Teachers from San Juan Elementary School sacrificed a day off to get familiar with computer software that will help them measure and advance students’ reading comprehension.
Educators gathered Feb. 11 to learn how to use the Lexia software before it went online Monday.
The program measures a student’s reading comprehension and develops lessons that will presumably help the child become grade-level proficient.
If the student already has grade-level comprehension, the program will devise lessons that will help them advance their reading skills.
San Juan Principal Candice Harrison said implementing the reading program is essential because it gives the school’s teachers a much-needed tool.
She said she hopes to use the Lexia program as a short-cycle, formative, assessment. Formative assessments are important because they provide data a teacher would need to modify their instruction to improve student outcomes.
The formative or short-cycle assessments are different from standardized tests, like the Standards Based Assessment and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test, which is a final evaluation of what a student learned during a certain time period.
Harrison said one of her overarching goals is to realize an increase in the school’s letter grade.
The state’s Public Education Department gave the school a B, which is a large jump from the F it earned during the 2015-2016 School Year.
Only two of the District’s 10 elementary schools had more proficient students than San Juan.
Slightly more than 45 percent of San Juan students were proficient in reading. That figure is contrasted with Dixon’s 50 percent and Abiquiú’s 49 percent proficiency.
This means that 45 percent of the school’s students read at, or above, grade level. The average for reading proficiency amongst the District’s 10 elementary schools, with the exception of Los Niños Kindergarten Center is 36 percent.
When it comes to math, 37 percent of Abiquiú’s, 32 percent of Dixon’s, 20 percent of Española’s and 19 percent of Alcalde’s students had proficiency averages higher than San Juan’s 18 percent.
Higher proficiency averages could help increase the school’s letter grade.
Arts integration
While the Lexia software is designed to help teachers improve a student’s reading ability, the school’s Arts Integration Program will help them think outside the box.
To help with that, Santa Fe Opera educators Wendy Chapin and Jeremy Bleich drop by the school every Friday to work on skills the students will need for an upcoming performance.
Chapin and Bleich were leading the students on a focus drill, which they were mastering, until Harrison’s singing prompted a few of the fifth graders to burst into laughter.
The students were eventually able to regain their composure and retain their focus, but only after the principals joined in the drill.
When she asked the students why the focus exercise was important, one of the students said, “So we can be ready for the PARCC.”
No doubt the focus exercises and working with the artist could help the children find success with the PARCC exam, Harrison told the students.
The school’s three, fifth grade classes will work together to produce a play complete with a hero who must navigate a perilous journey, while working to resolve a conflict.
Chapin said it is important the students’ create every aspect of the production from the characters to the conflict.
“Children learn better when they are doing it and are able to see how it applies that is when it sticks,” she said. “People can tell you about it, but once you own it, it sticks.”
She said traditional educational components, in this case, literacy, meet when the students sit down and write the script.
Harrison has a clay artist lined up to work with the school’s first, second and sixth grade students, while representatives from the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center are working with the third graders.
This is Harrison’s first year at San Juan and her 12th in New Mexico. She said when she talks to her friends and former co-workers in Southern California, they are often surprised that she works in a school that offers students art and physical education classes.
She said having alternatives to sports is good to meet the needs of children who aren’t into them.
“Sports is a great hook, but some children don’t like sports,” Harrison said.
Parent involvement
Harrison said after meeting and working with many of her students’ parents, she is confident the school will grow and the F grades will be a thing of the past.
Before she met her staff, the newly hired principal hosted a data night, last fall, where she discussed her plans for the upcoming school year.
“I must have had 75 to 80 families here,” Harrison said of the participation. “They brought their PARCC data and I explained to them what it meant. I couldn’t believe it.”
She estimates that a few months later, about 2,000 friends and families of the school’s approximately 327 students turned out for Celebration of Learning event the school hosted before the holiday break.
“We have such wonderful parents that is the gift of Española,” Harrison said. “They want the best for their children and they want to hold me accountable.”