teachers how to be successful during collaboration days. Our training for the past six years has focused on helping teachers create standards, develop good assessments, analyze data, etc….Things that will help them be successful during collaboration time.

If we truly believe that a collaborative model focused on the right things will improve student learning, then we needed to make sure we were highly capable at addressing the three questions in a meaningful way. Focusing our professional development days on best
practice in unwrapping standards, creating quality common formative assessments, best practice in intervention, and analyzing data we created the capacity in our teachers to increase student learning during collaboration. We trained teachers during professional development days and allowed them to do meaningful work during collaboration time.

Building Leadership Capacity

We understand that our PLC’s will only be as effective as the teacher leadership. We created an eight-person leadership team. This team of eight has the responsibility of monitoring where our strengths and weaknesses are in our PLC journey. We have found the rubrics in the book Learning by Doing are very beneficial.

We are in Control of Time

One of the things we realized as we began restructuring our school is we needed to take control of the time. We knew that students learned at different rates. If we keep time the constant, learning will be the variable. If we wanted all students to learn at high levels, we had to make time the variable.

Our first major move to take control of the time was when we moved to an A/B block schedule. The purpose for doing that was to allow flexibility within the students schedule to build in extra time and support within the school day. We found that it was very difficult to build a pyramid of intervention for students within the school day if we did
not create some flexibility in the students schedule in the school day. For us going to a block schedule created that flexibility.

Another shift for the administration was giving the teachers time to develop products outside of our once a week collaboration. We have paid departments to come in over the summer and develop standards, common assessments, and analyze data.

We have paid for subs for departments of teachers on days students are taking
assessments to get together and review standards, assessments, and data. These times have been invaluable to our staff. It is amazing what a group of professional teachers can accomplish if they are given the time.

Pyramids of Intervention

Once we create flexibility within our own schedule, we were capable of creating pyramids of intervention for students in our school. Our pyramids of intervention have four levels.

1. Learners: What do we do in our school for students that are learning?
2. Failed Learners: What do we do for students that have desire to learn, but need additional time and support?
3. Intentional non-learners:
   What do we do for students that are opting out of education?
4. Special Education: What do we do for students with learning disabilities?
   

Click here to see two Pyramids’ of Intervention. The first pyramid is the intervention diagram for all school interventions at Lakeridge Junior High School. The second diagram is for Math. The idea for our pyramids came from a conference where we heard Mike Mattos speak.

Overall Pyramid of Interventions

The first pyramid is all of the interventions we do school wide. These are programs,
classes, and support systems we have created through the PLC process. As we see a need to address certain groups not learning, we attempt to create a system of support for those students.

Math Pyramid of Interventions

The second pyramid is our math pyramid and illustrates how we support math. It is
broken down to three levels: 1) learners, 2) failed learners and 3) intentional non-learners.

1. Learners - On the bottom level of the pyramid you see three categories. Support for all students is a category of regular courses we offer. Already learned: strategies we have in place to challenge those students above level. The last column in the learner category is common practices and school structures we have in place for all students.
   
2. Failed Learners - The second level of the pyramid is what we do for failed learners. Most of these interventions are required extra time and support for students who need it. The intensive support column, are interventions in the school day and are not optional for students that are struggling. The Non-intensive support column, are things made available outside the
   school day.
   
3. Intentional non-learners - These are support systems put in place to work on the motivation side of students. They are all very intensive in nature. These interventions are done on more a one adult for every one to five students. The purpose is to get students to do the work or find out why they are not doing the work.

What do we want students to learn? Standards (I Can’s)

Lakeridge Junior High School took time in collaboration to develop what we call “I Can’s”. These are agreed upon standards that have been developed by the professionals in our school for each course that is taught.

Click here to see an example of I Can’s created by our Algebra teachers. Each student gets a list of I Can’s to track his or her learning. Students check off when they have mastered a concept.

How will we know if they have learned it? Common Formative Assessment Data
Orientation

We believe there are three reasons we give an assessment:

1. To guarantee the curriculum. If we have a common assessment in place that each teacher that teaches the same course administers, then that will guarantee the curriculum.
2. To inform the students of their learning---so they can learn more.
3. To inform the teachers of their teaching so they can improve instruction.
   

