PHASE+TWO+-+Goals+and+Plans

Post your department's needs and problems, and your plans to address these. What do you think your department needs? What resources do you have already and what do you require? What are your plans to address these areas? (Include your department name and the members of your literacy team.)


 * 10/11/2011**
 * Business Department**
 * Literacy Team: Rich Harden, Lisa Heid, Dan Nicholson, Tami Redden**
 * 1) Not all of our courses offer obvious reading opportunities. Our needs are finding strategies to incorporate reading into these courses like accounting, computer applications, keyboarding, ...
 * 2) Four of our eight department members have been through the literacy training. Literacy coaches. Online resources. Access to computer labs in most of our classes.
 * 3) One central listing of stragies for everyone in the department to access reading and writing strategies.
 * 4) Continue to present and share best practices in our department and PLC meetings. Create a centralized document for the business department.


 * 10-12-2011**
 * Special Education Department**
 * Literacy Team: Susan Flora, Tamie Ellis, Marie Burke-Chynoweth**

In Basic Skills development class we are teaching literacy skills to our identified students to increase their academic success. Last year, we determined the need to develop reading, reading comprehension, and writing skills during BSD. Attached is the year long curriculum mapping we are developing.


 * 10-18-2011**
 * Music Department**
 * Literacy Team: Jay Jasper and David Hartman**

We need to: 1. Make sure that the department uses pre-, during, and post- reading strategies when sight reading music, and connecting the strategies for reading music to those same strategies as they are used in reading text. 2. Presenting mini-demos of lessons used in our classes, to show how writing can be implemented into the music curriculum without major disruptions. I.E. Not everything must be graded. Note cards make a nice length for a short writing assignment. The five paragraph essay is probably not the best writing instrument to use in a music class.


 * 10-19-2011**
 * Science Department**
 * Literacy Team: Maggie Coyne, Melissa Kikta and Deb Cook**

We collected lists of the types of literacy related activities our students need to do in order to succeed in our classes from the Physics, Chemistry and Biology PLCs. Melissa Kikta and I sat down and sorted those activities into 6 categories, 4 reading categories and 2 writing categories. The categories are as follows:

__Reading__ 1. Reading for Content 2. Reading for Directions (specifically lab procedures) 3. Reading for Problem Solving 4. Reading for Research

__Writing:__ 1. Writing to Learn 2. Writing to Produce

As we were going over the lists that the PLCs provided us, we realized that a lot of people in the department were already doing great things to support our students' literacy development. So, we will first reach out to the rest of the department and collect the best practices in each category that people are already using and that are already working for our students. Then we will begin to add best practices strategies from sources outside the department to fill in any apparent gaps. These resources will be collected over the course of the semester and published on a Science Department Literacy Wiki that Maggie Coyne will develop so the Science Department will have a go-to place to find literacy strategies that work in science classes.


 * 10-25-2011**
 * Social Studies Department**
 * Literacy Team: Leslie Ringle, Cecilia Burtnett, Brandon Swart, and Andy McCormick**

The social studies department has focused on literacy for years with the inclusion of novels in our curriculum and a focus on essay writing. However, we have not worked together to create common literacy goals until recently. With the creation of a new PLC structure (9/10th grade PLC and a 11/12th grade PLC) that is designed around improving literacy and vertical teaming, we are now working on literacy as opposed to content goals.

Department Needs and Problems: We have identified that reading comprehension and motivation to read is low. We have been flooded in recent years with reading and writing strategies, literacy standards, and content standards. It has been a struggle to integrate all these. Most of us have utilized some strategies to some extent. There has been an attempt to coordinate what works and what doesn’t. While we have spent time sharing easy-to-use strategies, we probably need to create an “instructional database” of methods. Our department doesn’t like theory; we like to see how strategies actually work in the classroom. Additionally, access to 21st century technology is lacking. Some great ways to integrate all these strategies via project-based learning, etc. have not come to fruition due to the difficulties in getting into computer labs and inadequate tech support, etc..

Addressing Needs and Problems/Resources: We have great resources within our department. We have begun to focus on addressing literacy needs within our PLC’s. By identifying student and teacher weaknesses, we are focusing on how we can specifically address those within our classrooms. We can build that database of instruction for the more independent-minded in our department, but we can also use the resources of our school instructional coaches for those who are want additional perspectives.