Secondary Update

PSAT 8/9

WWMS administration, counselors, and eighth grade teachers are preparing for this year's PSAT 8/9 testing. As part of this year's state-mandated assessment schedule, our eighth grade students will be taking the PSAT 8/9 in ELA and mathematics. This assessment is designed to help students prepare for the SAT college entrance exam given to high school juniors as part of the Michigan Merit Exam (MME).

SOLO & ENSEMBLE FESTIVAL

Some of our WWMS Band students are preparing for this year's district Solo & Ensemble Festival, which will take place on Saturday, January 19, 2019 at Rochester High School. Solo & Ensemble Festival provides the opportunity for individual students from the band program to perform a selection of their choice for adjudication. Each student or group of students is evaluated by one judge and rated on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being the highest rating possible. Students or groups that earn a rating of 1 (Superior) will qualify for State Solo & Ensemble Festival, which is held in March. We would like to wish the BEST OF LUCK to all of our WWMS students who will be participating in this year's district Solo & Ensemble Festival!

DEPARTMENT UPDATES:

ELA

Before break, 8th grade ELA spent time researching credible websites. After they completed an evaluation packet on five websites, students began finding credible websites to research information to use for their historical fiction narrative. Students received a planning packet that included anchor charts, tools, as well as a plot diagram to begin planning the first stage of their narrative. They are currently working on writing their rough drafts, next, they will edit/revise, provide TAG feedback, and lastly, publish their final draft and upload to Turnitin.com.

7th grade finished The Giver before break, with a focus on conflict and citing evidence in the text. We will end the quarter by focusing on character types and theme, and introducing argument writing. Third quarter will consist of a cross-curricular unit with social studies, focusing on argument writing/argument essay.

6th grade is currently discussing plot elements. Students are working on defining exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Eventually students will be expected to not only define these elements, but to also identify them in our anchor text, Touching Spirit Bear, and in their independent reading books. Theme is on deck for later in the week.

MATH

The math department is continuing its work with our advisory intervention structure. We are ensuring all students in the assigned advisories have access to and are using Khan Academy. We are planning to extend this to all students in the coming weeks. This will support our second objective which is to prepare students for the PSAT - a testing structure that requires high-level math knowledge and the ability to use a specific bubble sheet. We will be using the next PLC to design assessment items that are similar to released PSAT items and a bubble sheet aligned to it; on the second January PLC, we will look at how our students performed and determine next steps.

SCIENCE

The science department is aligning essential instruction with Next Generation Science Standards. Each grade level is working on creating phenomena to help our students question and wonder about science in the world around them.

SOCIAL STUDIES

The Social Studies department continues to work with the C3 framework, focusing on inquiry and the use of primary sources. We have also been analyzing M-STEP reading and writing scores to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses as a department, and to evaluate how we can best support the Language Arts department. In upcoming meetings, we will dive deeper into the Social Studies M-STEP scores.

WARREN WOODS TOWER UPDATE

WWT Gives Back

The WWT family, including staff (current and former), clubs, teams, parent and student groups raised $12,482 in money, gift cards and merchandise to help out approximately 200 WWT families over the holidays.

PBIS

Our PBIS Team will be creating a "What's Appropriate Video" to share with students on on the first day of the semester. The purpose of the video is to show students what appropriate behavior looks like (and doesn't). The team is also creating a calendar for the remainder of the year with regard to PBIS reward events.

Student Referrals

November Discipline Referrals

2014- 212

2015- 189

2016- 143

2017- 125

2018- 128 (The first time in many months that we were up in referrals compared to the previous year)

WWT Showcase

During the first week of February we will be holding open houses during lunch in the media center. The purpose is to highlight different facets of WWT. Students will be allowed to leave the cafeteria and look at student led presentations in the media center.

Monday - AP Classes

Tuesday - CTE Classes (open to consortium classes as well)

Thursday - Skilled Trade Professionals (Tentative)

Friday- Clubs

School Improvement

During our last SIT/Building Leadership Meeting, we continued to look at and discussed all of the new class offering for the 2019-2020 school year. The School improvement team attended the Facilitator of Instruction meeting at the MISD. The focus of our time was on reviewing our PBIS plan for 2nd semester and next year.

Department Updates

In addition to reviewing MME data. All non-CTE departments are discussing new classes that we can bring to DSAT in the coming months to be implemented for the 2019/20 school year. There is a emphasis on adding additional AP classes and well as courses that can be taken by our freshmen and sophomore students. All five of the new classes that were approved by DSAT last year are currently running this year, some with multiple sections. The goal is to increase options for our students.

The Science Department: Continues to look at the new Next Generation Science Standards and determine what curricular changes need to be made. This could include changes in curriculum as well as sequencing of classes.

The Social Studies Department: Continues to look implementing and evaluating the use of primary and secondary source documents in their instruction. These document are something that students will see in both the SAT as well as the Social Studies M-STEP Assessment. The Social Studies department has also spent time discussing the role of support services (CRC, Special Ed teachers)

The Math Department: Continues to focus on real world connections in their lessons in an effort to help student make math connections. They are also incorporating higher order thinking techniques and helping students see various approaches to solving problems. The math department has reviewed the question analysis results from the PSAT/NMSQT that was administered to Junior in October.

The English Department: Continues to help students utilize close and critical reading strategies as well as working on students' writing stamina; an issue that appeared to hurt on on the SAT. The English department has reviewed the question analysis results from the PSAT/NMSQT that was administered to Junior in October.

Before the holiday break, Enterprise spent the previous two PLC meetings studying the results of our NWEA scores, and our staff completed breakdowns of each student's scores in math, science, and English. We discussed and noted target scores for each tester, and we focused on strengths and weaknesses in the various learning strands.

Each teacher in the four content areas (math, science, social studies, and English) began to target individual teaching strategies for each student and created some individual assignments for enrichment activities for the higher achieving students.

Also, before the holiday break, our staff conducted a practice SAT test for all tenth and eleventh grade students. The results are housed in Data Director, and staff will be looking at those results in upcoming PLC meetings. The goal is to return the actual practice SAT test and answer document to students along with a copy of the correct answer by the end of January. By doing so, staff is hoping to help students review results in the future to help bridge an understanding with areas of need to show improvement in April.

Second quarter exams are coming soon. We do have one more Tier II intervention Instructional Waiver before exams are to begin.

Before the holidays began, Enterprise students were very generous. Students created and held a canned food drive for those less fortunate. Many students brought in more than one item to help other students complete the school goal. All students were rewarded with a PBIS movie incentive.

Finally, there are eight students that may be finished with school at the end of Second Quarter. As a staff, we are rooting for these students, as all of these seniors would be graduating ahead of schedule.

New students will be enrolling at Enterprise beginning in Third Quarter. We are expecting 25 or more new students.

Please don't hesitate to contact us with questions, concerns, or ideas.

Email: kbeal@mywwps.org
Website: www.mywwps.org
Location: 12900 Frazho Road, Warren, MI, USA
Phone: (586) 439-4469
Facebook: facebook.com/warrenwoodspublicschools
Twitter: @warrenwoodsPS