The following are examples of quick formative assessments administered to our students in Algebra. The assessment is designed to determine if the student has mastered a standard. There are three assessments for each standard. If a student gets three out of four correct the teachers are confident they have mastered the standard. If they do not get three of four correct they will get extra time and support to learn that concept.

Click here to see three sample quizzes for standard 13-1 from the above standards sheet. This standard is finding the missing side of right triangle using the Pythagorean theorem.

Data Analysis

Once our students take our mastery quizzes, we analyze the data during our collaboration time. One of the things I think educators find difficult is getting meaningful data out of their own assessments. If we cannot get meaningful data out of our own assessments, it is difficult for us to be informed about the students learning and our teaching.

Click here to see a grading sheet from one of our math teachers. There are three major shifts that have taken place in our school when it comes to a grading sheet.

1. Scores on an assignment are not about creating a grade, they are about mastery
2. grading sheets should allow the teacher to quickly gather data on his/her instructional effectiveness, and
3. we should be able to make quick decisions about students by looking at our grading sheet.
   

Scores are about mastery.

If you look at the sheet below you see five different entries that are possible. A 10
means they achieved mastery on the first attempt. Nine means they met mastery
on the second attempt. 7 they achieved mastery but it took them more than two
attempts. An "I" means they have still not achieved mastery. An A means they
have not yet attempted to meet mastery.

We do not enter scores that show how many points out of ten a student got
correct. What we do is set how a student demonstrates mastery and then we give
him the points for the rate he shows mastery. This is not about creating a grade; this is about students showing mastery.

Scores showing instructional effectiveness

On the top of the grade sheet is each standard. These standards are shown by
designations such as 6-2, 6-7, 7-8, 8-2, etc. On the bottom of each of those
columns is an average score for example 9.5/10, 9.8/10. 8.1/10, etc. These scores
show the percentage of students that have mastered a concept. If the percentage is
high, it shows the teachers instruction led to students learning. If the score is low,
it shows the teachers instruction did not lead to high levels of learning.

Making quick decisions about students learning.

Each row represents a student. If a student’s scores primarily tens with a few nines we would identify them as a learner. They are showing mastery in the allotted amount of time we are giving them in a school day. If a student has several nines and sevens, this student would be a failed learner. This student is capable of learning, but is not showing mastery on the initial attempt. This student needs additional time and support. If a student has a great deal of A’s and I’s we would likely characterize them as intentional non-learners. They are missing school, not working hard in intervention time, or other possible scenarios. These students could also need testing for special education services, but we would not know this unless we get them to do work

Making quick decisions about our instruction

Monday Conversation

Monday collaboration conversation will focus on the results from these formative
assessments.

What do we do if students do not learn it?

We have created a system wide program for intervention that we call FLEX. This model has been years in the making and came about after much trial and error with different intervention and remedial efforts.

Below is our journey in addressing the third question: What do we do if students do not learn?

What causes students to fail?

It is the general feeling at Lakeridge Junior High School that there are two key reasons why students are not successful in school:

1. the student’s ability to learn and
2. the motivation of the student to learn.

It is critical to understand these two factors if a remedial program is to be created to help meet the needs of students in each category.

The first reason students fail is that they need more time to learn, we call these students failed learners. In education, with a traditional model, there is the belief that if given forty-five minutes a day, students will all be able to master a concept. If the student does not learn the concept, we move on the next day. Every student is expected to learn at the same rate and at the same time. Any system of intervention has to account for the additional time that some students need to learn. It is not that students cannot learn; they just need more time to learn.

The second reason for failing grades is strictly motivational, we call these students intentional non-learners. In creating an intervention system, there are two ways to approach motivation issues with students. The first way is out of fear and punishment. The second way is out of reward for doing what is correct. Both can be effective and both need to be considered when designing a school-wide intervention system. If we take into account these two reasons for student failure, the basis of our intervention
system will take a different direction. We focus on giving additional time and support to students instead of just complaining about their inabilities or lack of motivation. We can look to bridge gaps for students to succeed within the time available to the school. Whenever a school makes time and support for learning constant (that is, fixed), the
variable will always be student learning. Some students, probably most students, will learn the intended skill in the given time and with the given support. Other students will not.

