• Suggestions for Learning Circle Priorities in 2007-2008
• Including Samuel
• Minutes: October
• Minutes: November
• MEMBERS:

2007-2008

Based on Input from 11 Learning Circle Members- Nov. 14, 2007 Bold are priorities to explore and describe because ranked high

• CBM task Force will continue to mentor others , promote interest, and hold trainings on use of Curriculum Based Measures to assess students ,write measurable annual IEPgoals, and monitor progress
• Continue to gather CBMs to have a bank of probes
• Complete SAU chart of assessments and distribute it to other schools
• Video tape other collaborative efforts to use as exemplars on website Co-Teaching ( DCS, TRS, & PA) Reflective Practice/ Critical Friends groups ( PA& DCS) How to meet needs of various disabilities Planning and modification Rubric making session Differentiated Instruction use ( PA) Problem Solving / reflective Practice within LC
• Promote sharing to increase SAU Resource Center materials
• Add items to SAU Learning Circle Website ( experts, website blurbs…)

• Curriculum, Instruction, and Supports · Support Literacy and other RTI Initiatives 30 pts.
• How to modify: Explore CAST Site -pathways to reading and Writing ( Literacy) adaptations 19 pts.
• Begin to use in SAU experts to do staff development trainings 15 pts.
• Hold "How to Use Technology Sessions" throughout year 13 pts.

• Invite Anthony Blinn from Allenstown to tell us about Aimsweb benchmarks used in his district
• Use this year to investigate new state database, ICT Portfolio. Implement model so we can support trainings next year. 27 pts.
• Travel Task force goes to different buildings to hold workshops on assessments, grading, rubrics, report card use, and modifications. 10 pts
• Consider having own SAU data pool of norms ( need 100 kids per class) 10 pts.
• After School activity to develop grade specific rubrics 8 pts.
• Work toward having a district wide norm based system- hold

• Show Movie , Including Samuel Have reflective practice group to discuss 26 pts
• Have another Best Practice Celebration Day in spring 22 pts
• Book Study to promote Literacy/ RTI : Inclusion Facilitator with Cheryl Jorgensen visit, Freeks, Geeks, and Asbergers. You are Going to Love This Kid. 17 pts
• Reflective practice groups around article All FOR ONE - Scholastic Adm Magazine 2007- 10 lessons from inclusive classrooms -16 pts.
• Panel Speaking on Topics of Inclusion -9 pts. · Speaker on inclusion 9 pts.
• Least Dangerous Assumption discussion 8 pts.

• Posters in schools, power point ads, email about Learning Circle, Resource Center,& Web Site Publicize possibly March Workshop Day 25 pts.

• Traveling Road Show: 10-15 Min. presentation to School Boards 23 pts.

• Inclusive School Week poetry/ essay contest… Dec.3-7th 15 pts.

• Mini workshops on SAU Workshop Day for information and hands on "How to Assess" 12 pts.
• Brochure sharing ideas on grading, rubrics,,, and other assessment tools 8 pts.
• Mini workshops on grading, scoring, and use of rubrics 8pts.

• Use reflective practice groups more in SAU to solve problems. 11 pts.
• Check out resources in regards to collaboration 9 pts.
• Develop 3-5 year strategic plan for sped 9 pts .
• Ongoing meetings between sped and gen 9 pts.
• Training on use of meeting structures 7 pts.

Para

• SAU Grant writing to sponsor para teacher day in August 9 pts.

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Including Samuel

Invitation

Brouchure - page1, page2

January 15, 2008 EVALUATIONS

The event evaluations came back with awesome ratings. Some of the comments :

• struggles for people with disabilities can be presented in a compelling yet enjoyable way
• Great discussion and visuals
• Thanks to Learning Circle for coordinating the event and obvous efforts
• Other communities have many resources
• We need to collaborate more
• Having the school location was a great idea v Dan was informative and people came away with increased insight
• The film was real emotional, teachers were honest with their their fears and concerns
• We still have a long way to go with inclusion and this will take time
• Very motivational, inspiring, educational event
• The importance of belonging v Inclusion is a thing that is easy to do badly
• The need to build inner strength and self esteem is essentia
• A great use of a couple of hours
• The importance of a society as a whole to view people with disabilities in a new light
• High expectations are important as shared by Keith
• It raised my own personal awareness of the benefits of inclusion in schools
• The video with question and answer time was outstandin
• Having Dan here to share on a personal level was great

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Learning Circle Minutes November 20, 2007

Facilitator: Jan Santosuosso

Present: Peter Warburton (SAU), Mona Sandberg(Village), Mark Richmond (TRS), Nancy Maguire (DCS), Kathy Hering (Hill), Jan (PA), Anthony Blinn (ARD, AES), Pat Connors (ECS)

Team Building: Nancy led Two Truths & A Lie activity - Kathy won & received a tasty breakfast treat.

