Kelly Steimle Angela Andrasik Kay Sterpka Pete Carnabuci Jenny Mitchell

Inspiring all students to achieve personal excellence, pursue world class standards, and be self-directed lifelong learners.

Grade Levels: Kindergarten- Second Grade Location of School: Perry Ohio, Suburban Size of School: 372 Students Age of School: Built in 1967 (43 years old) Student Demographics: 94% White,.6% Black, 2.2% Hispanic,.15% Asian Pacific Island

Special Features:  State-of-the-art schools  A nationally recognized staff  A supportive community  An award-winning district in Northeast Ohio.  100-plus acre campus with three connected academic buildings, as well as the Perry Community Fitness Center.  Technology is a priority!

 Once we implemented the PLC concept the teachers came on board and used their time wisely.  We have a focus on teaching and learning and we make sure we do whatever it takes to get students to succeed. This is the biggest change.  Our teachers are also very professional and work extremely hard. According to Shelly Pulling

 The problem was that we gave the teachers the common planning time before they really needed it or understood what they were supposed to do with it.  We now meet more than once a week and have plenty of work to do but at first it was difficult for people to understand that the time was not just for planning but to meet to work together.  The resistance is to meeting more often. Technically the teachers could meet together each day, but we only require them to meet once a week. According to Shelly Pulling

Values  All individuals are personally responsible to themselves and society for their actions.  All people are created with and possess equal worth.  Individuals and society realize their fullest potential when integrity, cooperation and mutual respect prevail.  Lifelong learning enriches the quality of life.  All people can learn more.  Family is the primary influence in the development of the individual.  The higher the expectation, the greater the achievement.  The pursuit of personal excellence is worth the commitment.  Progress requires change and risk. Taken from the Perry Website

Objectives  All students will demonstrate growth toward identified world-class standards in areas specified by the district.  All students will use lifelong learning skills to set, pursue and attain personally challenging goals. Strategies  We will build capacity to transform the culture and structures of our learning environment to achieve our Strategic Objectives.  We will influence, proactively, state legislation, economic development and responsible fiscal policies to maintain our financial stability and achieve our Strategic Objectives.  We will collaborate with families in processes that engage them in meeting the Strategic Objectives.  We will ensure that our leaders, now and in the future, sustain the continuity of purpose expressed in our Mission.

Impact of PLC upon students and teachers.  During the past 3 years our district has focused on arranging our teachers in professional learning communities.  The first year the teachers began meeting with each other and pacing out their curriculum together in their grade levels.  They then began to focus on common assessments. After implementing the common assessments, they began to analyze their results and make changes to their assessments.  Curriculum, assessment and instruction are always the focus of the PLC meetings.  This year, the PLCs have a SMART goal and their work is focused on their action steps to reach this goal. Taken from Allthingsplc.info

Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.  Teachers do mastery reports each 6 weeks and report mastery on the objectives they have taught. The common assessments are used to assess for mastery and then to group students for intervention. Each student is administered the DIBELS assessment 3 times a year, the DRA two times a year, the FasttMath program and Success Maker program is used to monitor progress in both Math and Reading as well as a progress monitoring system. Effective Strategies

 We use the Response to Intervention model (RtI). We have a group of teachers that meet each week to discuss students, look at data, and meet with teachers to create plans to make sure each child is succeeding. The format of the meeting revolves around the collaborative problem solving process where you define the problem, generate a hypothesis, write a goal, brainstorm interventions, develop the intervention plan, implement the intervention, and evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

 In the mastery learning environment, learning is the constant with time being the variable. Students are given many opportunities to learn.  The teachers group students based on the objectives they have not mastered and then enrich the students who have mastered the content.  Each grade level works together to find the extra time needed for students to learn. ◦ One example is the third grade remediation time, where the students in the 6 classes switch classes in order to work on the particular objectives they have not mastered in Reading, but they teach this through Science and Social Studies content. There are two classes that are smaller in size and the students work on the Reading objectives while they are learning about Science and Social Studies. The other 4 classes are working on Science and Social Studies at this time. These groups are flexible and can change based on student needs.

 Other grade levels switch classes when needed to enrich or provide intervention based on student needs. The third and fourth grade classes switch for Reading and Math to provide for Acceleration as well as intervention based on student data.

 Our district has focused many of our 8 staff development days each year on building the capacity of our teams. Each year our teams create norms and will begin each year by focusing on their current reality and writing a SMART goal to focus their work. Building the capacity of teachers to work as members of high performing collaborative teams who focus the efforts of their team on improved learning for students.

Maggie Niedzwiecki, Principal

 Shelly Pulling, PLC Contact, conversation  Perry School Website   ALLTHINGSPLC website 