Continuous Improvement Process Plan · curriculum in Social Studies. We found that students were...

Kirkland Middle School

430 – 18th Avenue

Kirkland, WA 98033

425-936-2420

http://www.lwsd.org/school/kirkland

Continuous Improvement Process Plan

2016 - 2017

Deborah McCarson, Principal

Julie Dixon, Associate Principal

Lake Washington School District

2016 - 2017

1 Kirkland Middle School

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Activity

Location

Description of School ---------------------------------------------

District Performance Targets ------------------------------ Page 3

School Performance Over Time ------------------------------- Page 5

CIP Reflection: Evaluate Outcomes ------------------------- Page 6

Annual School Goals---------------------------------------------- Page 9

Strategies to Accomplish Goals ------------------------------- Page 13

Parent, Family, and Community Involvement ----------- Page 16


DESCRIPTION OF SCHOOL

Provide a description of the school, its performance history, demographic make-up,

academic focus, school culture focus, and parent/family/community engagement

strategies.

Kirkland Middle School (KiMS). We just completed our fifth year as a 6-8 Middle School

with wonderful results. We serve approx. 580 students, and are small enough to know our

students well. This fact in turn supports the important concept of a more personalized

educational environment for our middle level students. Through our peer mentor program,

each sixth grader is matched with a 7th or 8th grade mentor to help them navigate the first

few months of Middle School. We continued our school-wide Bully Prevention Program and

will continue the program during our Panther Pride meetings during Panther Time at the

end of each day. We have added the Safe School Ambassador Program and trained 30

students who are instrumental in helping establish a positive school climate and shaping

behavioral norms on campus. We still enjoy our extensive building remodel which supports

and promotes our emphasis on grade level and content teaming and collaboration among

staff and students. Our elective offerings include: Game Design, STEM, Design and

Modeling, Band, Orchestra, Choir, Select Choir, Drama, Debate, Journalism, Team Sports,

Digital Media, Art, Pottery, Spanish, Study Skills, and Leadership.

As always, our focus is on providing every student with the opportunity to progress,

advance and experience personally challenging work. Our students must be prepared to

meet the challenges of an ever changing world that is increasingly more complex.


DISTRICT PERFORMANCE TARGETS

Indicators Note: Indicators based on

state assessments

District

Baseline

Performance

2014-15

District

Current

Performance

2015-16

District

Target

Performance

2018 8th Graders’

on Track for

Success

% of 8th graders meeting or

exceeding state standards in

Literacy 81.1% 81.7% 92.0% % of 8th graders meeting or


Math 71.5% 73.6% 85.0% % of 8th graders meeting or


Science 83.4% 86.5% 93.0%

Grade 6-8 Literacy and Math Data based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) and

reported on the OSPI Washington State Report Card (http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/).

Process to determine District Performance Targets: Lake Washington School District developed a strategic plan for implementation in 2013-

2018. Part of the strategic plan includes Student Learning Milestones and indicators of

student success. Many of the indicators are measured based on state testing results. A

process was implemented to set performance targets for each indicator. For the 2014-15

school year, the state adopted the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) to measure

student progress in Math and English Language Arts. Due to this change the district

made adjustments to the 2018 performance targets in these areas. The performance

targets were set based on the 2015 SBA results.

http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/


SCHOOL PERFORMANCE OVER TIME

2014-15 2015-16

2016-

17

2017-

18

2018-

19

2019-

20

2020-

21

6th Graders’ on

Track for

Success

% of 6th graders

meeting or

exceeding state

standards in

Literacy

83.3% 76.9%

% of 6th graders

meeting or

exceeding state

standards in

Math

79.0% 77.1%

7th Graders’ on

Track for

Success

% of 7th graders

meeting or

exceeding state

standards in

Literacy

85.6% 86.3%

% of 7th graders

meeting or

exceeding state

standards in

Math

80.8% 88.4%

8th Graders’ on

Track for

Success

% of 8th graders

meeting or

exceeding state

standards in

Literacy

84.2% 84.6%

% of 8th graders

meeting or

exceeding state

standards in

Science

91.0% 84.6%

% of 8th graders

meeting or

exceeding state

standards in

Math

83.1% 75.4%


CIP Reflection: Evaluate Outcomes

2015-16 CIP Goals and 2016 Outcomes:

Data:

Goal Achievement

(Achievement Level Descriptor)

Literacy:

6-8 ELA

6th -Grade – 113/154 which is

73% of students to show

clear to high growth

7th Grade – 2.76/5 student

score on CARS assessment

Critical Thinking/ Inference

Strand 8th Grade- 8th

Grade – 90% of students will

perform at 75% accuracy or

better, on the

Comprehension and

Summarization measures;

Comprehensive Assessment

of Reading Skills (CARS) and

Upfront magazine

assessments.

6th Grade – 77% met the established

target of clear to high growth. 5%

showed no growth overall.

7th Grade – 2.76/5 was class average

score on final assessment

8th grade -Students are still

inconsistently showing evidence of

at or above standard performance in

the areas of main idea, and

summarization.

Math:

6 Math

80% of students would

achieve 80% accuracy on

vocabulary by the end of the

year

Goal was met as 84% of students

achieved at least 80% accuracy.

7th Math 80% of students would



year

Goal was not met as 77% of students


8th Math 80% of students would



year

Goal was not met as 75% of students


Science:

8 Science

70% of 6th, 7th and 8th graders

will meet or exceed standard

in procedural writing.

42% of the 8th graders, 72% of the 7th

graders and 76% of the 6th grades

met or exceeded standard.

Achievement

Gap

We expect that our Hispanic

students will reach 54%

proficiency in ELA and 51%

proficiency in the Math

We exceed our target in this area.

Our Hispanic students reached 69%

proficiency on the ELA portion of

the SBA, and 72% proficiency on the

Math SBA as reported Spring 2016.


portion of the SBA in Spring

2016

College and

Career

Readiness

Our goal was to increase the

number of students that

choose Level 4 / Challenge

/Honors work from 3% from

first to second semester.

Goal was met with 10% of students

choosing Challenge / Honors, an

increase of 7%.

School

Effectiveness:

Goal was to complete Safe

School Ambassador Program.

Program a success, with additional

training scheduled and implemented

for 22 new 6th graders Oct. 2016

Attendance and

Discipline:

Students with 4+Tradies

We selected the tardy

portion of our attendance as

our goal because we noticed

that the number of students

late to school and late to

class were at an

unacceptable level. In the

school year 2014-2015, there

were 67 students (11.2%)

who had 4 or more tardies

per quarter/ 10+ for the total

year. We worked toward

reducing them by

In 2015-2016 instead of going down

as hoped that number increased to

90 students (15.2%). This may be

due to an added emphasis by staff to

hold students accountable for

arriving on time.

Narrative Reflection

Process:

Click here to enter text.

Literacy:

6-8 ELA

6th Grade –77th% of all 6th grade students met the

target established for clear – high growth in drawing

conclusions and making inferences (CCSSRL/RI 6.1).

5% (8 students) overall, demonstrated no growth. All

were due to below level reading skills, limited

vocabulary and poor comprehension of main idea.

These students had difficulty making connections and

developmentally only stated the obvious details.

Inferential thinking is largely based on experience and

exposure so it will need to be a continuing focus and

practiced through the years.

7th Grade Overall, students demonstrated an increased

ability to identify and correctly support inferences in

appropriate grade level passages. Students also showed

gains in their ability to make inferences on across


curriculum in Social Studies. We found that students

were accurately identifying inferences, but could not

explain or support the reasoning to support them.

8th Grade - We viewed evidence from three UPFRONT

current events tests and four CARS reading skills

assessments. At this point we are noticing many

inconsistencies. Benchmark 3 appeared to give

students much difficulty, especially with word

meaning. Though we have worked on these topics in

class, and after some improvement, students are still

inconsistently showing evidence of at or above

standard performance in the areas of main idea, and

summarization.