Minutes accepted from last meeting.

UPDATES

Electronic Portfolios

Pat presented the packet on electronic portfolios which included a continuum for teachers designed by the triad. He also demonstrated Performance Tracker. People were very impressed with the availability of this data. Some people had not heard about it yet - members were advised to ask for their passwords in the buildings so they could start using the data.

AIMSweb

Anthony presented an overview of the AIMSweb assessment program. Both ARD & AES are using it; Deerfield is piloting it this year. Deerfield is hosting a training for the literacy assessment next week, November 28th & 29th.

Lasting Literacy

Mona talked about schools getting ready for Jumpstart to Literacy. This is a program to get books into the hands of kids aged birth to five. Staff members from Barrington had come to the October Lasting Literacy meeting to present the program - they've had great success with it. Everyone who saw the presentation was excited about it. She also spoke about Dog Tales, a program where volunteers bring their dogs to school & let kids read to the dogs.

RTI Initiatives

Peter said our consultant "has a presence" in all nine schools. That was one of our goals & it has been accomplished. Another goal was to get all school boards to adopt an RTI goal - all have done so.

Assessment Charts

Nancy passed them out and added assessments for Hill and Village - chart is now complete.

CFGs

Word has spread in Deerfield & CFGs are growing. They now have four CFGs led by trained facilitators.

Alternative Portfolio

Peter said the state wants us to look at kids and see if we can give any of them the Alt. Nancy said it has come up at Deerfield DINI meetings that maybe we can give it to more people. Jan read some of the requirements from the booklet, and we agreed we should wait until Vicki is back to discuss this, as we weren't exactly sure what we were looking at.

Priorities

We reviewed the ranked priorities for 2007-08. Peter suggested sending the list out via email so people can see what we've been working on. We thought that was a great idea and discussed the possibility of also posting it on our webpage.

Including Samuel

Vicki had sent fliers for us to take back to our schools, which we did. We will put fliers in each teacher's mailbox & hang some up around the schools. We will each ask our tech person to put it on our website. We decided to invite the public, as Vicki had suggested, and to put an ad in the paper. Parents would not be required to sign up beforehand. We all agreed it would be great if too many people came! Jan emailed out Vicki's questions for each of us to answer and send back.

EVALUATE MEETING

What worked? We pulled it off - great job facilitating by Jan! We all really liked the presentations by Pat & Anthony.

What didn't work? Nothing, but we missed Vicki!

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Learning Circle Meeting Goal Setting October 22, 2007

Facilitator: Vicki Therrien
In Attendance: Peter Warburton ( SAU), Mona Sandberg ( Village), Kathy Hering ( Hill ) , Mark Richmond ( TRS), Sarah Bachelder ( ECS)

Review of LC's purpose and mission

Power point shown to review LC history and to explain purpose, mission statement, meeting structures, and impact.

Introductions

Welcome new members: Mona Sandberg (Assistant Principal Village/Hill) and Sarah Bachelder ( ECS Grade 6 teacher). Jan Sheen ( SAIF) will represent PA but was unable to attend. Molly Ireland ( ARD Gr. 5 teacher) may join us.

Team Building Activity

Members shared about student they have impacted /stood for.
Hot Topic Share: Peter told us about Flikr.com where you can get good pictures.

Review of Learning Circle 2006-2007 Impact

Reviewed list of tasks accomplished. Highlights include :

• Workshop on Curriculum, Instruction, and Supports for Students with Disabilities
• Completion of para/teacher brochure
• Consultant List for trainings
• CBM task force members from each town available to do trainings and mentorship
• Survey Monkey sent to all SAU requesting materials for Resource Center, names of experts, …to be included on Learning Circle website
• SAU Resource Center at PA established and accessible to all in SAU via PA link

Updates Literacy Task Force -

• Peter -force started when Mike Reardon recognized students entering high school lacking reading and writing skills. 80 9th graders were interviewed by principals. Monthly meeting of 25 people including principals, gen ed, SPED, admin. involved. Recommendations were brought to school boards. Goal is for all boards to adopt the goals of task force. Some ideas include: Strong RTI piece , Jump Start to Literacy in each district. Early Intervention Plans, Early Literacy Programs, Lasting Literacy ( a community approach) would put brochures in Drs. /Dentist's office…Grant didn't go through this year but they will try again. Art Maerlender consulting on RTI, ESC hired RTI teacher
• Mona- Village having Literacy Lunch where child and reading specialist meet, Having first literacy night, Interested in having Dog Tales where students read to dogs. CCS does this.
• Discussed LC helping Task force- Vicki invited to attended task force.
• Peter will share idea of giving out list with report cards " List of things parent can do to promote literacy".

School Assessment Tools- Nancy sent charts and asked that members update them for school.

