001I will take a motion to come out of executive session at 605. I'll make the motion. Jane, a second. Diana, all in favor? Okay. I'm going to call to order the Thursday, April 24th special meeting of the board of education. And we'll begin with the pledge to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Now, I don't have Joe's cheat sheet, but I believe I'm supposed to say something about the exits being behind you. No smoking anywhere on school property. It's being streamed live on our YouTube channel. Please silence your cell phones. Got it. All right. See, I pay attention. All right. So, first item on the agenda is the
002consideration of the Orange Alcar Bosey's administrative budget and that's the amount of 9,638,64 which is the 2.95% increase from last year. I'll take a motion. I'll make a motion. Sarah, I'll second. Angela, all in favor? I thank you. Um, next we consideration of Orange Bosey's vacancies of which there are three for their board and there are three candidates, William Boss, Edwin Estrada, and David Eaton. I'll take a motion for that. Jane, Jane, Diana. All in favor? I opposed. 5 Z. Uh, next on the agenda, we have our proposed consent agenda. And please note, um, I believe you all know that there's an addendum to the consent agenda that we're considering as well. I'll take a motion. I'll make a motion. Sarah, a second. Angela. Angela. All in favor? I. I. All right. Opposed? Right. Five
003Z. And the moment we've all been waiting for, mentor presentations. Yay. You're up, Kathy. Um, we have this as a celebration of our mentors. I can talk loud enough for our mentors uh mentees and their work for the past two years as they acclimate to Valley Central, learn to be better educators and thrive here at Valley Central. So we are going to go through our presentations and they are trying to go quickly so please bear with us. First up we have Walden mentee Emma Feny. [Applause] Okay. So, my name is Emma Feny. I teach kindergarten at Walden Elementary and I did research in multiensory methods and early literacy instruction. There we go. Okay. So, the focus of my research was improving letter and sound knowledge. I noticed a lot of my students struggling in knowing
004their letters, knowing their sounds, and this is part of something called funological awareness. So, for this specific project, I'm focusing on teaching one of my students the letters in his name. I'm going to be using a multi-ensory approach to do this. The end goal is that he will be able to identify the letters in his name and make the primary sound for that letter. And the five letters that we focused on were D, O, N, V, and A. So like I said before, letters and sounds as part of funological awareness. So funological awareness is a really important building block for students to be able to read. It helps them sound out words. And research has shown that students who receive the funological awareness interventions either before or during reading instruction are more likely to achieve
005those higher reading levels. So multiensory methods are using two or more of the five senses in your learning. So incorporating multiple senses in learning allows information to enter the brain in different ways. And when those multiple sensory modes are used, more neurological connections are being made, which helps students transfer learning from short-term memory to long-term memory and ultimately allows them to retain and recall their previous learning. So the project implementation, so this multiensory intervention was delivered for 15 minutes each day over the course of a three-month period, so about 10 weeks. I did this every day and after five days, five sessions, I assessed the students letter sound knowledge to determine how successful the intervention was going. So the multiensory methods I used were sand and play-doh and then again the target letters were D,
006O, N, V, and A. So here was the process. So for the sand intervention, I had a little thing of sand and he would write the letters in the sand. He was writing his name in the sand. You can see some of the pictures there. And as he wrote the letters, we would talk about the different sounds the letters made and some words that started with those letters. And then we also have the Play-Doh up there. So I had Play-Doh mats and he formed the letters with Play-Doh. He did uppercase and lowercase letters. And on those Play-Doh mats there were pictures of things that started with that letter. So that was also a great talking point for us to talk about the sounds the letter makes. And then here's the data. So before beginning the
007intervention, we have our letter identification on the left and the sound identification on the right. So for letter identification, before beginning the intervention, he only knew the letter O out of all the five letters we were learning. After implementing the intervention, he was able to successfully identify letters D, O, and A. And you can see over the course of the intervention for the letter identification, he was pretty solid in knowing the letters D and O and the other three fluctuated. For sound identification, that's on the right side. He did not know any of those five sounds before beginning the intervention. At the end of the intervention, he knew the sounds for D, O, V, and A. And there was a big jump towards the end of the intervention. and most of the intervention he struggled
008with those letter sounds but then we saw a big jump towards the end and then just in conclusion he grew in both his letter and sound recognition. He really enjoyed participating in the activities and he looked forward to doing them every day. This gave me a really great chance to get to know him better and talk with him more and really build that connection. Thank you. [Applause] Next we have Caroline Zenetti, a music teacher at Walden Elementary. And then forward. Yep. Okay. Hey everybody, I'm Caroline Zetti. I'm a music teacher at Walden. My project is not about that bass. It's all treble. This project, I taught my students notes on the treble staff. And for this project specifically, I focused on the note letters because when you're looking at a note, you can both tell
009the letter name of the note and the rhythmic value. So, I isolated it for just the letter name. For this purpose, my goal was to increase musical literacy. In kindergarten through 2 grade, there's a lot of sound before sight. So we will sing a song, we will hear the pitches and then we will look at the music and see where are ts and tits, quarter notes, eighth notes, high notes and low notes. But for this I was working with my students to identify hear the sound and identify it while reading it. This is important because we got to recorder playing and also important as a precursor to ensembles for band chorus and beyond. It's really important to build that literacy. Some of the interventions that I used, two were new to me and two were
010some that I've used before. The two that I used before were a pneummonic device and gamification. And the other two that are new to me are playing simple songs and using a hand staff. And I'll be able to get into that in my pictures. You can see the hand staves on the left. We drew it out first. And then in conjunction with the pneummonic device, we'd hold our hands up to our face because our hands have five fingers, four spaces. Hands, the staff has five lines, four spaces. And we would say every good boy does fine. For our spaces, we go F A C E. So that helps students give like a tactile visual feel to what they were learning. For the simple songs, I didn't get a picture, but we would play Boomhackers. We
