Jefferson Elementary School is helping all students develop the world-class skills and life and career characteristics of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by creating a safe, diverse, innovative, and academically challenging environment. We provide college and career readiness by implementing rigorous standards in language arts and math and by supporting continuous professional development for our teachers in the target areas of literacy, data-driven instruction, social and emotional learning, and technology.
Our school’s mission, vision, and beliefs reflect our district’s mission, vision, and beliefs. While we intensely focus on academics, we want to teach the whole child, so our students can reach their highest potential. We want our students to be responsible, show initiative, be creative, set and meet goals, resolve conflicts and problems, think critically, learn from mistakes, and contribute to our community and world. This school year, we have focused on strengthening our Tier 1 instruction and providing intensive intervention and enrichment opportunities to accelerate and remediate our students. We continuously examine student assessments and teacher observation data to determine our professional learning goals. Summative data from SC READY and SC PASS each school year and the data from formative assessments, such as NWEA MAP, provide direction and guidance regarding our student’s strengths and needs and the professional development opportunities we design for staff. Looking at NWEA MAP data taken in the spring, we noticed that the percentage of first- and second-grade students that should be expected with a high probability (50% probability) to achieve “meets expectations” or “exceeds expectations” when they take the third-grade South Carolina College-and Career-Ready Assessment (SC READY) is much lower than desired. We found that 44% of second-grade English language arts (ELA) students and 41% of second-grade math students were on track to score either “meets expectations” or “exceeds expectations” on the third-grade SC READY. Similarly, from the MAP data gathered during winter administration, we found that 44% of first-grade ELA students and 43% of first-grade math students were on track to score either “meets expectations” or “exceeds expectations” on the third-grade SC READY.
In response to the data reviewed from the 2021-2022 school year, we modified the design of our master schedule to allow us to provide students with multiple opportunities for intervention and enrichment in ELA and Mathematics. We will also continue to support our staff professionally to grow their capacity as learners because students grow when teachers grow. Because learning is the core of effective teaching, we seek opportunities to acquire new and effective strategies to use in the classroom, emphasizing instructional best practices. We will continue to focus our work on becoming a true Professional Learning Community. We are working to address the four core questions of PLCS: 1. What is it we want students to know and be able to do? 2. How will we know when they have learned it? 3. What will we do when they have not learned it? 4. How will we respond if students already know it? We have conducted data dives using our schoolwide formative assessment data, focused professional development on helping teachers write effective learning targets to accompany their lessons, and worked to help teachers leverage technology to improve their assessment design and student engagement. Therefore, based on the teacher observation data, our future professional development focus areas include the following high-leverage practices: 1. The inclusion of teaching, modeling, and demonstrating portion in each lesson 2. The use of timely and specific feedback to clarify student misconceptions and push student acceleration in thinking critically, and 3. The development of aligned and rigorous common assessments to assess student mastery of priority standards in each subject area. In addition to these professional development efforts, we are continuing our work to address our students’ social-emotional and behavioral needs.
Finally, our character education program emphasizes the qualities of good citizenship, interpersonal skills, and participation in service-connected activities to build community. We will continue to work with the community and participate in programs outside the school that nurture the characteristics and skills of responsible citizens in a global society.
At Jefferson Elementary School, we believe in ensuring that students and staff reach their fullest potential. To do that, the school, staff members, families, and the community must share the responsibility for educating all enrolled. Together, we can ensure the safety of our school while planning an accelerated and challenging learning experience for all students.
Thank you for your support in helping develop our future South Carolina graduates and world leaders.
Mattie Hughes, Principal
Jennifer Cooney, Chairperson/School Improvement Council