What are key components to good intervention?

The process of good intervention is very important in helping all students learn. How do we respond when students do not learn what we have intended them to learn? We took our answer for this from the book Learning by Doing. The solution requires a systematic process of intervention to ensure students receive additional time and support for learning according to a school-wide plan:

1. The process should ensure students receive the intervention in a timely fashion—at first indication they are experiencing difficulty. It should be intervention as
   often as possible, not remediation.
2. The process should direct rather than invite students to devote the extra time and take advantage of the additional support until they are experiencing success. If a student is experiencing difficulty, additional time and support is not optional.
3. Most importantly, students should be guaranteed they will receive this time and support regardless of who their teacher might be. It needs to be system-wide.
4. It must be within the school day. This may cause an alteration to schedules, but will allow for the additional time and support students need in the school day.
5. You must have your most qualified teachers doing the intervention. If you are using aides to intervene rather than the classroom instructor, your intervention is not as efficient as it could be.
6. It must be a fluid model. If a student is failing a course, he should not have to spend a set amount of time in remediation (a week for each F, a month, etc). As soon as a student raises his grades, he should be allowed to get out of intervention time.
   

Middle Level Philosophy and Intervention

The impetus for the middle school movement was clearly the conviction that the unique needs for young adolescents required a unique school program. Although NMSA acknowledges academic achievement should be a priority responsibility for middle level
education, it calls upon middle school educators to balance academic rigor with
humanness.

“During the middle level years (students) face new academic demands that quite often do not coincide with their intellectual or mental development. Therefore, while intellectual development is and must continue to be the basic responsibility of the middle school, the education and nurture of young adolescents has to be an integrated venture that provides a balance between academic rigor and humanness. The physical, social, emotional, and intellectual aspects of young adolescents are inexorably woven together in the fabric of their lives.”

Therefore when creating a good intervention plan in the middle level, you want to take into account the needs of students beyond just academic needs. How could we create a system of intervention that takes into account intellectual development, as well as
physical, social, and emotional growth opportunities? Good intervention in a middle level school should look different than intervention in an elementary school or high school—the students have different needs.

Lakeridge History of Intervention

1. Leopard Academy - Lakeridge has made several attempts at intervention. Leopard Academy was our first attempt at creating a remedial program. Teachers would wait until the end of the term and then we would get a list of students that had failed either math or English. If they failed math or English we would then require them to go to an after school program for an hour a day for 16 days. If they refused to attend parents would sign a refusal of services. We found that parents had no problems signing their students out of Leopard Academy. There were basic flaws to Leopard Academy. It was a good system-wide effort by the school, but it missed all other qualifications for good intervention. It was not timely; we waited until the student had failed a term to intervene. It was optional, because parents and students could sign out. It was after school, not in the school day. It was taught by an aide or computer and not a certified teacher.
2. Summer School - We have had summer school for several years. It has the same basic flaws as Leopard Academy. The only difference is we use a certified teacher to teach summer school. The basic flaw to the summer school model is it is very difficult to get the kids there who
   most need the help. If you look at the criteria for good intervention, it misses several key factors: it is optional, it is not in the school day, and it is not timely.
3. Before and After School - We have a staff that is truly dedicated to the success of each student. In an effort to assure that students were successful, we’ve had teachers with 20-30 kids in their classrooms before and after school, attempting to make things up. We found that this was leading to tired teachers, and we were still not getting a large portion coming in before and after school to get help.

FLEX

Why FLEX?

There is a strong belief at Lakeridge Junior High School that all students can learn. There are two things that prohibit students from learning:

1. they just do not get what is being taught and
2. motivation to learn.
   

Everyone has had the experience of trying to learn something, only to find themselves unable to grasp a concept. In most cases, the remedy for this is more time to learn or instruction that is more direct. It is not necessarily an inability to learn a concept that is causing the student to struggle, but a lack of time or help to learn that concept. Our goal with the flex schedule is to give students the opportunity to meet with one of our
outstanding teachers for additional instruction time. We believe that offering students 30 extra minutes a day to learn something they are struggling with will be of great benefit.