011would see the song, we'd play along with it, and then we would read the notation. And then for the games, we would hop to it. I put five uh lines of floor tape, and either myself or the students would call out a letter name for a note, and then they would have to hop to that. So, for example, the team called out the letter D. So, the note D, they hop to the fourth line on the staff. And they're all correct, and they all got the point. Hooray. I administered a pre and post test before all this. The test was timed for three minutes and it wasn't really a test. It was kind of like a multiple choice. There was a note on the top and on the bottom there were the musical letters A
012through G and the students had to choose which letter name corresponded to the note that they saw. For the pre and post test results, group C improved by 46%, group D improved by 74% and group M improved by 69%. And I think group C only improved by 46% because they missed two out of six of the instruction days because there was a snow day and a two-hour delay. So I think if they got the full six lessons, they would improve a little more. Some things that I reflected on during this unit was that um I found it interesting that students gravitated towards the well-known pneummonic device of every good boy does fine. I gave them a chance to come up with their own and some came up with like every good bird does fly and
013every good burrito does fun. They came up with silly things and it was really cute. But they came up with they wanted to stick to the more traditional one. So I thought that was interesting. The games were the most popular method by far. Who doesn't love a game? And the pre and post tests as reflection shouldn't have been timed because during the pre-EST quite a few a few students knew what the notes were but many of them didn't. So I saw more just kind of clicking through. But during the post test all my students were standing there and thinking okay this is on this line or this space and they took their time picking the letter name. So not all the students got to um participate in the post test due to the time. So,
014I think the next time I do this project, I would definitely make the post test untimed. I would do one more floor tape game because it's really fun. And I would extend this to nine lessons instead of six. The initial six would be what I've done with the interventions. And then the additional three, I would add in a rhythmic component. So, we would see, okay, this note is a half note and it's an E. So, we would know it goes E D C like we know. Hot cross buns. Three. Thank [Music] you. So, I want to apologize. I did not give the mentees a chance to ask the board if they had any questions. So, Caroline, I did prep them. They knew it was coming. So, Caroline is ask questions. Do you have any questions?
015Not planned at all. All right. You have to come to an assembly. Oh, thanks. That's good. Thank you, ma'am. [Applause] Next up, we have Andrew Owenberg from Bur Elementary. [Applause] Hi everyone. I'm Mr. Owenberg. Hi Mrs. Rubino. How are you? I teach first grade at Berea Elementary. It was a very long walk over. I had a hard time finding parking. Uh but anyways, I'm here to talk to you today about the research I did involving the UFly phonics program and its role as a whole class program as well as an MTSS intervention type program. So going into my research, my focus really was does the incorporation bless you. Um does the incorporation of a program involving phonics skills improve our reading and writing skills of our kids? Uh specifically our struggling kids. Um this visual
016here from Scarboro kind of demonstrates the need for phonics based skills. So you know things like phonical uh funological awareness, decoding, site word recognition as well as comprehension skills uh as we you know produce more strong readers. uh some of the skills that you fly targets uh whether that be like I said in whole group situations or small group uh or one-on-one intervention situations uh are blending segmenting uh letter sound correspondence automaticity when you're decoding or encoding uh explicit instruction of phonics concepts or word patterns irregular or high frequency words in UFly we call them heart words um reading spelling and analyzing connected text that has these or have uh these patterns and then handwriting with letter formation. We definitely need that in first grade a little bit. Um this visual here uh as well
017as the research on the side kind of goes into the the need for repetition for our kids when it comes to our reading and our phonics patterns. Um my focus for my research was more so the bottom half of that. So our struggling kids, our kids that are learning disabled or dyslexic. Um, and like I said, this visual kind of just demonstrates the need for repetition, the need for different experiences with different patterns. On the right here is pulled from the UFly uh handbook, and it kind of just demonstrates the um amount of times that a certain skill is, you know, practiced by the kids. So, for example, here is short I uh I um and it kind of shows the different lessons and how many times it comes up. Um, and it's hard to
018see, so I apologize, but at the bottom it says 338 times over 10 lessons, the kids are practicing short eyes. So for our struggling kids, for our learning disabled kids, they're getting uh, you know, the practice that they need to be able to succeed. Uh, so my focus student um was super excited. I might have hinted that he might be a part of tonight, but I told him not to say anything. um was um a student who obviously had concerns when it came to reading and writing. So um I did choose him as well as other kids to kind of focus on, but I really wanted to horn in on him uh for this presentation. So um his needs were addressed like I said through our various whole group uh small group interventions all that
019using our youly lessons and materials. Uh and then I track that using different uh assessment measures. So, for example, here, I apologize if it's kind of hard to see, but on the right there are some of our pre and post uh UFly assessments that we do weekly. Um, are things perfect? Absolutely not. Don't expect that. However, I do like to see that he is showing progression after a week's worth of instruction in whichever concept that it is. Uh here kind of going along to another metric is our core diagnostic assessment that really assesses more um their decoding and their understanding of the different sounds as well as their words and their patterns as that you know kind of increases in complexity. Um so on the right or excuse me the left you could see his
020uh data in the fall. So definitely some things to point out are, you know, struggles with long vowel sounds, struggles with blend words. Um, after a few months of, you know, small group instruction, whole group instruction, I did pull him again for this. Uh, and as you could see, there was definitely growth in those kind of concerning areas as well as progression uh with, you know, more complex uh concepts. Um, moving on. Uh, in addition to that, I did use our data on benchmarks, uh, our FMP benchmarks as well as NWEA data. So, on the top again, you could see his fall information. Um, something that kind of struck me in the fall was that he came to me at a letter A, which coming into first grade, that's definitely concerning. Um, so I really
