1. Budget: Items Needed
1.1. 1. Professional Development: a. 1 day during first week of work days for teachers; b. optional summer PD (all teachers who attend recieve $100 stipend); c. Funds to cover staff travel to neighboring districts for observations
1.2. School Events: funds to cover food and activities for students and families
1.3. Family Incentives: funds/items needed for monthly raffles
1.4. Currciculum/Resources: new resources to be purchased for teacher and student use to reach goal
2. Collaboration with Families/Communities
2.1. School Events
2.1.1. PTO Night: At each PTO meeting, families are given an update surrounding student performance on the practice tests; parents are provided with resources to help their children at home; parents are encouraged and given a way to contact Initiative leaders about their concerns and suggestions to make this a success
2.1.2. STEM Night: 1 portion of STEM Night will focus on scientific literacy with games including reading graphs, the scientific method, ansd scientific phenomenon
2.1.3. School Parenting Day: parents will be invited to meet with teachers about their child's academic growth and review ways and resources to help close the gap in science'/scientific literature
2.2. Bi-Weekly Tips
2.2.1. Parents will recieve educational tips bi-weekly to use to encourage their children and/or assist their children in reaching the weekly or monthly goal of scoring high on the practice tests; parents will also recieve a bi-weekly short reading passage wtih a few multiple choice questions to practuce with their children; the families that participare in these challenges will be entered into a monthly raffle
2.3. Industry/Organization Partnerships
2.3.1. Partners will assit with funding of school activities, covering the cost of professional development with staff, and incentives for students and families
3. Professional Development Opportunities
3.1. PD for Elementary and Middle School Staff
3.1.1. PD to explore scientific literacy and the passage types of the ACT science test; teachers given resources and opportunities to practice with the new resources; teachers given opportunity to observe other teachers using curriculum monthly
3.2. PD for High School Science Department
3.2.1. PD to teach teachers how to teach the science portion of ACT; PD will provide resources for teacher to use in class and opportunity to explore the types of passages, graphs, etc that are in each ACT science test; teachers given opportunity to observe other science teachers using the resource monthly
3.3. Whole Staff PD
3.3.1. PD to show alignment of standards and data to support initative; staff return to review how they plan to utilize resources to meet the goal of the initiative
4. Communication with School Community
4.1. Plan for Teachers
4.1.1. Meet with upper elementay and middle school teachers in May to discuss the initiative that will begin in August of the upcoming school year
4.1.2. High school history teachers will include 1 opportunity a week for students to explore non-fiction texts
4.1.3. High school science teachers will give 1 timed ACT science practice test weekly and review answers will students that same day
4.2. Plan for Students
4.2.1. Students will recieve communication of this iniative in history and science classes throughout the year
5. Collaboration and Communication with Feeder Schools
5.1. Upper Elementary & Middle School Plan
5.1.1. Inform upper elem. and middle school teachers that they should plan for 1-2 weekly lessons that focus on scientific literacy and the 3 types of ACT science passages
5.2. Upper Elementary & Middle School Initial Communication
5.2.1. Meet with upper elementay and middle school teachers in May to discuss the initiative that will begin in August of the upcoming school year; ask for their input and needed resources
5.3. Assessment of Upper Elementary & Middle School Students
5.3.1. Students will be assessed monthly on their ability to read and answer scientific comprehension questions monthly; tests created by instructional coach and teachers
6. Data for Progress Monitoring
6.1. Data Used to ID Need for Initiative
6.1.1. Data taken from Alabama Department of Education; Average District-wide ACT Score: 17; Majority of 4th,6th,8th grade students score level 1 and 2 on ACAP Science
6.2. Data Used to Monitor Progress
6.2.1. Upper Elementary and Middle: Instructional Coach and teachers will use scores from tests given monthly
6.2.2. High School Science Teacher: Utilize score on weekly timed test to determine if students are improving and benchmarking weekly