Math:

6-8 Math

Overall we had 77% of math students achieve at least

80% accuracy. In general, we were very pleased with

the growth demonstrated in each grouping. The

biggest gains were from students starting in the

Critical and Struggling Groups as they had plenty of

headroom to grow. As noted in prior log entries, the

department enhanced instruction and assessment to

increase focus and rigor on vocabulary. We are pleased

with our progress and would like to refine and continue

this goal into next year, especially as we adopt new

curriculum.

Science:

8 Science

Students in all grades demonstrated improvement with

a range of 84% - 97% overall growth. The

improvement shown by the 6th graders was 96.7%

overall. 6th graders started the year with less exposure

to procedure writing and we expected to see greater

gains in their skill level after a year of focused practice.

7th graders started the year with a baseline of skills

gained from 6th grade instruction in procedure writing.

7th graders demonstrated the most improvement over

all three grades with 97.2% growth from pre to post

testing. They demonstrated that they continued to

improve upon their procedural writing skills, which

resulted in greater proficiency after an additional year

of practice. 8th graders did not perform as well as

expected, however 83.9% of the 8th graders

demonstrated overall improvement. We felt this was

because the directions varied from grade to grade

putting the 8th graders at a disadvantage when

compared to 6th and 7th graders. The plan was to

differentiate the directions in order to be

developmentally appropriate for each grade level. The

6th graders were given a materials list and the


experimental question was reviewed prior to writing

their procedure. The 7th graders were given a

materials list prior to writing their procedure. The 7th

graders also had performed a very similar experiment

in class and could draw upon direct experience with the

question. The 8th graders were only given the scientific

question and provided with a few guidelines for

experimental boundaries, such as no testing of water,

no use of an alcohol burner, etc. In hindsight we

discovered that by not providing a materials list, we

inadvertently introduced additional variables into the

scenario, which negatively affected the results.

Students not only had to write a procedure, but first

had to process how to devise the experiment, develop

their own materials list and think through the

experimental process. The variation in the procedures

was evident and we realized the error that was caused

by making the directions for each grade level different.

Challenge Group: Our goal was to increase the

procedural writing scores of our challenge group

students from a Level 1 to a Level 4. These students

had achieved a Level 4 on the ELA literacy SBA, yet

only scored a Level 1 on the procedural writing pretest.

Our results were: 34% of the 6th graders in this group

achieved the goal of scoring a Level 4 on the post test.

41% of the 7th graders in this group achieved the goal of

scoring a Level 4 on the post test. 33% of the 8th

graders in this group achieved the goal of scoring a

Level 4 on the post test. While these percentages

initially seemed low, we also acknowledge that only 6%

of the students in this group failed to make any

progress. 94% of the group increased their score

overall. Sub Group: Our sub group students were

identified from a combination of their Literacy SBA

score and their procedural writing pretest score. In

both tests these students scored at a Level 1. Our goal

was to increase their procedural writing scores by at

least one level from pre to post test. Our results were:

88% of the 6th graders improved a minimum of one

level. 69% of the 7th graders improved a minimum of

one level. 60% of the 8th graders improved a minimum

of one level. We were very pleased with the progress

demonstrated by this sub group of students.

Achievement Gap Focused instruction using building wide SIOP

strategies in our intervention and general ed. classes

provided support for all of our students.


College and Career

Readiness

We will continue to collect data on the number of

students choosing to complete Honors/Level 4 work in

6-7-8 ELA, and encourage students to step up to the

challenge. This year we will focus on 100% completion

of Career Cruising requirements by all of our 8th

graders.

School Effectiveness: Very successful first year of our Safe School

Ambassadors program. We will be more intentional

with “Family” meeting time this year.

Attendance and Discipline: Our increase in number of students with 4 or more

tardies might be explained by the fact that teachers

were putting more emphasis on holding students

accountable for their

tardies.

ANNUAL SCHOOL GOALS

2016-17 Annual School Goals: SMART Goals

Literacy:

6th Grade ELA – Focusing on CCSS 6.4, students will increase their

ability to correctly evaluate, use and identify literary devices and

figurative language using a teacher created Figurative Language

Summative Assessment measure. 40% of 6th graders will show high

growth, being able to evaluate the author’s use of several types of

figurative language. 50% will show clear growth and be able to

explain the meaning of various forms of figurative language. This will

result in 90% of students being at standard when measured.