021did want to see, you know, how this kind of intervention consistently would improve that or, you know, provide him with what he needed. Um, and as you can see on the bottom, there was definitely significant growth. Um, especially when it comes to the NWA, I do believe strongly that his growth in vocab acquisition and use had a lot to do with seeing these different patterns, practicing them in different ways. Um, and in addition, um, you can see his benchmark did grow as well. Again, is it where it needs to be? No. But we're not plateauing. We're seeing pro, uh, positive growth, um, which is really what I want more than anything. Um so upon reflection just thinking about my question again of does this um phonics program you know even in an MTSS type setting
022does that you know foster growth in literacy skills for these kids and for uh my focus student at least I do strongly believe that it did and thank you. Do you want to ask the poor if they have any questions? How could I forget? Do you guys have any questions? It's okay. Perfect. Okay, [Applause] next. Next up, we have Cameron McCarthy, also from Berea Elementary. [Applause] [Music] Good evening. As you know, my name is Cameron McCarthy and I'm here to talk about the importance of social and emotional learning. More specifically, how social emotional dysregulation affects the students ability to focus, engage, and perform in the classroom. Social emotional learning is the ability in which students acquire knowledge and skills in order to hone their social and emotional competency and their emotional well-being and intelligence. Some
023of these skills include stress management, problem solving, interpersonal relationship skills, emotional self-awareness, and emotional expression. Much of my research stems from Maslo's hierarchy of needs, which says that a student cannot even begin to think about attending to their learning without accessing their self-fulfillment needs, their psychological and physiological needs, and even their basic needs. Before I intervent uh implemented some strategies and interventions, I really was focusing on creating a classroom family. Every morning, our students completed a daily check-in in which they identified how they were feeling in that moment. Not only did this allow them to identify their own perception of how they were feeling, but this allowed them to provided my co-teer and I the opportunity to give them the one-to-one support they needed in that given day for any student. Additionally, we often completed
024afternoon meeting which involved students completing and involving in cooperative play in a structured setting. I also realized that I wanted to like correlate my interventions in a multi u multi-tered system of supports. So the following uh interventions such as the daily check-in and the afternoon meeting were really tier one and all students were involved in this interventions. The following interventions were tier 2 and tier three interventions in which only some students were using these interventions and this was based on the needs of these students. For example, to promote positive behavior in the classroom, I implemented a reward card system. For students who were experiencing high levels of anxiety, I coached them through a grounding technique. And students who experienced overwhelming frustration, I allowed them to experience kinesthetic movement and sensory breaks. This chart is what
025I used to base my um understanding of their level of engagement in the classroom. I wanted the students to move from more of a passive role with disengagement and moving into more of a participating and investing role in their own learning. This student here at the start of our uh intervention would often not participate in any activities and would often just work by themselves and didn't really work well with others. So, they lacked the interpersonal relationship skills they needed. They also did not advocate for themselves when they needed help and they had difficulty realizing that they needed to have compassion with their peers. At the end of the interventions, we noticed a dramatic increase in the students ability to have connections with their peers. They often advocated and were like, "Miss McCarthy, can we have
026partners?" And I'm like, "Uh, sure, why not?" So, and it really was awesome to see the compassion growing with this student and the empathy for all like just getting along with one another and witnessing their participation also in the class whether it's classroom discussions or activities was also amazing. This second example of our student as you know looks drastically different from the first um graph and that's because this student was chronically absent. This is one of the worries that I had with a student. I wanted to make sure that the student was coming to school every single day so they could learn and they could feel comfortable in what they were um experiencing. When the student was in class, however, they often took a backseat role to their learning. They did not feel comfortable sharing
027their work with others either in a small group or as a whole class setting. As you can see at the end of my study, the student came to school a lot more often and even the engagement level increased with the student. They felt more comfortable participating in front of a whole class setting and even sharing their creative work. Overall, social emotional learning does not have to be a separate entity from academic curriculum, but rather should be intertwined into the fabric of classroom management and academic. We cannot possibly think about allowing students to engage actively in their learning without meeting their needs first. And finally, when we incorporate social and emotional learning practices in our curriculum and in our classroom management, we will notice student engagement increase not only and will also notice the attendance increase
028as well. And finally, their performance in academics will increase. Thank you. If you want to know more, I can definitely send you my entire slideshow because it was a long one as my peers know. But do you guys have any questions? Thank you so much for your [Applause] time. All right. Next up, we have Robert Satrianiano from the ALC. [Applause] Good evening everybody. I'm Robert Satrianiano. I teach at ALC. Okay. I did my project based off of participation, lack of participation due to electronics and how we can implement electronics to have students more active in physical education. the Feolf 2 portable simulator um did a great job in uh proving my study. So again, the problem is not having students participate at their full capacity. Um even something as simple as walking. When the students