CBM Task Force-

• Kathy reported that task force includes Jan Santosuosso ( ECS), Kathy Hering Hill/Village), Kathy Whittaker ( DCS), Jane Heely /Lisa Clark ( CCS) , and Vicki ( TRS/PA)
• They attended state CBM (curriculum based measures) and Aimsweb CBM an data management trainings. They have offered to do CBM trainings and mentorship in each school. They have explored websites and are collecting probes to be used for assessments, progress monitoring, and goal writing.
• Art Maerlender is making fluency/ developmental spelling probes for Pembroke to pilot
• Pembroke is also having Carol Kosnitsky do follow-up CBM training for staff.
• Allenstown has offered Aimsweb math and Deerfield will be having Aimsweb Literacy training Nov. 28 and 29th. CBM. Aimweb also has a strong RTI management program.

Resource Center:

• Access located at PA library on line. Go to www.sau53.org/pa,
  • click on library, search for new library catalog,
  • go to reading lists then SAU Resource Center.
  • OR do advanced search,
  • choose copy type by scrolling down to SAU Resource Center. PA .
  • At this time you can's access from home, just on school computers.
• People resources: Need to look at survey monkey again to check experts. Nancy offered to make table for website.

Materials:

• David Ricard had woodshop students make and put up 2 shelves for materials.
• Kathy Hering has spent hours cataloguing materials.
• Christy Smith, librarian is entering items in system. "InfoCentre is a catalog of PA' resources, I would rather not include items that are not physically here. The same for people's names. That isn't a function of a library catalog, more of a web site."
• Karen Medeiros, PA learning Center teacher has students earning community service hours by making materials.

Transport of items:

Survey comments were made that it would be difficult to retrieve items from PA because of distance and time constraints. Gail Luerssen, Transition Coordinator is willing to have her students deliver and pick up materials if people email a request to her.

Website: Vicki met with Deb Boisvert to plan site. See mock up sheet. It will take time to put items on site.

LC will be presented at Best Practice Conference on Education for All Children on November 2 at Marriott Hotel in Concord- Vicki and Heather will co-present.

Review and rank priorities for Learning Circle 2007 -2008

• Group reviewed impact sheet for 2006-2007. This will be sent to coordinators/principals
• Decision to complete things that have already been started and not add many new items .
• Reviewed list of priorities that were on 2006-2007 "dotmocracy" chart papers. After discussion LC voted with: 3 ( do now), 2 ( Do soon), 1 ( next year), 0 ( no interest). Vicki will get input from rest of members and tally.
• Members agree that if SAU focus is Literacy/RTI, we should also have that as goal for this year.

Explore and Describe SAU Event

• Dec. 4th after SAU School event 3:15-5:15 at PA will Show 50 Min. DVD Including Samuel. PA students and staff are in the DVD. Possibly break into reflective practice sessions according to interest ex. Behavior, modifications, system change, access, circle of friends, .. have facilitator for each group and share ideas with all. To publicize this, Peter will ask principals to show 9 Min. preview at staff meeting in Nov.
• Learning Circle Roadshow team ( Mark, Sarah, Peter, Vicki …) to do infomercial on March Workshop Day and for School Boards in April/may, sharing Learning Circle, Resource Center, and Website. Having members from different towns present would show solidarity of districts.
• March best Practice Celebration showing possible RTI / Literacy initiatives …

Next Steps.

• Check with Julie Heon about having Dec. 4th and March events.
• Get ranking from members to solidify goals for the year
• Consider how LC goals can compliment SAU RTI/Literacy initiative .

Parking Lot

• Websense . Mark shared teachers concern that teachers can't expand their curriculum because SAU blocks 95% of what we want.
• Develop tips sheets for parents that could be given out at dump, report card meetings, at the polls…
• Literacy/ RTI Book Study for staff development to promote reading and expand SAU initiative Freeks & Geeks, You're Going to Love This Kid, Inclusion Facilitator, Other book on Literacy/RTI. Will this be SAU event or event that travels to each school?
• Vicki Represents LC on Literacy Task Force, think about what we want represented Meeting Evaluation

What worked? Having new members with fresh ideas, we got through agenda,
What didn't work? Too much information/papers . Some confusion over what was being discussed
What to do differently next time? Make sure projector is focused properly, vary the format more movement /change so not just talking.
Ah Has! Learning Circle has begun. New members are excited about LC and feel they can contribute to its impact on SAU 53.

To Do List

NEXT MEETING Date: Monday, November 19,2007
Place: SAU Conference Room Time 8:30-11:30
Refreshments: Vicki
Gift: Vicki
Crowd Breaker:Nancy
Agenda:

• Assessments Wrapup:Anthony Blinn- Aimsweb, Updates Portfolio by Mike(?)
• Update Literacy, RTI intiative
• Review goals for year
• Plan Details of Dec. SAU Event

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