7th grade ELA – CCSS 7.1 and CCSS 7.2. By the end of the

instructional period, we hope to see a 7th grade average score on the

CARS Assessment in the 2 identified strands to be raised to a 3 in

Critical Thinking/ Inference and a 3.5 in Summarizing.

Using the Inference short response passages, we expect to see all

identified Level 2 (SBA) students responding at a Level 3 and all

identified SBA Level 3 students responding at a Level 4 using our

teacher - created rubric.

Using the Summarizing short response passages, we expect to see all

identified Level 2 (SBA) students responding at a Level 3 and all


identified SBA Level 3 students responding at a Level 4 using our

teacher - created rubric.

8th grade ELA - R1-8.1 Our goal is for 80% of identified students to

perform at or above standard (75% accurate) on the comprehension

and summarization tests as measured by CARS by April 2017

Math:

6-8 Math

80% of KiMS students will be proficient in demonstrating

understanding of grade-level appropriate mathematical

vocabulary. Vocabulary proficiency requires a student to demonstrate

understanding of at least 80% of the vocabulary word bank of 60

word. 95% of all students will show growth over the year. After the

baseline is established, grade level teachers will group students into 4

growth groups: Struggling (0-69), Approaching (70-79), Grade Level

(80-89), Masters (90-100) and set growth targets per groups.

Science:

8 Science

At the beginning of the school year 4.5% of the 8th graders tested at

grade level or above on scientific vocabulary. Our goal is to increase

this to 80% of the 8th graders being at standard or above by March

2017.

At the beginning of the school year 0.5% of the 7th graders tested at



2017.

At the beginning of the school year 18% of the 6th graders tested at



2017.

In addition, our goal is to have 95% of our students demonstrate some

growth by March 2017.

Achievement

Gap We expect that our Hispanic students will reach 55% proficiency in

ELA and 60% proficiency in the Math portion of the SBA in Spring

2017. We also expect Special Education student in the area of math to

have a combined Student Growth Percentile score moving from a 42

in 2016 to 50 Median SGP in 2017. College and

Career

Readiness

We expect a 100% completion rate of Career Cruising requirements by

all of our 8th graders

School

Effectiveness:

We will increase by 6% the number of students choosing to complete

Honors/Level 4 work in 6-7-8 ELA over the 2015-16 school year.

Attendance:

Implement 2016-2017 revised late policy which notifies parents by

email when a student reaches 3 tardies in the semester and requires a

parent meeting and consequence when the student reaches 4.


Teachers shared with all students the revised late policy the first

week of school and also shared with parents during our curriculum

night.

Teachers and other school personnel are present consistently in

hallways encouraging students to be on time.

Discipline: The majority of our school discipline deals with students’ attendance-

see above.

Annual School Goals: Academic

Science:

1. Describe the process the school used to determine annual school goals. Our team began

by discussing where we felt there were gaps in knowledge or skills in our current

students. This discussion also included our previous two years of CIP experience.

2. Describe why these goals were selected. Two years ago for our CIP goal we focused on

vocabulary development which resulted in our highest overall increase in student

achievement to date, as measured by MSP results. Last year we decided to work on

higher level thinking skills and chose to focus on procedural writing. Our MSP test

scores indicated that our students demonstrated less improvement when compared to a

vocabulary focus. We have decided to establish a vocabulary goal again this year to

compare this year’s student achievement results with the achievement results from the

past two years

3. How are we ensuring that all students are receiving challenge and rigor? We are

using a variety of methods for instruction and practice to reach a broad range of skill

levels. We use Quizlet and a number of strategies outlined in the Vocabulary for the New

Science Standards book we purchased for our team members. 4. How are we ensuring

that students receive the necessary intervention?

We will provide weekly vocabulary practice, work with individuals who are struggling

and provide additional challenge for those students who are excelling. We use small

group as well as individual settings to provide these interventions.

5. Describe how you will progress monitor your Academic Annual School Goals. We will

include vocabulary in our formative assessments as well as the summative assessments

we give at the end of units.