029go on their phone to walk, they walk slower. So it's it's just about getting because we're not going to get rid of technology. It's that simple. So for me it was about how do we implement it in a way that we can get them more active using it. Um uh the process is that I started off with a survey um a pre-class survey for every class and what I did there was basically get a good idea of what kind of technologies would they be interested in using? Do they think that their cell phones and other technologies prohibit them or does it advance and make them do better? um which gave me a good path to where I was going with my project. I recorded all these and before and after I implemented the simulator and
030the numbers prove that if you implement some sort of technology that they're interested in that they will improve in physical activity. I compared my data at the end and and got my results. So at the bottom of my chart, I did put in the national standards and the state standards. um for middle school and for high school uh just to show that I'm still within my boundaries, still doing what I need to do uh through the standards. And as you see on the top, these are all of my different classes. Um in the blue are the students that uh these uh that were participating. Um each class had anywhere from 3 to 12 students. So it was difficult to really get a good number on it. But in the blue, that's all the students that
031were participating at high levels before we implemented the golf simulator. And then the red is after we implemented the golf simulator, did we have more participation? And from the chart, we did in most classes. In my eighth period class, there's only three students in that class and they are very active. So, they did a nice job. This is what the simulator looks like. Uh, it's very small. It's very compact. Uh, you can put it in a duffel bag. You can bring it anywhere you want. You could also, for kids that want to be more active with it, you could adjust it to make it real life. So, you can attach it to an actual golf club and go to a range, things along those lines. Um, you can play games on it, who has the
032longest drive. Um, you can do the simulator. If you see this picture over here, that shows you their swing path, how fast they're swinging, all that stuff. So, it analyzes how they're doing as well as them participating, which is really fun. And, uh, this isn't the only thing I found. In my research, this was one of the ones that was doable uh price-wise, but in my research, they uh there's things like the Oculus, and there's a numerous amount of technologies out there like this that the entire class could use. Um, another thing that I did is I used a projector for my young kids. I have used projector just to project obstacles on the floor for young kids to use. So, um, there's numerous amounts of technology out there that can get our kids up
033and moving, um, which is great. These are my sources. And is there any questions? Thank you. Up next we have Antinet Rivera Robinson, a middle school teacher also at the ALC. [Applause] Hello. Good evening everyone. I am middle school um social studies teacher at ALC Middle School and I will be presenting building stronger teams collaboration presentation and inclusivity. What I learned throughout this project was our students do not like to collaborate. They do not like standing up here and talking in front of a p bunch of people because it's scary. Um, and what I learned on the Valley Central School District website is that we are moving toward culturally responsive, sustaining framework. And that is creating a welcoming and affirming environment in my classroom and letting them know like I'm here. I got you. We
034got this. We're going to make it through. We can collaborate. We can talk to each other and move forward. Studies show that inclusive classrooms boast collaboration, confidence, and academic success. According to student surveys, these are the things that hinder that environment. During collaboration, they said, "I don't feel heard. People don't respect my ideas. They didn't feel included when I put them in groups." And I did this with my sixth graders, my seventh grade, and my eighth grade. My their presentation, they were scared to speak in front of people. They got stuck on their words. They were worried about messing up. and inclusivity, their cultural understanding. I rarely work with people from different um backgrounds or different from me. Being culturally aware isn't something they were used to and they don't see how of course history
035connects to their everyday life. This was my survey and it was more so like how comfortable do you feel collaborating with your peers and they were very uncomfortable. They were they said they were comfortable presenting but me knowing my students I know they weren't being very honest. So when they did get up and do their presentation this was over a two-eek period they got together they researched together and a lot of them was like well I will never get a job that I have to talk to someone that I have to collaborate that I have to stand up and talk in front of people and here I am. So I was like I want to find that job but that's not going to happen. So inclusivity, they just want to feel included and heard and
036cared for. So we worked together. We we created clear roles in group work. So every voice mattered. We created activities. We did pre-presentations where they got up and talked to me. And even though they talked to me every single day when they got up to do their presentation on their board, Miss Aiel, I was actually there in one of their presentations. They still spoke so low that we could barely hear them. they were so nervous and they talked to me every single day. So we will continue to work on that throughout the school year. Um, so with sixth grade we did cultural understanding through ancient China and we talked about Confucianism and harmony and respect and then connecting that to today's history, letting them know because right now we have anti- Asian hate and global
037tensions and being heard with the great um the American Revolution and students who don't feel heard and groups mirror the colonist frustrated, right? And they didn't feel respected and they got together, band together and overcame. So all of these things were kind of connecting the past to the present and letting them know how history repeats itself. How we're dealing with the same things that we dealt in the past now. And that was what how they connected it and felt like they were being heard a little bit more. And they have a lot of cultural questions and they do want to understand a lot more. So we talk and continuously have these discussions. So, our next steps, of course, I'm going to continue to get them back together and talking and presenting and collaborating. Um, working
038with my sixth grade. They were not too happy and they do not want to work in groups. My seventh grade actually became a family and it's really nice to see them. Parents have been saying they even hang out together outside of school where they didn't leave the house. So, them getting together, presenting, collaborating, talking in class is now going outside. is going outside of the school boards and not home on the video game on the phone. So, um it helps and you know we're gonna keep going with the momentum and we'll have our cultural day at ALC soon and they'll get to express their culture and discuss all of that. Do you have any questions? Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. And next up we have the high school mentees and Bria Austin is first up.
