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Stilwell Junior High School
GOAL: Learners will display improved reading comprehension.
The students and staff at Stilwell Junior High School continue to work diligently to improve reading comprehension among all our learners. Our staff has been trained on the Reading Comprehension Toolkit--the training was facilitated by our two reading resource teachers—Mrs. Pat Kraus and Mrs. Michelle Huber—those strategies are now infused throughout our curriculum and reinforced throughout our building. One collaboration day a month has been utilized to continually assist staff with the implementation of the those strategies into their teaching and their students’ learning.
As a building we are disappointed in our recent ITBS results in the area of reading comprehension. They certainly do not coincide with the kind of growth we have been able to have our students display over the past four years. It is the first year in the last five that we have not met or exceeded 1.2 years growth among our 8th grader. We are extremely pleased with the results our students displayed on the American Guidance Services Inc. reading assessment we gave to all our students in the fall and in the spring. 82.3% of our students that had not already topped out the test displayed at least 1.2 years growth—7th graders or 2.4 year growth—8th graders in the area reading comprehension. We will continue to review/revamp our efforts and strive for the level of student progress we are known for.
Through the support provided by the Teacher Quality Funding a number of our staff members participated in study groups that focused on essential questioning, using Engaging Readers and Writers With Inquiry, by Jeffrey Wilhelm. Mr. Wilhelm will be visiting our school and working with our whole staff during our October 13th staff development day. We hope to see the benefit of this work displayed in increased student reading comprehension.
Our building has recommitted to our goal of improving reading comprehension among all our learners for next year. We feel strongly about the positive effect this goal has had and will continue to have on our building.
The following individual team reports will include specific procedures that our teams have utilized in their efforts to help our school achieve our building and district goals. These teams all act as different entities, but we come together in a number of ways (staff meetings, site-improvement team, department meetings, and collaboration days) to ensure that we are working together and staying on course with our efforts.
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