At the beginning of the school year, Salem Middle School staff brainstormed ways to continue improving ILEARN scores and how to increase accountability for staff, teachers and students.
According to the Indiana Department of Education’s website, Indiana’s Learning Evaluation and Assessment Readiness Network (ILEARN) is an assessment system that measures achievement and growth related to Indiana Academic Standards for students in grades three through eight, high school biology, and high school U.S. Government.
The test is given during the spring, with preparation and check point tests given throughout the school year.
“In general, with all of the testing, it is difficult for students to take the ILEARN tests seriously so we were thinking of ways to get our school-wide stance stronger,” said Principal Brett Miller.
He had discussions with each grade-level student group and teachers about ideas for continuing to improve scores.
“In August, we met with teachers and students separately,” he said. “The teachers helped us in the office with creating a survey for students to determine what avenue we need to take to motivate and have the ILEARN on our minds throughout the school year.”
Through the meetings and feedback, administration decided to have an incentive for improvement program and have an ILEARN Prep class period on Wednesdays and Thursdays for 25 minutes each day.
“Students are divided into groups, working on what their needs are,” he said. “Our math teachers work on a mini lesson and activity for Wednesdays and language arts has a lesson and activity planned for Thursdays.”
There are nine to 10 classrooms per grade level in which grade level teachers are paired with groups of 10-14 students to go over the lesson the math and language arts teachers have planned.
“Our teachers and students have really bought in and it is showing through the ILEARN checkpoints,” he said. “We are hoping this translates to improvements on the Summative ILEARN Test in April.”
-Monika Spaulding