039[Applause] Yeah. Okay. All right. Good evening. My name is Bria Austin. I'm a social studies teacher at Valley Central High School and I did my project on projectbased learning. So, what is project-based learning? Um, if you look at your brochures or if you don't have one, I'll go back to the um title slide. Basically, it means give the PE pupil something to do, not something to learn. And the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking. Learning naturally results. So instead of standing in front of the kids and giving a traditional lecture um and having them write an assessment, I decided to um do project-based learning instead. So the problem um engagement in high school can be limited because it often centers around teachers um and lecture-based methods. um a priority this year
040was uh very much focused on engagement um through our strategic planning that I was very lucky to be a part of. So I wanted my project to align something with that. Um and the goal was to increase student engagement through differentiated learning through project-based learning a teaching method where st students learn through collaboration and creativity. Okay. So before I implemented PBL, I wanted to gauge where the kids were at um and their mindset about projects. So um I asked them how excited they feel about doing school projects and I got mostly positive results about that as well as how comfortable they were working with the group. But I did ask them specifically what challenges do they face. And here you have some quotes about some things that they were worried about in terms of group
041projects. So stress, anxiety, pressure, trying to understand new information, um working with different people that they're not familiar with. I just wanted to gauge where they were at before I implemented this. So as a social studies teacher, um you teach many different like subjects. So I don't teach social studies. You can teach global global one, global 2, economics. So, um to the right or I guess it depends this one. Um you can see I teach a government class and I was teaching them the constitution. Um traditionally I could stand in front of them and say this is article one and this is the preamble but instead I gave them a very basic outline of each part of the constitution and I asked them to give me a oneliner about what it was about as well
042as draw a picture. Um, so you can maybe look at this and maybe learn a little bit about the constitution without me even teaching you something like so for example um, article two. So someone drew a very nice picture I think a good picture of Trump. So you know that that's about the executive branch. Um, so I taught government last year in which I did not implement project-based learning and then I taught it this year in which I did. So if you look at the assessment that I gave the kids before I implemented project uh based learning compared to after I did get increased results um to this side um this is my global two global one class I'm sorry with nth graders um project based learning is also about collaboration and presentation so um
043we were learning about the Islamic golden age and all the things that were invented during this time I had my kids um find the things that were most interested like interesting to them. Um they made slides about it and then they taught each other. So I put all the slides into one and then they got in front and like as the teacher and they taught the kids or each other. So it was pretty cool. Um if you look at my results, so last year I taught global one as well in which I did not implement project-based learning compared to this year and I got significantly better grades. um particularly no one fa failed this year. So that was pretty cool to see. And lastly, so this is my economics class. Um the first step of
044project-based learning is to give a prompt or a challenge or a problem. So um I have seniors in my economics class and a lot of them always complain about how they don't know like anything about the real world when they graduate. So we talked about um credit and how to build credit and repair credit. And this is an example of something that one of the kids created because I told them to create their own story. So here you can just see the creativity. This is something that I would not have seen if I just stood and lectured them. So it was really cool and they're so creative and it was awesome. So lastly, I wanted um I wanted to know how they felt about everything and it was very positive. They felt engaged. They felt
045like it helped them understand things better. um they felt like it was a good alternative to traditional teacher lecture lecturing. Um going forward, I'm definitely going to implement project-based learning even more across all subjects like I have been doing and um it was really fun. It was fun for me too. So uh do you guys have any questions? No. All right. Thank you. And next up from the high school, we have Courtney Cunningham and Halianne Fitzgerald. I'm Courtney. I'm also teacher at the high school. Um I teach in the pool. So I've seen sixth grade through 10th grade. So we did our project on student centered choice based learning. So we're going to give you example what that looks like. So before you do that, I I appreciate you not really needing the mic, but
046the mic is really for the te tele, you know, to be tell. So it's not not just for the room, but so that you can be heard on YouTube. Okay. Like an awkward hand. So we did the student centered with choice based learning to improve engagement and motivation. So our goal for this um was to have students choose which type of activity um they wanted to do within the classroom. So instead of us standing up in front of the class and saying we're going to do this today, we gave them the option within the unit um to choose from for um for the unit that we see them. So for this we see students in three week cycles. So I see all 9th grade students for three weeks. Haleenne sees all nth grade students for
047three weeks and then it rotates and then we see a new set of students. Um so this is kind of how we were able to do our project. um because we were able to use different groups of students throughout instead of the same group. Um so during this we used two different types of teaching styles. We use the choice-based teaching style and then we also use the instructorled to see which type of learning the students liked better um in the classroom. So how does this look like in a fizzed class? So you can see a couple pictures that are up there. We have instructorled and we have choice based. So the two pictures to the right and you can see this also on the brochure that is what my room looks like. So two of
