Following the retirement of longtime Trigg County Intermediate Schools Principal Brian Futrell, Lisa Bush delivered a detailed update on her students and staff during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting — several focal points heading into Spring and Summer breaks.
The creation of a new leadership team of teachers, she said, is already paying dividends.
One of the ideas, “The School-At-Home” work, requires students to read Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. She said it isn’t new material, but is instead associated with some skill the child is already learning in the classroom, and it helps the parents level with their kids.
Bush said she has already heard from more than a half-dozen parents giving thanks for this measure, because they themselves were seeking a better understanding of what their child was learning in the classrooms.
It’s so popular, Bush added, that Trigg County Middle School Amy Breckel plans to carry the plan into the sixth grade.
Bush, and many of the faculty, are also taking some advice from the newly-implemented Intermediate Leadership Team — a gifted, selected group of six fourth graders and six fifth graders that have been bringing some key ideas to the table.
Some of them, Bush said, will be implemented before the semester ends.
As the campus focuses on four prolific subjects — reading, social studies, science and mathematics — Bush said March 23 will be “Drop Everything And Write” Day, in which students will do just that, and complete writing assignments about a great many concepts.
The point, she said, is to continue marked improvement in the skill across all three grade levels.
Other major discussion points?
+ Bush said a teacher newsletter called “Next Week At A Glance,” as well as some efforts with “Response To Intervention” students, have both been effective.
+ In STAR Testing, Bush said reading and math scores were strong across the board, but the biggest changes have come in third graders, who have gone from 37% to 20% novice, with mirrored growth in proficient and distinguished efforts.
+ Bush said several development days have been spent on the implementation of vertical learning, in which third-, fourth- and fifth-grade curricula are being built around social studies and science, reading fluency, comprehension checks, summarizing text and longer passages, and the progression of language, grammar and other mechanics.
+ She doesn’t know who, but someone has started a “Random Acts of Kindness” Google Document, in which special gifts are being anonymously left all around the school.