Motivation is a completely different issue. Every student has differing levels of
motivation for schooling. Some students struggle to participate in class, do homework, or reach out for help. Since motivation for schooling is quite often low, our goal is to provide opportunities for students to participate in things they enjoy if they have taken care of their educational responsibilities.

The third reason we are implementing a flextime is to provide students with the
opportunity to explore areas of interest and engage in education in a way that is not necessarily traditional, but might be more conducive to the learning style of many middle level students. This is a middle level component of trying to address social, emotional, and academic skills.

Ultimately, we are trying to find the correct motivation for those students that are not motivated, give more time to students that are struggling to learn concepts, and enrich the education of students that are having success.

How often does the flex schedule run?

Every Monday Lakeridge releases school an hour early so teachers can get together in departments and address student learning. Monday will always be a regular collaboration schedule—no flex. (Please see Monday Collaboration Schedule).

We are on a block schedule. Our students have eight classes and they attend those
classes every other day. There are “A” days and “B” days.

Tuesday through Friday, we will run the FLEX schedule. During this time, students that are getting a failing grade in a course will be required to spend a half hour with that instructor - working on the things necessary to earn a non-failing grade.

Students that have no failing grades attend a FLEXtime activity based on their interest. They have shown us the maturity to pass all of their classes, and we trust them to choose an activity that will meet their interest or need.

Where did we find the time in the school day to run FLEX?

Let us first say that we are in control of time. Time is critical in the learning process. If time is constant for all kids learning will be the variable. If we are willing to be flexible with the time then learning can be the constant.

We use to run Channel 1 every day. Between this program and our announcements we took 16 minutes. By getting rid of channel 1 we gained sixteen minutes for this new schedule. The other fourteen minutes came by shortening two classes from 85 to 80 minutes and the other two classes from 82 down to 80 minutes.

Each class now has 80 minutes of instruction time and we have created a thirty-minute block of time for additional time and support for students.

How does the schedule for FLEX work?

The flex schedule will make each class 80 minutes on an A/B schedule.

8:15-9:35 (First Period)

This will be a regular 80-minute class. We will attempt to keep other interruptions
limited. This will no longer be homeroom. During first period, the FLEX coordinator will run a failure report and fill out slips of
paper for those students that are getting an F or an I grade.

9:40-11:00 (Second Period)

This will be a regular 80-minute class. We will have regular announcements the last two minutes of this time. Report cards are handed to the second period teacher and they distribute them to each student.

11:00-11:30

This is FLEXtime. All students will attend an enrichment activity if they are not failing any classes. If a student is failing a class, he attends the class he is failing. If he is failing more than one class, the student gets to choose the class he would like to make up, unless he is assigned to a certain class by the administration. Students will have 5 minutes to be where they should be or want to be.

We run two lunches for our students. We have a student body of about 1230
students and our lunchroom can accommodate around 650 students. Half of our students go to first lunch and half go to second lunch.

First Lunch Students

11:30-11:55 - This will be lunchtime for all first lunch students.

12:00-1:20 - This time will be third period for all first lunch students.

Second Lunch Students

11:05-12:25 - This will be third period for all second lunch students.

12:55-1:20 - This will be lunchtime for all second lunch students.

1:25-2:45 (Fourth Period) - This will be a regular 80-minute class for all students.

How do Students know they are failing a course? (FLEX coordinator)

Lakeridge Junior High School has an aide that is our coordinator for all intervention. She has several duties throughout the day to make sure that FLEX works in a smooth and efficient manner. If you get serious about implementation of something like this, please let me know and I will go into the details of her job.

Her critical job is to put a report card on each student’s desk on a daily basis. We run a web based grading system known as power school, but there are several similar programs available. During first period, the FLEX coordinator runs two reports. One report is for all students that have no failing grades. This report creates a report card for each student that we run a colored sheet of paper. To see a sample report card please see appendix A.

The second report is the report for all students that are failing at least one course. This report we run on a white sheet of paper. All students that are given a colored sheet of paper attend an enrichment activity. All students that have a white sheet of paper will attend intervention with the teacher of whom the course is being failed.

Adults running the enrichment activities check for the colored piece of paper. If a student is failing more than one course, they get the choice of which course to attend for intervention.

