Logan High School implements new programs to prepare for ACT

Logan High School has started new math remediation classes to help prepare struggling students for the ACT. This change was prompted by Logan City School District’s goal that by 2020 the students will meet or exceed the national percentage of students that meet the four college readiness benchmarks as determined by the ACT. Remediation classes for English will start after winter break.

“There’s the math portion which is the largest portion of the ACT as far as time is concerned and probably the most difficult of the four tests that are given,” said Alma Brown, the academic support coordinator at Logan High. “We want to make sure all of our students have those basic necessary skills to be functional and then some.”

Brown said the classes are still in a pilot stage and if they are a success, they may go further than math and English remediation.

“We have chosen as a school district, we have chosen as a state, to focus on using the ACT as one of the tools in accomplishing what our mandate is as a high school,” Brown said.

Along with remediation classes, Logan High will be switching to the John Baylor Prep test to prepare students for the ACT.

“It’s a little bit more concrete,” said Shane Ogden, principal of Logan High.

The program allows students to watch videos, work in groups and use sample tests to prepare for the ACT.

“That would be a focus for us in January and February,” Ogden said. “If that’s the way the district has set that goal then we need to make sure that we, as each of the buildings in our district, are focusing our efforts towards that.”

Leadership binder to help Wilson Elementary students track growth

Success has been noticed with the implementation of the leadership binder at Wilson Elementary. At the beginning of this school year Wilson created binders for each student to keep track of their progress through the year.

Each child's binder contains mission statements from the school, their teacher and the student. Personal goals are included that each student made with their teacher. Students are then able to track progress being made toward their goals and grade-level achievement.

“We feel really good about where we’re headed,” said Sundee Ware, the principal of Wilson. “Kids know where they’re headed.”

Ware said if a student reaches one of their goals they can receive rewards and set a new goal.

“I’m really proud of my school,” Ware said. “Every kid, no matter who, is going to make gains.”

The binders are part of the school’s Leader in Me program, which is based on Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” This program encourages students to be leaders and take charge of their own learning experience. This is the second year Leader in Me has been implemented at Wilson.

Ware said she has noticed the benefits that the binders and the Leader in Me program have provided, but she isn’t the only one.

“It helps the kids to know what to reach for,” said Andrea Lindstrom, a first-grade teacher at Wilson. “They know the outcome is up to them.”

Lindstrom said the binders allow students to be aware of their own attitude and actions. This puts the accountability for success on their shoulders. With students keeping track of their own progress allows Lindstrom to see what students may be struggling with.

“We are always looking at our data,” Lindstrom said. “We are constantly readjusting.”

New learning program for Mount Logan Middle School sees results

Mount Logan Middle School has already begun to see the benefits from implementing the professional learning community program at the beginning of the school year. A PLC provides opportunities for teachers to collaborate in groups and learn how to be more successful. This has been emphasized across the district since Frank Schofield became Logan City School District’s superintendent on July 1.

“It has been the most effective way to get students to accomplish great things,” said Paul Wagner, an assistant principal at Mount Logan. “We’re all blown away by how well our teachers have responded and how willing they’ve been to cooperate and to do this. We’re all excited.”

Part of being a professional learning community requires teachers to meet together to discuss four questions. These include what they want the students to learn, how students will know when they’ve learned, what to do if they don’t learn and how to extend their learning if they have already learned the basics.

Tests are created based on those questions to make sure teachers are teaching what is important for that class across the board. These are called common formative assessments.

“When we say common we want not only the questions to be common, but we want to make sure the administration of the quiz is also very common,” said Shane Hutchinson, a seventh-grade science teacher at Mount Logan. “So when we get the data back we can know that it’s because of certain things students got or didn’t get, not the way we were administering the quiz.”

In addition to common formative assessments, the program gives the idea that every student can learn.

“Some people think that there are some students who just can’t learn,” Wagner said. “The magic of this PLC approach is that you just don’t believe it. You don’t believe that a student can’t learn.”

Wagner said teachers will use other teachers, as well as the resources the school provides, to keep finding ways to help a student in need.

“I’m pretty passionate about this stuff,” Wagner said. “What I got involved in administration for is to kind of deliver this educational vision that every kid can get.”

Hutchinson said he has noticed the influence of the new district emphasis.

“It’s not just that this department’s doing it because they think it’s the right thing to do,” Hutchinson said. “We’re all united in the whole school in doing the same things.”

Schofield said he feels the value of this emphasis is felt across the district.

“Effective teams have always done these things,” Schofield said. “Effective teams in any industry have clear goals for performance. They work collaboratively.”

Schofield said while some may be getting up to speed on the emphasis, it still has been received well.

“If we come together as a team, we can accomplish more and we can reach more students than if we all just try to do this individually,” Schofield said.

Bridger Elementary develops survey to see correlations in new testing system

The goal is simple. Bridger Elementary’s community council wants students reading at home for 20 minutes. Now they need to find out if kids are doing it. The community council has created a survey to find out if students are reading at home.