ELA:

1. Describe the process the school used to determine annual school goals.

After reviewing PGE results from the 2015—16 academic year, Smarter Balance

Data and current year CARS assessments each grade level determined a specific

reading skill focus given the current cohort data.

2. Describe why these goals were selected.


Each ELA grade level team determined that there was a specific strand of reading

skills students required additional focus on and instruction in.

3. How are we ensuring that all students are receiving challenge and rigor?

Students are given opportunities to select Level 4 assignments and achieve at an

Above Standard level on all major assessments. Differentiation occurs in reading

selections, question types, and critical thinking skills.

4. How are we ensuring that students receive the necessary intervention?

Through use of student data, we have identified students who may need

additional support in order to gain mastery of Social Studies and Language Arts

content, as well as boost reading skills. Intervention takes place through

modification of assignments, continued data tracking and leveled reading.

5. Describe how you will progress monitor your Academic Annual School Goals.

Each grade level has chosen benchmark assessments directly tied to their

academic SMART goals.

During math content meetings in the fall of 2016, math department members decided to

set a goal based on mathematical vocabulary for the 2016-2017 school year. The rationale

for focusing on vocabulary is that vocabulary is essential for understanding and

communicating mathematics. Vocabulary helps students to decipher directions and

speak about mathematical process steps. Vocabulary is built into lesson planning as well

as assessments, insuring that all students have equal access. Several options may be

offered to students to aid in the understanding of vocabulary: using Quizlet, making

flash cards, formative assessing during lessons, Haiku quizzes, etc. The math

department compiled 35 vocabulary terms common to all students in all grade levels.

Then, smaller teams compiled 25 additional terms relative to their particular course (6th

grade math, 7th grade math, 8th grade math, algebra, and geometry). The first baseline

assessment was given in October with additional assessments to follow in January and

March. Compilation of data in relation to all Kirkland Middle School mathematics

students will take place in early spring.

Annual School Goals: Achievement Gap

We used information from our 2016 SBA, and looked at the outcomes from last year’s

goals and determined that we would continue to focus on the success of our Hispanic

students, in both Math and ELA. We are also interested in seeing how the addition of a .4

ELL FTE will impact our results this year.

Annual School Goals: College and Career Readiness


It is important to us that our 8th graders get a solid start on their academic and career

planning using the district adopted Career Cruising software. It also supports our feeder

high schools if all of our students have meet expectations for completion of the 8th grade

requirements.

Annual School Goals: School Effectiveness Encouraging students to take on additional challenge, be it in the form of product,

process or content is a goal of our LA/SS department. By increasing the number of

students who choose the Honors/Level 4 work the students will be better prepared for

more rigor as they move through our system. We will offer an Honors designation on the

report card for students choosing this option and then revisit at the semester with the

goal of identifying additional students that didn’t take advantage of the opportunity at

the beginning of the year. This will allow students that many not have been comfortable

at the beginning of the year to now challenge themselves further. Note challenge options

are available to any student at any time.

Annual School Goals: Attendance Attendance (tardies) is our biggest discipline issue. During a weekly attendance meeting

Counselors, Attendance Secretary and Associate Principle meet and review data and

discuss possible solutions to individual attendance issues. A full review will be done at

the semester and adjustments made as necessary. Review year data will take place in

June 2017 to determine if goal has been reached.

Annual School Goals: Discipline See above

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES AND REQUIRED RESOURCES

Goal Area Literacy Strategy to

support goals 6th Grade ELA – The focus of novel and short story studies will be on the

author’s use of language. Students will identify literary devices and be given

explicit instruction in how to evaluate the author’s use and effectiveness of

language.

7th Grade ELA – In both LA and SS teachers will use explicit instruction in

making inferences and summarizing. In SS, the focus of responses to text

questions will require these reading skills be used. Also in summative unit

assessments, students will use these reading skills to demonstrate mastery

of reading content.


