2011-2012+Reading+Team

__**2011-2012 Reading Team Members**__ Reading Coach- Tina Towers - Chairperson K- Sandra Jones 1- Kim Peck 2- Carol Powell 3- Sarah Bragwell - Secretary 4- Leah Turner 5- Suzanne Mozely Resource- Dana Boudreaux Library Media- Rita Jackson

(All members present except Mrs. Jones) __Disussion- [|AR- Renaissance Learning Program]__
 * __1-18-12 Meeting__**
 * System is up and ready to go school-wide. There are a few glitches. We are handling them as they arise.
 * Revisiting AR- Focus needs to be quality not quantity... taking huge emphasis off of points while keeping recognition for points earned school-wide for now.
 * Mrs. Turner brought up that some AR tests have a voice prompt that will read questions but voice prompt is not available for vocabulary tests.
 * Committee decided to set a goal of having __**STAR and Early Literacy Tests taken school-wide by February 1st.**__ Determine new ZPD for students. Upper levels should print reports and establish goals.
 * K-2 will take time to become familiar with the newly revised program and will set goals next nine weeks.
 * Grades 3-5 should be ready to set student individual goals for students based upon 6 week benchmark since we are just beginning 3rd week into this 9 week grading period. (Jump in and see how it goes.)
 * Rita Jackson suggested that we visit the tutorial videos to help with our questions and reports first. She said they were user friendly and very simple to follow.
 * Question was asked about K-2's ability for students to delete and re-test if a student bombs a test due to unusual circumstances (student on wrong test before teacher could catch it, etc...)
 * Comittee requested that there be several people within our school be put in place that had the authority to make those changes:
 * Names suggested: Rita Jackson and Tina Towers
 * Committee was reminded that students who took test after Dec. 20...data is possibly not there. Teachers are encouraged to have students check to see if those tests are in the system as already taken. If not, they **__should__** be able to re-take them. Mrs. Jackson sent data twice to RenLearn so she was not exactly sure if they are there or could retake them.
 * Committee would like to __not establish the home connection until next year__. There are a lot of new aspects that we want to make sure we are comfortable with and can speak to parents confidently about it.
 * AR night was suggested toward the end of the year. Teachers prefer to also wait until we have had time to work with program and get something truly established before we bring parents in. There are still some that don't feel comfortable yet. We will discuss AR night at a later meeting depending upon how things progress.
 * Are we keeping points? After discussion we will still keep the points board outside Tina's room. Until further discussion and decisions can be made about how to restructure goals/points etc... we will still track points and reward those students who are increasing to certain point clubs for now.
 * Sending students to the library: Please do not send them during a class. Students should be getting books during library time. Librarian has extended time during class for them to have time to select books. Librarian as well as classroom teacher should encourage students to begin selecting longer chapter books to read that will sustain them for longer than a day or two if possible due to the lack of availability to have someone help the students check out books.
 * Also suggested that teachers send a basket to library and have 30 books checked out in teacher name to have available for students to take AR test on that remain in the classroom. These could rotate within the classroom. As upper level readers begin saying...I don't have anything to read, basket can be taken back and more books can be checked out to teacher. This was just a suggestion if teachers are having students visiting library too often and during library class times.