“We know that reading at home makes a big impact on if they’re reading in their zone of proximal development,” said Jed Grunig, the principal of Bridger. “So it’s just hard enough to challenge them, but not too hard that they can’t be successful independently reading it.”

The survey asks for the students’ grade, amount of days they read at home, the minutes they read each day and if they met their AR, accelerated reading goal. The students AR determines what difficulty of books they should read.

“It’s based on their STAR assessment,” said Carrie Curtis, the literacy coach for Bridger.

STAR used to stand for Standardized Testing for the Assessment of Reading, but has created tests for other subjects. This is the first year Bridger Elementary has given the STAR assessments monthly. It breaks students into four different categories to show them how close to grade level in a certain subject they are.

“With their STAR assessment they take what grade level they are at and how many minutes they are supposed to read each night and then there is a formula that calculates how many points they need for a given amount of time,” Curtis said.

Grunig is interested to see if there are any correlations between reading at home and how students do on their STAR reading assessments.

“It might be good to share with parents too,” Grunig said.

After each STAR test the student is immediately given feedback.

“They’re so excited to take it again to see what they’ve learned in the last month,” Curtis said.

Wilson Elementary hosts “So You Think You Can Dance” celebrities for toy drive

A local toy drive will be boosted by a bit of star power on Friday as “So You Think You Can Dance” celebrities, Kathryn McCormick and Cyrus “Glitch” Spencer come to reward the students. Starting at 1 p.m. it will be held in the Logan High School auditorium accompanied by a career symposium and dance clinic. Wilson Elementary held a similar event last year, but this is the first year the rest of the Logan City School District has been invited to come to the event.

The event was organized by SafTEQ, a company that sells devices to protect and monitor children's online activity. As an incentive to the students at Wilson Elementary, SafTEQ is requiring every student to give a toy at the drive to be able to dance with McCormick and Spencer.

“We try to give out 500 toys,” said Sundee Ware, the principal of Wilson. “They can bring a toy or they can make it. I just think it’s really great.”

Ware said the other schools were invited to join the toy drive, but could choose to do something else.

“We want to get to a bigger goal of toys so we can send them out to charities,” said Paul Singh, a fourth-grade student at Wilson. “If we can get it to a high level then we can do a very good job.”

Singh is a part of a student group that is helping with the toy drive, as well as counting the toys. Singh will also be in charge of Wilson performing moves from the music video “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” at the start of the symposium.

The CEO of SafTEQ, Jeremiah Cox said the career symposium should be impactful for the students that come.

“I’m hoping that we’ll have it full,” Cox said.

Hillcrest Elementary implements new language arts curriculum

Hillcrest Elementary implemented its new language arts program at the beginning of the school year. The curriculum called ReadyGEN allows students to set goals and track their own progress on achieving their objectives.

“We’re really excited about it,” said Eric Markworth, the principal of Hillcrest Elementary. “Sometimes our students come in and they’re behind. We want to expect at least one year's growth from each student.”

According to Susanne Kuresa, the human resource services director of Logan City School District, goals give the students an opportunity to reflect on on what they have to do to achieve their objectives.

“Anytime kids have an awareness of where they are and how they’re doing and what comes next in their achievements, I think that they are better able to participate and take ownership for that learning,” Kuresa said. “I think that’s a great way to include students and to outline where they need to go and how they’re going to get there.”

Markworth said some students might need some extra help and this program allows the school to give more time and intensity to those students.

“They’re making their own personal and own academic goals,” Markworth said. “We feel like it’s challenging kids to think at a higher level than ever before. That’s what we want them to do. We want them to come out college and career ready by the time they graduate from high school. We think that our small piece of that is a really valuable piece.”

Ellis Elementary prepares for revamping of science program

Ellis Elementary has changed their curriculum in preparation for the statewide changes to the science program next school year. Principal Sue Sorenson said that she expects the new core to follow the Next Generation Science Standards, which has been adopted by 26 states.

“We’re trying to use the core we currently have, that the teachers know really well, and trying to incorporate that deeper questioning side to what we already know,” Sorenson said. “So when the new core comes in it won’t be such an adjustment for us. We’re trying to think ahead.”

Sorenson said they might have asked surface questions like, what color the sky is. With the changes, students are encouraged to use high order thinking to answer thought provoking questions.

“My question to them was, ‘I was diagnosed and my doctor said that I could not eat things that had fungi properties. What couldn’t I eat?’” Sorenson said. “So that would be that deeper thinking that they have to go through and think, ‘Well what is it that she couldn’t have?’”

Susanne Kuresa, the human resource services director of Logan City School District said it was smart for Ellis to prepare for the changes.

“Anytime there is a change in curriculum, it is not an overnight implementation or response for that change,” Kuresa said. “Anticipating that, doing some preliminary work and being ahead of that is certainly going to be to their benefit.”