048those lessons I have done. Um, one is called toxic waste and the next one is called pipeline. For toxic waste, what I give the students, they're trying to transport toxic material, toxic material successfully. I don't tell them how to do it. They have to figure it out. So, they get all the directions, all the rules, and someone has to take lead and decide how to do this. They have to also get their entire group to do it at the same time. So, collaboration, communication, teamwork, all of that is happening in this room. uh it doesn't start as great as I see it look. We stop, we pause, we talk, and then they start, you could see them start to talk and figure out how to do things. Um the instructorled side, that'll be more in
049the pool. So we have like our CPR unit, and then we have um teaching swim strokes. So that would be more instructorled. You're teaching the child how to do the skill. Uh so we did both types of styles in both of our rooms. All right. So, this was the data that we got. Um, we have four different types of graphs that you can see. The main one we're going to look at is the one that says themes of motivation. Um, this is what we were really looking for within our class. We were looking to see which types of motivators were students looking for to engage in these lessons. Um, and if you look at them, the most that the students wanted was um the grades, the environment, the teacher, and the activity type. Um these
050four different types of motivators are the ones that the students were looking to do or the students were looking at to engage in the class. Um the environment and the teacher and activity were really big ones um that we saw in the students. I saw definitely a lot um more engagement when the students were engaging in games. They were using the swim strokes that we taught and then using that within the activity which was really cool to see. um they were swimming using the freestyle and not even knowing it to like get the ball in water polo. Um so that was awesome to see. And then the other three um just separated between the mental health unit, the swim unit and then we combined all the data at the bottom. So this is probably the
051most important slide we have was the engagement slide. Um this was all from students that we got post after they experienced both teaching styles and how they felt about the teaching style. So specifically the one that's flat out in the center, the energy of the room and teacher motivation that like spoke volumes for me and for Courtney because we want to motivate the students. So if we're interested in it, they're going to want to do it. Especially for the high school, like you're living on your phones and they're staring at their phones, especially in PE. If you've ever walked past, you can see that they're just like not engaged really. So for us, it's we're trying to make them engaged as best as we can. And that spoke probably the most volumes for me and
052for Courtney. So getting their feedback on how that learning style helps them and makes them engage and want to be in our rooms was tremendous. And the biggest feedback that I got was not only we did a pre and post assessment and we had them write down what they wanted, but the biggest one was the verbal in the classroom like, "Oh my gosh, this this activity was fun today. Like I had a lot of fun in swimming class or I had a lot of fun doing this activity. Can we do that again?" Like I keep hearing kids asking to do activities over and over again, which is something that's more positive. um going forward to get them to engage and that's how I'm getting them in the pool too. Yes. Right. So conclusion uh they
053prefer choosing what they would like to do in the room. So that choice element for my room I give them a situation and they choose how to experience their own learning through that situation was awesome. And for Courtney giving them options in the pool because some people might not like to swim right. So giving them an option in the pool definitely they saw more engagement and wanted to do it. Um, the activity type and the environment were clear indicators for us, especially in the PE world. That is what we're doing. They need to be moving. They need to be active. So, the activity was huge. And the environment, we're trying to create an environment where we're getting kids off their phone and moving and talking and socializing. That is our jobs essentially. So, that's what
054we saw. And that's pictures of the pool and then the mental health room that Haley teaches in. And that is it. Thank you everybody. Did you guys have any questions? The PE Worlds. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All done. And next up, next up we have Samantha Row from the high school. [Applause] Okay. Thank you. Hi everybody. I'm Sam Row. I'm a math teacher in Valley Central High School and I chose to do my project on peer teaching but specifically to promote student ownership of the learning process. So in a math classroom it can be sometimes challenging to get students to work together. So I found this to be a really awesome way to get students talking and up out of their seats. So what is pure teaching? Um it's an instructional
055method where students teach and learn from each other. Uh so what's really important about this is that there are clearly defined roles so students know when they're the learner and when they're the expert. Um you can see on the bottom there the the learning period pyramid. Um pure teaching is a participatory teaching method. So as opposed to a passive teaching method, the students are really engaged and working together. And if you see on the bottom tier of that pyramid, um it says about 90% of um retention comes from teaching one another. So that was um something I was really hoping to see. Um some of the goals of peer teaching are to improve communication, to get kids to talk to each other, to hold students accountable so they know that, you know, what they're doing
056matters and that someone is looking to them for help. Um in addition to that it to accelerate the learning right like they um are really seeing it doing it and it it's coming to them quicker. Um so my method so it was really three-fold. I started with gathering a baseline. So students took a preliminary test. To preface I should say that we were in a unit on solving quadratic equations. So they already had a little bit of background knowledge. Um, so we started with this preliminary test and I just wanted to see where they were at. Um, from there, specifically in my uh my nth grade class, students were given a set of problems and they had nothing from me. They kind of just had to go at it and research and do some work.