Enrichment and Intervention

Intervention is the term we use for students that are failing a course. This is a 30-minute block of time where students go to the room of the teacher’s course they are failing for additional time and support.

Enrichment is the term we use for the activities that students get to choose from if they are not failing any courses. Students are free each day to choose an enrichment activity of their choice. There are only a couple of activities where we will require students to attend the same activity on a daily basis. For all other activities, they can change daily. They might have an intramural game one day, attend dance revolution the next, and then find that they need to do some homework and attend a study hall the next. This time is their time. We need to help them make good choices with that time, but it is their time. We trust them to use their time wisely, because they have demonstrated to use the responsibility to pass all of their classes.

Teachers and FLEXtime

FLEX is a tool for teachers. One of the reasons we went to this model of intervention is the pressure on teachers to help students that did not learn before and after school. This should not be more work for the teacher, but a support system for them to help more students learn.

What is the teacher’s role during intervention time - The teacher has one role during intervention and that is to help the non-learner learn. Our job as a school is to get the kids to that teacher. We have found in 30 minutes teacher can accomplish amazing things.

Math, English, and Science teachers have intervention every day. All other teachers have intervention every other day and do an enrichment activity on the opposite day.

Pyramid for FLEX

Like all interventions in our school, we like to create a pyramid to help us get a quick look of our intervention model. Click here to see what the pyramid looks like for FLEX.

The bottom level of the pyramid is what happens during FLEX for students that are showing mastery in each of their classes. These are our enrichment activities.

The second level is what we do for our failed learners and where they go for additional time and support.

The third level is what we do for students that are our intentional non-learners or students that are disengaged from the educational process.

What is great about FLEX for intervention?

1. It meets all the criteria for good intervention.
   
2. As soon as a student’s grade falls to failing, he has extra time and support with his teacher—it is timely. We do not wait until the end of the term. As soon as a student gets in trouble, he gets the support he needs.
   
3. It is not optional. Every student with a failing grade attends the teacher’s class that he is failing. Kids cannot opt out of this.
   
4. By putting the intervention time in the school day, we are able to control it. We are able to get kids where they need to be.
   
5. It is system-wide. This is something our entire school is involved with. It has become part of our school culture and the way we do things at Lakeridge. Extra time and support
   does not depend on which teacher a student has and how much extra time that teacher is willing to put in. All students can get the time and support they need to be successful.
   
6. Our students get the most qualified professional to help them in the areas where they are deficient. The students attend intervention time with their instructors. If a student is
   struggling with math, he is with his math teacher, not an aide.
   
7. A great middle level side benefit is that kids get rewarded with an exploratory activity if they are passing all of their classes. They get to choose from twenty different activities. This makes FLEX a reward-based system. The kids failing their classes have the
   opportunity to earn time doing something they really enjoy if they work hard and raise those grades. That reward is immediate. Intervention is not a long-term punishment for having a failing grade. With thirty extra minutes, students can make up the work they
   need so they are not failing, and they will get to attend the FLEX activity the next day. It is fluid.
   

What increases do we want to see?

1. A 10% decrease in the percentage of students failing a course compared to the 2006-07 school year.
2. By conducting a survey: Did students that are on level enjoy their educational experience more than in the 2006-07 school year because of the enrichment activities.
3. A 3% increase in the pass rate for all CRT scores in each tested area.
4. By conducting a survey: Do parents feel their students are benefiting from the FLEX model.
   

What have been the results?

1. In comparing the fail rate between 2007 and 2008. We saw a 34% decrease in our fail rate during the first term and a 44% decrease in our failure rate the second term. This far exceeded expectations.
2. 97% of students say they feel that FLEXtime has been of benefit to them academically. 94% of students enjoy the activities with minor modifications needed as to offering a few different activities.
3. We will not find out the answer to this question until the CRT (end of level assessment has been administered and results received).
4. 93% of parents feel that FLEX has been of benefit to their student.
   

Summary

We as a school believe in the PLC process. We focus on our culture, standards, assessment, intervention, and data analysis. The results have been amazing and we look forward to continued success.

List awards and recognitions your school has achieved

2008 Best of State for K-12 public/private schools.