The Addison Early Learning Center's improvement plan includes a focus on ensuring students read aloud. | Unsplash/Johnny McClung
The Addison Early Learning Center's improvement plan includes a focus on ensuring students read aloud. | Unsplash/Johnny McClung
Literacy and engagement were the focus of a pair of presentations made before a recent Addison School District Board of Education meeting.
Dr. Erin Alexander, principal of the Addison Early Learning Center, discussed improvement plans for the center, with a focus on ensuring students read aloud, which has been proven to be effective. During the meeting, streamed live on YouTube, she also noted that teachers in the school meet on Monday mornings to work on their professional development and collaborative skills and meet monthly with her.
“Reading to children is a critical foundation of early literacy skills,” she told the board. “So we are working as a staff and with our parents to get better at interacting and making read aloud, meaningful and purposeful. We're looking for a 10% increase in our data over the year on one of our objectives interacting during read aloud in book conversations.”
The board also heard form Chris Jamrose and the building leadership team regarding a school improvement plan for Indian Trails Junior High School. Jamrose noted during a presentation at the meeting that attention will be given to boosting student engagement by 10% to 15%, per the Instructional Practices Index, to increase cognitive growth and engagement.
Moreover, Jamrose noted that professional development during the year will focus on the index numbers.
According to the presentation, each month, team members will collect IPI data to monitor classrooms based on IPI categories. The data drives professional development and instructional practices to enhance student engagements.
To date, Janrose noted that there have been four training days and 95 licensed staff members are now officially trained.
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