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Rationale:
We continue to understand the importance and relevance of effective writing skills for 21st Century students. As an outcome of our school improvement team, we have begun teaching prompt writing as a genre and will continue that practice. We have also added a component to our writing goal which will provide students an opportunity to strengthen their skills in writing a constructed response.

Assessment:
Writing assessments will be given quarterly to students in grades 1 – 5. We believe that our efforts and strategies are working. Our Meap scores improved significantly at 3rd and 4th grade this year with 3rd grade scoring at 89%; 4th grade scored at 85%; and 5th grade scored at 75% which was down 1%. Science content will be used to provide students practice with constructed response. Using a 4 point rubric, students will be assessed quarterly in grades 1 – 5. First grade students will gain practice using a question to restate information. Second grade students will answer a question using because… Third grade students will practice restating the question and providing proof in their answer. Fourth and fifth grade students will restate, give proof, and give details through examples.

Goal 2 - Increase basic math fact fluency for all students grade 1-5

Rationale:
Although our scores exceed state averages and indicate students are learning, we have noticed that on Iowa and Meap tests our students’ scores are not as high as we believe they could be in the area of computation skills. Our preliminary research shows that there is a correlation between fluency and several other math computation skills.

Assessment:
Our quarterly assessments in math facts at 1st grade through 5th grade demonstrate that students are gaining fluency at remarkable rates. We anticipate computation scores will improve as a result of our continued practice with math facts.

Long range initiative 1: Building a sense of community

Rationale:
Our students have learned a common language used to encourage respect, responsibility, caring, fairness, and honesty. Not only do we support those character traits within our building, but we have reached out and extended these traits to our friends at Holbrook Elementary. We will continue to forge that relationship.
 

Rationale:
We have surveyed our parents twice in the past two years and have consistently heard that while they value their volunteerism and social events that invite their participation, Winchester parents want a deeper understanding of our curriculum. Parents want to understand ELA and math curriculum in order to gain knowledge about how to specifically support their child’s learning at home. For two years we have held a very successful Curriculum Night, parents join most of our School Improvement meetings as well as attend DSIT.
 

Rationale:
IDEA 2004 requirements to provide data on students achievement progress are based on 40 years of educational research called RTI. We know that general educators and special educators must work together to intervene early when students struggle with basic skills. At Winchester, we will work together to screen student learning in reading, we will design and implement research based interventions, we will monitor student progress during interventions, and we will keep data to provide a record of students’ responses to interventions.