Restructuring - Instructional Program
Standards Based Curriculum - There is data driven instruction and a school-wide, indicator focus to ensure that all students learn grade level or above grade level curriculum content. The standards based curriculum allows for acceleration and intervention. The School Improvement Plan includes tasks to accelerate at least ten percent of the students at each grade level. Currently over twenty percent of second graders are being instructed at a third grade level in math, while over fifteen percent of third graders receive fifth grade level instruction.
Increased instructional time, using every minute of the school day for a reading/social studies block and a math/science block. Walk into any classroom and you will see students totally immersed in their academic work, teachers working with students, systems well in place to handle classroom routines. Instruction at BA is without interruptions. Assemblies, cultural arts, and ceremonies are activities that take place outside of the school day, inviting the community, to avoid interference with the laser sharp focus on meaningful instruction.
All Day Kindergarten - At Broad Acres Elementary School and countywide, the expectations for kindergarten students have increased significantly with an emphasis on mastery in reading and math. These increased expectations begin in Head Start and Pre-Kindergarten classes, which are particularly important to the majority of students at Broad Acres, as they often provide our students with their first exposure to formal English. The MCPS Assessment Program demonstrates that while Broad Acres Kindergarten students enter below their counterparts in other MCPS schools, at the end of their Kindergarten year, they are competitive with their peers.
Reduced Class Size - Students have benefited from reduced class sizes at grades K-2 and Title I staffing is used to lower class size in grades 3-5 and provide students with focused interventions. Classes which once were as large as thirty students now remain no larger than 15 at kindergarten, 17 at grades one and two, and twenty at grades 3, 4, and 5. This reduction in class size enables our teachers to maximize student potential by giving specific feedback, meeting individual student needs and nurturing students as learners.
The instructional program is monitored closely using multiple data points. School wide reading level databases have been created to monitor reading level progress in all grade levels. All primary literacy teachers enter running record data twice monthly in order for individual teachers, content experts and vertical teams to analyze and plan for instruction. In addition, our upper grade teachers also monitor the reading levels of students by either entering running record data or informal reading assessments to determine the reading levels of individual students.
The Montgomery County Public School Assessment Program (MCPSAP) has allowed the literacy teachers to make monthly targeted projections based on the end of the year reading level benchmarks. This focused analysis of data about student achievement drives even greater determination to meet the needs of all of our students to achieve on or above level expectations.
As a result of this progress-tracking, a number of our first grade students participate in the Reading Recovery Program. This program provides individual support to students. In addition, our Reading Recovery Teachers have been consultants to the primary literacy team.
Math spreadsheets are used to track student computation skills, as well as their indicator level skills. In addition MCPS math unit assessment data provides a comparison of student performance relative to that of students in other schools.
The Instructional Management System (IMS) provides teachers with up-to-date information about indicators, standards, resources, as well as student, class, and grade level data.