057So, they could use whatever they wanted, online resources, textbooks, they could ask me as many questions as they wanted. They had about 15 minutes to kind of go through a few of these questions. And then eventually the goal was that they would turn to a partner and teach their questions. Um and then lastly I wanted to see you know how they did. So I gave them a secondary test and I compared the results. Um in addition to that I gave them a survey because I just wanted to know did they hate it? Like were they feeling good about it? You know how did it go? So I used the jigsaw grouping method to do to do this essentially. So I started with two big groups um group A, group B. And so all of group
058A got the same questions and then all of group B got the same questions to research. Um so then after some time I switched the grouping. So I paired a group A member with a group B member and they were then to teach each other their questions. So you can see here some of the students getting up, moving around, pointing on the computer saying, "Oh, look, this is what I found here." Whatever. And it was just it was just cool because they were so motivated. They were so excited. They were like running around the room. I had to tell them to calm down a little bit, you know, but it was great. Um, and you can see the student work here. So, partner A's work might be on the left and partner B here on
059the right. And so, just like the opposite questions, but then they were then responsible for for trading all that work and making sure that their partner knew what they needed to know. So my results and I can see here that it's a little hard to see and I'm sorry about that but um if you can see on the right uh the top graph is for my ninth graders. So it's hard to read but quiz one the preliminary quiz was 80% and after applying pure teaching that went up about by about uh 80 nope by about 5%. Um, and you can also see here, so in burgundy, that was the first quiz, um, before pure teaching. And then in this yellow color, uh, that was the second. And so you can see like as we get
060up into the 80s, 90s, 100 region, we have we have more of those for quiz 2 after peer teaching. Um, for this second graph, that was applied, the same thing was applied to some of my 11th and 12th graders. and the the average didn't increase as much, but they really were engaged way more. They were asking questions. It really promoted an environment where students wanted to work together and learn from each other and and like support each other really um not scared to ask questions. So, there were a lot of positive feed feelings when I gave um them a survey. But I just wanted to read you two quotes that I found really interesting. One said, "I liked it. it was a new way to learn and learning from your peers can help you understand
061something better since they're just learning it too. But then another one said, "I thought peer the peer teaching activity was good. It was a nice way to show partners our answers and tell each other how to solve the problems. I found it to be a calming experience." I thought it was really great cuz not a lot of students tell me that math makes them feel calm, but this one did. So that's it. But um thanks a lot. Do you guys have any questions? Thank you. And also from the high school, we have Arlene Nunees. [Applause] Hello. Hi, my name is Arllin Nunees. I'm the attendance teacher for the high school, Berea, East Coldenham, and ALC. Uh, I'm going to talk to you today about building positive relationships with students. Um, which brings me to one
062of my favorite quotes. When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts. How do we do that? Here's the problem. It all starts with attendance. If they're absent, they're not here to make connections. The students, not only with adults in the building, but with each other, with their peers, whether it's in the classroom or in sports or clubs. Um, here is the vicious cycle. Absenteeism, disengagement, and academic decline. They're all connected. One leads to another. And by the time they get here, they're absent again. When students feel disconnected, they attend less. They participate less, and their grades drop. So, what can we do? This is what I did. What do you do with any relationship? You got to put in the work. Here's the work I did with our
063students. Um whether it's greeting them in the mornings or anytime you see them in the hallway to gauge their moods. Um sometimes you have to meet students where they are. So, you know, we do home visits. Um collaborate with counselors. Um always be consistent with them. Don't be fake. They can tell. Uh be honest with them. Be respectful. um show interest in things that they like. Uh again, you don't have to fake it, but just to to be there for them and just be their person. I I did weekly check-ins with the students. Um send encouraging emails. Um if necessary, positive phone calls home to let the uh their families know how they're doing in school, if they're improving. Um so I conducted um a case study with three high school students facing poor attendance,
064failing grades and lack of school connections. Um, I track their progress using their attendance reports and their grades from marking uh the first semester. And uh once once I made a connection with them, whether it was uh through home visits or outreach via email or phone calls and got them to come to school, um once their attendance improved, uh that's when the connection started to happen, whether it was me helping them make connections with their teachers to maybe catch up on some work or connecting them in one of our MTSS groups. groups, seniors, helping seniors get to the finish line and make those connections with students. Um, and the results showed that um, there was improvement once they got in the building. We were able to work with them. And again, um, between emails and
065phone calls and just saying hello to them in the hallway and having our check-ins, they were really appreciative of that. and and I saw that um when they felt they were connected, their attendance improved, they became more engaged and motivated, which of course leads to success. And here are just some of the quotes um from these particular three students that um really touched my heart because um you know I could see that they felt that I cared and I felt a connection with them and it just made me really happy that I could be part of their journey and this is my work. I love it. And thank you so much. Any questions? Unmuted. All right. Thank you. And next up, we have Callie Edge, also from the high school. [Applause] Hi, I'm Cali Edge
066and I'm the behavior intervention specialist at the high school and I will be speaking about collaborative problem solving, a new way of looking at behavior. Collaborative problem solving was developed by Dr. Ross Green and has been redefined by Dr. Stuart Avalon, who recently co-wrote a book with well-known Mel Robbins, um called Parenting with Let Them. Um so the focus of this practice, it's a sorry, it's a cognitive behavioral approach that focuses on working with still students to build their lagging skills. So students do well if they can. If they can't, we need to figure out why so we can help them. Um here are the roles and goals. So you have assessments, planning and interventions. Effective interventions are building the relationship with students, problem solving, teaching them the lagging skills to reduce the challenging behaviors.
