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ISMS students improving in math, P.E. |
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Wednesday, September 17 2008 |
By TJ HEMLINGER
Staff writer
The Whitley County Consolidated Schools met Tuesday night and discussed the defeat of the petition drive to build a new high school.
“We have no plan B,” board member Tim Bloom said. “It’s tremendously unfair to students who go through an antiquated and inadequate school to do nothing. (The board) should start to address those concerns.”
WCCS superintendent Laura Huffman said, “We are prioritizing. What do we need to do and what to address? Discussions are ongoing.”
The board received some good news as Indian Springs Middle School teachers reported progress in math and physical education classes.
Math teacher Jill Baker told the board that high-ability students were not being challenged in the sixth and seventh grades and “leveled” math classes in the eighth grade were effective and allowed the teacher to focus on the low students.
Baker said the number of remedial classes at the high school has decreased over the past three years from six to one.
She said the percent of students who met or exceeded the ISTEP+ ‘07 performance standards was 86 percent for grade six, 82.6 percent for grade seven and 84.8 percent for grade eight.
“Our school goal is to increase the percentage of students passing ISTEP+ in math to 90 percent by 2011,” Baker told the board.
She said after-school tutoring increased test scores “greatly.”
Students who did not place in the ISTEP+ in 2007 and are not taking band or choir have a 30-minute remediation period every day. The results, Baker said, are “increased student self-confidence, increased homework completion and test scores, and increased classroom participation.”
She said that in May, 96 percent of the eighth graders who took a core test passed, while the state average for junior high and middle school students was 69 percent.
In planning for 2009, the school will use the measure of academic progress, grades and scores on the ISTEP+ to place students in the upper math class.
In the physical education sequence, Reisa Snyder said the philosophy is students are “not fully educated until they are physically educated. We want to empower life-long fitness skills.
“Thirty percent of children ages two to 19 are overweight or obese. By 2015, 75 percent of adults will be overweight or obese.”
At ISMS students meet every other day for 75 minutes of physical education. The school has a SHAPE program: super healthy and physically educated. SHAPE has been integrated into the regular PE curriculum.
Snyder reported that 100 percent of the students improve their SHAPE fitness test each year in at least one component of fitness.
“How can we get the families involved?” Bloom asked.
Snyder said they are trying incentives to do at home.
In other business, CCHS assistant principal Chris Lagoni reported that 100 percent of the employees at the high school donated to United Way.
He also said cell phone confiscation is one-half of what it was last year.
E-mail staff writer TJ Hemlinger atTJ@the postandmail.com. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, September 18 2008 )
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