LETRS Training, Intervention Groups, PLCs, 2 Hour Reading Blocks, and more! How do you put it all together in a school day so teachers and staff can best meet the needs of students and increase student achievement! Elementary Principals in Sampson County with the support of their PreK-8 Director developed and implemented a daily schedule that ensured students had access to 120 minutes of grade level reading instruction daily, a daily intervention and enrichment block for all students, and teachers had 90 uninterrupted minutes of planning once per week to complete LETRS training during the school day.
Our presentation will result in attendees having an exemplar of how to develop system wide scheduling standards or “non-negotiables”, a better understanding of how principals can lead the scheduling process in their building, innovative ways to maximize instructional and planning time for teacher by being creative with their adult duty assignments, and knowledge of how to build a sense of collective efficacy within your school to increase student achievement.
Sampson County Schools’ scheduling standards address the following goals of the 2023 Symposium Theme.
-Developing a collaborative culture of high expectations for students and staff
-Elements of successful school and/or district-wide instructional improvement initiatives
-Teaming strategies that promote teacher buy-in and peer accountability
-Using data analysis to help teachers see the evidence of their collective impact on student learning
Having a system wide scheduling standard allowed teachers in our smaller rural school system to plan across schools because there were system wide standards for lesson length and developed a collaborative culture of high expectations for staff.
The intervention groups created for students in grades K-5 focused on reading primarily and were expected to have students from multiple classes included in each group. The results from our intervention groups were used to help teachers see the evidence of their collective impact on student learning.
The dedicated 2 hours of reading instruction were part of the district wide instructional improvement initiative to make sure that students had access to a grade level curriculum and as part of a new reading curriculum initiative. The new curriculum also assisted in developing a culture of high expectations for students and staff.
The 90-minute LETRS training block each week promoted teacher buy-in and peer accountability.
A rough outline of our 45-minute presentation is as follows:
Introduction to the problem
Creating a sense of urgency
Introduction to the research around scheduling
How to use school based leadership to establish non-negotiables