067And the students that I primarily work with are on a tier 2 and a tier three level. And I'm going to speak about I did three case studies as well. And the student that I'm going to speak about is on a tier one level um at risk of going into a tier 2 level. So the student a referral sheet came in to me to to me from the teacher um saying that the the unsolved problem is that the student has been tardy to class. And um from the referral sheet, it also shows that the unsolved problem is that they're frequently tardy to first period. That the teacher has addressed and sorry that it's small. Um the teacher has addressed tried to address the problem by having one-to-one conversations with the student and has sent emails
068home and is now seeking support from the counselor. I then meet with the student individually and we go over a thinking skill sheet. So on the thinking skills sheet the student it it displays that you know we we go over all the questions and and everything from you know this is when the um the data collecting and the intervention starts. So we the according to the thinking skill sheet it shows that the student is struggling with social skills, cognitive flexibility, emotion, self-regulation and attention and working memory skills. So it says here in the middle that the problem is that the student is tardy to school because they're lacking skills to overcome challenges of taking the class handling transition and time management which leads to the behavior of the student having their head down on the
069desk ignoring the teacher throwing out or ripping up work arguing swearing cursing or leaving the classroom. I then meet with the student and the teacher either if not that day, the following day, that week, and we go over an organizer sheet. So on the organizer sheet, the student shares their concerns and the educator share our concerns. So that's myself, the teacher, and the students concerns are that they do not like the class, especially first period. They um they're concerned that they are going to fail the class. They also um they don't want detention. They don't want ISS. They don't want to take the class in summer school. They don't want to repeat the class, but they're pretty much giving up. And that's why they're at risk of going to tier 2. So our concerns are
070that they're missing valuable learning time and it's negatively impacting their their learning and they may have the consequences that they don't want and also it's disrupting the flow of the class. So from there we collaboratively go over three possible solutions which the first one they didn't agree to which was getting up earlier. They were like, "No, that's not happening even 15 20 minutes earlier." Okay. So, then we went to potential solution two and three. So, for solution two, um it's just having an organized calendar at home whether it's in their room, it's somewhere somewhere where the family can see it, the student sees it, the family is involved, so they're also collaborating with, you know, their child. Um, potential solution three was meeting with the teacher weekly post session after school until they're caught up
071with their work and then check-ins with the counselor. This goes on for four to six weeks as an intervention to see um if it's working. So here their unsolved problem the their the average of their improved behaviors have had increased by 60%. meaning that now the student the first two weeks they were still tardy but maybe three or four times out of the week now at the sixth week going into seven weeks they are they come to school they go to class um they're not failing they are more engaged and all because we work together so collaborative problem solving does align with castle which is our collaborative academic social emotional learning competencies and also with MTSS and studies have shown that there's been a a reduced um just improved academic standing for students re reduction
072in teacher stress um what else teach uh students are actually there's a decrease in them being sent out of the classroom and an increase in attendance. So, wait, is that the last? Yes. So, um at VC, our support staff, our teachers, and our all of our staff, we continue with our interventions, our efforts to try to help students grow so they can thrive academically and personally. And that's it. Thank you. Are there any questions? Okay. Thank you. Well, that concludes our presentations. I want to thank you for your attention and hearing and witnessing the future of Valley Central. And I say it every year, but as a veteran seasoned teacher, looking at the people and the future of Valley Central excites me. So, let's give them another round of applause. Great job, everyone. Thank you
073for presenting and sharing with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Great job. Yeah, it's very difficult. Your students aren't the only ones that get nervous out there. That brings us to the end of our agenda. Any board members have anything else? Nope. Okay. I will take a motion um to go back into executive session for personnel. We will not be taking any action and we will adjourn the meeting when we come out. So I'll take a motion. I'll make a motion. Okay. Sarah and Diana get the right. All in favor? I opposed. Sarah, Diana. Okay, thank you everyone.