Leadership Meeting Agenda
6/14/04 10:30 AM

1. Review focus / home group agenda comments from May
   1. Discuss Comments
   2. Finalize ESLRs
2. Summer and beyond Timeline
   1. July Meeting for interested members July 26-27
   2. Next Leadership Meeting Aug. 9
   3. Major meeting for all groups Sept 28
   4. Committee Chair assigned September 2004
   5. WASC Committee Visit March 6-9, 2005
3. Writers Selected-1st draft June 30
   1. Be aware of the criteria for your focus group. The writer will be contacting you. To what extent do we fulfill the criteria? What is the evidence of this?
4. How to collect Evidence?
   1. Pertinent evdence available for review by visiting committee through school. This includes samples of representative student work that have been analyzed.
5. Thanks and farewell to Chris Linder.

focus groups suggestions

Bay Area - Writing

• Monthly writing contests with themein newsletter
• It was suggested that to help our parents and students do this, writing ideas and curriculum recommendations might be included in the newsletter month to month.
• Make rubrics available to parents
• provide books on tape

Manteca Aft - Math

• Students need to be taught to show their work, without which it makes it very difficult to accurately assess the student‚s proficiency.
• The algebra requirement is difficult to meet. Many students need additional help from tutors to be able to meet the standard.(Several options were discussed for providing math help. Possible tutors mentioned were Darla Hanson and Joyce Niles. Other options include myskillstutor.com, and Riverdeep- Destination Math)
• The quality of the math book. Is the math book what the student needs?
• We need to see the results from the benchmark assessments.
• On-line and computer based resources.

Mant Eve - Writing

• Suggested Improvements for Writing Rubrics:
• too hard to use for K-12
• too vague/generic
• genre based would be better (ex: rubric does not apply to poetry)
• 0 or 1-- no in between even though .5 would work in many cases
• what is our goal?-- Help parents direct students?
• Choose 1 genre to look at and then give criteria
• Separate out into smaller groups K-3, 4-6, etc...
• No samples to base our findings on
• Not clear enough directions for assignment-- maybe give a specific topic for each grade level next time.
• N/A may alter results

Modesto Eve-writing

• Sherry suggested that we form a group to meet and come up with state standard based curriculum choices for each grade level for ES use and Parents
• use.http://www.writing-edu.com/index.html Excellence in Writing program
• A suggestion was made to anaylize one document of writing as a group so we could have more input on the state standards and how to evaluate writing; also we could share our impressions and how each ES evaluates. By practicing, we can then be able better to help our parents.
• It was suggested that we give each parent the 4th and 7th grade State Standards for the Writing Exam.

Mountain Group-math

• The Group did see the advantage of having an accreditation process timetable.
• Our visiting parent introduced the Mountain Group to a math program that she has
  used with her home schooled children, with great success. She explained that " Math You See" is a video based program spanning kindergarten to Trigonometry. She discussed that it comes with printed workbooks, videos explaining the new math concepts, and manipulatives.
• One ES in our group described the advantages of a program "Visually Verbalizing" for help in reading, word attack skills, and writing. We learned that this program by Linda Mood Bell also takes time to train teachers purchasing their program.

Stockton – Math

• Lecia Leige voiced her concern that the rubrics do not indicate any improvement the student may have made since enrolling with CWCS.
• Another ES asked whether the rubrics could include an ES observation note so that the rubric denotes progression of student achievement?
• Rolff stated that this exercise is used only to determine the needs of our school in Math, not individual student achievement.
• Did the Leadership committee consider previously recommended changes of ESLR's from the Stockton Groups March meeting (see meeting minutes)? It was noted that our recommendations to change some aspects of current ESLR's were not addressed. Namely:
  1. de-emphasize technology, by putting it under lifeskills
  2. correct the grammatical errors;
  3. change or delete the speaking clearly ESLR, as we do not teach Speech – grad requirements?
• It was unanimous that the Lodi/Stockton areas need vendors for Math Tutoring.