School Improvement Plan (SIP)
Information for Parents
Vision: Learning and Growing Together
Mission: CDR William C. McCool Elementary/Middle School prepares its students to excel as citizens in a diverse and technological society.
Key Outcomes:
Teamwork and positive personal values
Analytical skills for creative, critical thinking
Listening, oral and written communication skills
Community and global environmental awareness
Personal wellness skills
Technology and information literacy
Safe learning environment
Develop lifelong learners
Goal 1: All students will improve in writing across all curricular areas.
Essence: Write narrative, informative, and persuasive texts using the “writing process.”
Brief Description of Interventions and Supporting Research
Intervention: 6 + 1 Trait Writing Model of Instruction and Assessment
“The 6+1 Trait® Writing model gives teachers a powerful framework to formatively evaluate student writing through an analytical approach focused on the traits that characterize quality writing. Used in thousands of classrooms throughout the world, this assessment model was developed in the Northwest by educators seeking a better system for grading students’ written work as well as providing effective feedback that could help students improve their writing” (Northwest Educational Laboratory, 2005).
· Ideas: Ideas are the heart of the message, the content of the piece, the main theme, together with the details that enrich and develop that theme.
· Organization: Organization is the internal structure, the thread of central meaning, the logical and sometimes intriguing pattern of ideas within a piece of writing.
· Voice: Voice is the heart and soul, the magic, the wit, along with the feeling and conviction of the individual writer coming out through the words.
· Word Choice: Word choice is the use of rich, colorful, precise language that moves and enlightens the reader.
· Sentence Fluency: Sentence Fluency is the rhythm and flow of the language, the sound of patterns, the way in which the writing plays to the ear – not just to the eye.
· Conventions: Conventions are like the mechanical correctness of the piece – spelling, paragraphing, grammar and usage, punctuation, and use of capitals.
· Presentation: Presentation zeros in on the form and layout of the text and its readability; the piece should be pleasing to the eye.
School Improvement Plan(SIP)
Information for Parents
Goal 2: All students will improve in math computation across all curriculum areas.
Essence: Students will make reasonable estimates and compute within context.
Intervention: Problem of the Day
Implementation Strategy: Think, Pair, and Share
The heart of our SIP math computation goal is to improve our students’ ability to make good estimations and correct computations using the four basic operations (+, -, x, ÷). We want our students to make these computations within a real-world context. Asking students to multiply 4 and 3 is a problem that is out of context. On the other hand, asking students how much it will cost for three people to go to a movie at $4.00 per person is a problem that has a real-world context. The latter example is what we want students to be able to estimate and compute.
We are more interested in the students’ ability to understand what it means to add, subtract, multiply, or divide within a real-world context than we are in the problem solving process. However, the problem solving process provides a framework from which students are able to understand when to use each of the basic mathematical operations. The rationale of our goal is that if students can connect the four basic operations (+, -, x, ÷) to the world around them (Constructivist Theory), their skill in math computation will improve. When students share their thought processes, it helps to clarify and deepen their understanding about the mathematical computations being made.