8th Grade ELA - In 8th grade Language Arts, instruction on “making

inferences and drawing conclusions” is explicitly throughout the year in

short stories and novels, especially while reading Flowers for Algernon,

Fahrenheit 451, and To Kill a Mockingbird. In Social Studies, “making

inferences and drawing conclusions” is imbedded daily instruction, class

work, and assessment.

Professional

Learning

needed

As a ELA Department, information on SBA scoring reports, measures used

to determine the student achievement against standards using SBA scoring.

Resources

needed CARS Assessment, NY Times student magazine, teacher created

assessments in Summarization, Inference, Literary Devices/ Figurative

Language Responsible

individual or

team

6th – 8th grade ELA teams

Goal Area Math Strategy to

support goals To deepen student understanding and retention of key mathematical

concepts and vocabulary, KiMS math teachers will emphasize, improve, and

integrate vocabulary instruction throughout the year. We will use Quizlet,

Haiku quizzes, notes, starter problems, word wall, vocab posters, and the

inclusion of vocabulary on content assessments to work towards our goal of

80% of KiMS students achieving 80% accuracy or better on vocabulary

assessments.

Professional

Learning

needed

Review of using Haiku for assessments.

Resources

needed Establishment of Quizlet accounts

Responsible

individual or

team

: I Amy trimmed the core words down to 35, Monica adjusted 7th grade terms,

Kevin & MaryEllen adjusted 6th grade terms, Anne adjusted 8th grade terms

and Amy adjusted lists for Geometry and Algebra terms. Each math

department member was responsible for administering the baseline

assessment by October 20 and will be responsible for administering the

same assessment in January and in March.

Goal Area Science Strategy to

support goals 6th-8th grade teachers will use a variety of instructional practices to focus on

vocabulary development such as the use of Quizlet, vocabulary games,

explicit instruction on terminology, word webs, classification of words by

topic, etc. Professional

Learning

needed

Resource Book: Vocabulary for the New Science Standards-Marzano, Rogers

and Simms

Planning meetings for new science adoption materials.


Resources

needed Teacher created vocabulary assessments for pre and post testing, Quizlet

accounts, word list from McGraw-Hill curriculum resources, materials for

vocabulary games and activities Responsible

individual or

team

6th-8th grade science teachers

Goal Area Select one Strategy to

support goals With the addition of .4 ELL FTE we have added two co-teach classrooms-

one with a 6th grade ELA teacher and one with a Safety Net teacher.

Counseling hand scheduled students into classes to make sure we had the

max number of students needing ELL assistance in both of these classes. Professional

Learning

needed

SIOP training is scheduled for 6th grade ELA teacher and new ELL teacher

(Safety Net teacher was previously trained). All staff received training on

English Language Proficiency Standards- introduced in August and

revisited during Oct. full day LEAP using district developed PowerPoint. Resources

needed Planning time for teachers to meet and plan, we have a variety of student

needs in both of these classrooms, it is far from a one size fits all solution. Responsible

individual or

team

The entire staff is responsible- they are all our students. We will continue to

incorporate training on ELPS, and offer SIOP training to other staff

members when it is available.


PARENT, FAMILY, AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Strategies to involve parents, families, and the community in the Continuous Improvement

Process

The Principal meets with PTSA leadership every other week to share CIP progress and

answer questions regarding programs and initiatives. At each PTSA general membership

meeting the principle report is a standing item, which always contains pertinent CIP

information. Newsletters go out to families once a month and contain information reported

out by grade level content areas. We also survey our parents to determine their interest in

order to better serve our school community. with PTSA leadership every other week to

share CIP related progress and answer questions regarding programs and

initiatives

Strategies to inform parents, families, and the community about the Continuous

Improvement Process

Family and community involvement- KiMS works with many community organizations that

support our staff and students in a variety of ways: Kirkland Kiwanis, City of Kirkland,

Kirkland Parks and Recreation, Kirkland Youth Council, Pantry Packs, and YES. Parents

are involved as volunteers in classrooms, our health room as well as serving as walk-abouts

during lunches and before and after school. We also offer evening study/organizational

skills, and technology parent nights outside of our regular PTSA general membership

meetings and parent coffees. The more connected we are to our community, the more

opportunities we have to share our goals and progress on a regular basis.

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